Featured Posts
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Friday, 17 May 2013
Art: Forms and functions - an interview with Haroon Mirza
Former Northern Art Prize winner Haroon Mirza’s new installation is about to be unveiled at The Hepworth Wakefield.
Artist Haroon Mirza’s latest exhibition, which goes on display this month, takes inspiration from its host gallery.
Utilising the adjacent River Calder to create a unique audio composition, the new installation of light, sound and found objects uses The Hepworth Wakefield’s art collection as materials for his own work.
“I’m interested in the idea of art being more than something that is just visual,” Haroon explains. “With the work at The Hepworth, one of the things I’ve been interested in looking at is the idea of ready-made materials, but also existing artworks. So I often work with works of art and incorporate them into my own installations – it’s turning works of art into material for art. So the collection at The Hepworth comes into this, and it sheds light on the idea that an artwork for me is the same as a found object.”
Haroon likes to play with the idea of function and is interested in how found objects can become works of art, and how works of art can become functional. “There’s the Marcel Duchamp tradition of the ready-made, where an artist takes an everyday object and places it within the context of art. But he also spoke about the reverse ready-made, which is the idea of taking a work of art and giving it a function,” he says.
“One of things I am doing is displaying plinths from The Hepworth – empty plinths with nothing on them. I’m displaying several plinths which are joined together by LED lights at their base, so the plinths become a support for LED lights.”
He says he doesn’t want gallery visitors to get bogged down in trying to understand his work on an intellectual level.“It’s an experience like you would have going to a gig or something like that.“
With the use of materials in his work that can expire, such as light bulbs and electronic equipment, it was interesting to hear Haroon’s position on the status of his artworks once things stop functioning as they were originally intended. “That’s the moment when the work becomes a sculpture,” he says. “If you’ve got this big assemblage of lights, and objects, and things all together that is generating sound, then it’s an audio-visual work. But when you switch it off, it’s still an interesting object.”
Haroon was awarded the prestigious Northern Art Prize in 2011. Since then his career has blossomed. “Winning the Northern Art Prize definitely helped things. It gave me the confidence as an artist,” he says. “Before that moment, I never really took myself seriously as an artist. It’s given me a lot more attention, especially in the north. Museums in the north have started collecting my work. Right now, I have work on show in Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, and now at The Hepworth. Immediately, it didn’t feel like it changed anything, but now I think that it’s one of those things that curators and museums look to with confidence – it’s a fantastic endorsement.”
Haroon began his artistic career in Sheffield, so returning to Yorkshire means a lot to him. “Yorkshire’s an incredible place with an amazing history and art history. For me it was being able to work in a big city like Sheffield, establish myself as an artist, and not have to worry about money as I might in London. I’m not surprised that people like David Hockney want to live in Yorkshire – it’s not just that it’s the subject for his art, but there’s this lifestyle that goes with it.”
Haroon Mirza, The Hepworth, Wakefield, May 25 to September 29.
This is article was originally published by the Yorkshire Post on May 17, 2013.
Artist Haroon Mirza’s latest exhibition, which goes on display this month, takes inspiration from its host gallery.
Utilising the adjacent River Calder to create a unique audio composition, the new installation of light, sound and found objects uses The Hepworth Wakefield’s art collection as materials for his own work.
“I’m interested in the idea of art being more than something that is just visual,” Haroon explains. “With the work at The Hepworth, one of the things I’ve been interested in looking at is the idea of ready-made materials, but also existing artworks. So I often work with works of art and incorporate them into my own installations – it’s turning works of art into material for art. So the collection at The Hepworth comes into this, and it sheds light on the idea that an artwork for me is the same as a found object.”
Haroon likes to play with the idea of function and is interested in how found objects can become works of art, and how works of art can become functional. “There’s the Marcel Duchamp tradition of the ready-made, where an artist takes an everyday object and places it within the context of art. But he also spoke about the reverse ready-made, which is the idea of taking a work of art and giving it a function,” he says.
“One of things I am doing is displaying plinths from The Hepworth – empty plinths with nothing on them. I’m displaying several plinths which are joined together by LED lights at their base, so the plinths become a support for LED lights.”
