Conrad Atkinson | Tate Britain

Conrad Akinson, who will be having an exhibition at South Square over April and May this year, has revealed that he has recently had a piece put on display in Tate Britain. The artwork (pictured below) was commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Irish Congress of trades Unions northern Committee in 1975. 

 

Conrad Atkinson "A shade of green: an orange edge: Mayday 1968/1975"

The piece is made up of approximately 70 photos and 35 texts and will be on display for several months. This work has previously been exhibited in such prestigious galleries as the Arts Council Gallery Northern Ireland (1975), Feldman Fine Art new York (1979), Hirshhorn Museum (1982) and others including the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Emmy Twigge at South Square

Yesterday South Square was visited by Emmy Twigge, a Leeds-based artist who responded to an open call for exhibitions at South Square. She was successful in her application, and is currently set to show during June 2011 in the main gallery space. The exact nature of her upcoming show has not been completely decided, so expect to hear more next year.

Below is an image of one of her works from earlier this year made up of thirty-three hand built earthenware bricks and thirty-two fired porcelain spheres hidden within the bricks. The work was part of Emmy's contribution for the AA2A scheme at the Leeds College of Art this year.

"Thirty-three green clay bricks with thirty-two porcelain spheres" Emmy Twigge, AA2A 2009/2010

You can also visit her website at www.emmytwigge.com to see more images of her past works.

Tereza Kotyk - International Curator

Last week South Square was visited by Tereza Kotyk, former curator at Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, and at the Cornerhouse, Manchester. Exhibitions she helped curate include "The Intertwining Line" at the Cornerhouse, and "Arbeit*" (Work*) in Innsbruck.

She was visiting the gallery for the first time, to see the space after having suggested South Square as a possible venue for Conrad Atkinson's part of the upcoming international exhibition "Personal Tempest".

 “If this drama has no single protagonist, it has a pronounced motif—one that recurs constantly throughout the Brontë lives and works. This motif is the element of storm: time and again the sisters described some cataclysmic event of nature as a sympathetic manifestation of some inner, personal tempest. The theme first occurs in the shipwreck reference by their mother, Maria Branwell, in one of her letters; its pagan presence was felt by their clergyman father when he wrote of his wife’s death,’…another storm arose,  more terrible than the former—one that shook every part of the mortal frame and often threatened it with dissolution...”

Muriel Spark, ‘The Bronte Letters’, Peter Nevill Ltd: London, 1954, p.13

This exhibition explores how our inner state of mind can be affected by a certain experience of nature, one that uniquely evolves into a ‘personal tempest’. Mirrored in imaginary accounts and personal stories this romantic motif is explored in paintings, drawings, video installations, and photographs from Victorian time to the present. 

Tereza has been working closely with the curatorial team at South Square for this exhibition and offering suggestions and advice with respect to the planning and implementation of the exhibition. Watch this space....