He says he doesn’t want gallery visitors to get bogged down in trying to understand his work on an intellectual level.“It’s an experience like you would have going to a gig or something like that.“
With the use of materials in his work that can expire, such as light bulbs and electronic equipment, it was interesting to hear Haroon’s position on the status of his artworks once things stop functioning as they were originally intended. “That’s the moment when the work becomes a sculpture,” he says. “If you’ve got this big assemblage of lights, and objects, and things all together that is generating sound, then it’s an audio-visual work. But when you switch it off, it’s still an interesting object.”
Haroon was awarded the prestigious Northern Art Prize in 2011. Since then his career has blossomed. “Winning the Northern Art Prize definitely helped things. It gave me the confidence as an artist,” he says. “Before that moment, I never really took myself seriously as an artist. It’s given me a lot more attention, especially in the north. Museums in the north have started collecting my work. Right now, I have work on show in Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, and now at The Hepworth. Immediately, it didn’t feel like it changed anything, but now I think that it’s one of those things that curators and museums look to with confidence – it’s a fantastic endorsement.”
Haroon began his artistic career in Sheffield, so returning to Yorkshire means a lot to him. “Yorkshire’s an incredible place with an amazing history and art history. For me it was being able to work in a big city like Sheffield, establish myself as an artist, and not have to worry about money as I might in London. I’m not surprised that people like David Hockney want to live in Yorkshire – it’s not just that it’s the subject for his art, but there’s this lifestyle that goes with it.”
Haroon Mirza, The Hepworth, Wakefield, May 25 to September 29.
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Art: In Cloud Country - in conversation with Iwona Blazwick and Diane Howse
In recent years the reputation of art inspired by nature has taken something of a battering – especially if it has a tendency towards abstraction.
There is so much kitschy and inoffensive art littering the walls of hotel rooms and coffee shops that the idea of an exhibition focusing on the abstraction in nature is one that is easy to dismiss.
But the latest exhibition at Harewood House sees curators Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, and Countess of Harewood, Diane Howse, take a daring approach to the genre.
In Cloud Country is an exhibition that doesn’t just capture your imagination – it teases and prods it, pulls at it and contorts it beyond recognition.
At each turn you are met with seeming unrelated works coupled together. One can see an early 19th century sketch by J.W.M. Turner hanging next a piece by contemporary artist Chris Ofili, who is best known for his paintings featuring elephant dung.
Iwona explained: “We felt we had a licence to do this partly because we had both seen an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in the 1990s curated by Michael Craig-Martin called Drawing the Line where he just ran amuck with a whole collection of drawings. You could see Leonardo Da Vinci next to Sol LeWitt – it was really liberating.
“So we thought why not travel across space and time and seeing if the concerns are the same. And sure enough, we found that there were these parallels. So, for example, we could see that you could put together an oil pastel by Degas and find it next a contemporary work by Julian Opie – they’re both intimations of something sublime, but the Julian Opie has a motorway in it.
“It was looking at the similarities, but also the differences, and rather than telling this story as a chronology, it was actually to say there are themes within this topic. The word ‘abstraction’ is as big as the word ‘nature’, and we wanted to find all different manifestations of it - hence the grouping of different themes."
The very definition of the words ‘nature’ and ‘abstraction’ are called into question throughout the exhibition. Diane said: “There’s a notion that if you work with nature that it’s about trees and landscapes seen from a certain perspective, but that’s not necessarily always so. Nature is everything that is in our physical world – there’s gravity, radiation, the movement of the planets, and so on. A lot of artists are working with that notion in the broadest sense, even though they are not in any way, shape or form landscape artists – it’s how we experience that landscape, or our relationship to the physical world.
“A lot of artists now work in the studio, completely removed from natural stimulus, so there’s a notion there of memory, embedded memory, and perhaps of personal memory or even some sort ancient memory that we all have.”
Iwona added: “Throughout the whole thing you get this miraculous process, this alchemical process where an artist can reduce an entire environment - a huge 360 degree panorama – onto a piece of paper. How do they do that? That’s what we’re hoping to show. These are the many ways that artists have done this over the last three centuries and continue to do so.”
The term ‘abstraction’ is used metaphorically throughout the exhibition. Iwona said: ”We’re looking at abstraction where art becomes a symbol, where nature becomes a symbol. So we’ve got a grouping of work around nature and society where we start with William Morris. And even though the drawing that we have, which is a design for a wallpaper, is really a very precise picture of petals, flowers and tendrils, the concept is an abstract one because he reflected a society where people saw the growth of Satanic mills and the way that human beings were losing touch with their environment and destroying it at the same time. Belching smoke, mines, factories, so Morris’s project was to bring nature back to urban society, and bring nature back into the home.”
Alongside the works of Morris and Turner are pieces by contemporary artists such as Imran Qureshi. Iwona said: “He has an extraordinary skill for depicting chrysanthemums and turning those into quite a shocking image of political trauma. That image is really about partition, and it’s a bloody footprint. But when you look more closely, you see that it made of these beautifully, exquisitely rendered chrysanthemum petals embossed with gold.”
The exhibition ventures into the terrain of conceptual art, as Iwona explained: “There’s a thread of post-war conceptual art where language becomes another form of representation. The idea of a proposal such as Paolo Bruschi’s idea that he could colour the clouds over New York, or indeed Lawrence Weiner – one of the greatest conceptual artists in the world – evoking a structure made out of bamboo purely with words on a wall.”
But it is the historical scope of the exhibition that make it such an engaging and surprising experience for the audience. Iwona said: “You have these great, acknowledged art historical giants like Turner, but seen at their most intimate – the sketch. The deftness with which they capture something with pen and ink, or with watercolour, juxtaposed with some of the most important developments in modern and contemporary art.
“It has a strong locus of the British art scene and within British collections. We’re sad not to have Van Gogh or Mondrian, or the Barbizon school, but we do have a Degas and a Matisse. We’ve tried to map the key moments right up to Richard Long, perhaps one of the greatest post-war British artists, who uses his body as a form of mapping. He describes his journey across the moorland to create a sort of conceptual sculpture.”
In Cloud Country breaks the trend for exhibitions to focus on oil paintings or sculptures, and instead relishes in the spontaneity and potential associated with works produced on paper. Iwona said: “What's thrilling about working with works on paper is that they are rarely seen except for in small galleries and storerooms. There’s this ‘what if?’ potential about them – they’re quite utopian. They’re about grabbing something fleeting – they’re about the possibility of something more. And that somehow gives them a tremendous energy which oil paintings lack.
“I hope people come away feeling excited and maybe even grab a pen themselves, and find themselves drawing and reacting to the natural environment around them.”
There is so much kitschy and inoffensive art littering the walls of hotel rooms and coffee shops that the idea of an exhibition focusing on the abstraction in nature is one that is easy to dismiss.
But the latest exhibition at Harewood House sees curators Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, and Countess of Harewood, Diane Howse, take a daring approach to the genre.
.jpg) |
| Diane Howse (left) and Iwona Blazwick (right). Picture by Bethany Clark. |
At each turn you are met with seeming unrelated works coupled together. One can see an early 19th century sketch by J.W.M. Turner hanging next a piece by contemporary artist Chris Ofili, who is best known for his paintings featuring elephant dung.
Iwona explained: “We felt we had a licence to do this partly because we had both seen an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in the 1990s curated by Michael Craig-Martin called Drawing the Line where he just ran amuck with a whole collection of drawings. You could see Leonardo Da Vinci next to Sol LeWitt – it was really liberating.
“So we thought why not travel across space and time and seeing if the concerns are the same. And sure enough, we found that there were these parallels. So, for example, we could see that you could put together an oil pastel by Degas and find it next a contemporary work by Julian Opie – they’re both intimations of something sublime, but the Julian Opie has a motorway in it.
“It was looking at the similarities, but also the differences, and rather than telling this story as a chronology, it was actually to say there are themes within this topic. The word ‘abstraction’ is as big as the word ‘nature’, and we wanted to find all different manifestations of it - hence the grouping of different themes."
The very definition of the words ‘nature’ and ‘abstraction’ are called into question throughout the exhibition. Diane said: “There’s a notion that if you work with nature that it’s about trees and landscapes seen from a certain perspective, but that’s not necessarily always so. Nature is everything that is in our physical world – there’s gravity, radiation, the movement of the planets, and so on. A lot of artists are working with that notion in the broadest sense, even though they are not in any way, shape or form landscape artists – it’s how we experience that landscape, or our relationship to the physical world.
“A lot of artists now work in the studio, completely removed from natural stimulus, so there’s a notion there of memory, embedded memory, and perhaps of personal memory or even some sort ancient memory that we all have.”
Iwona added: “Throughout the whole thing you get this miraculous process, this alchemical process where an artist can reduce an entire environment - a huge 360 degree panorama – onto a piece of paper. How do they do that? That’s what we’re hoping to show. These are the many ways that artists have done this over the last three centuries and continue to do so.”
 |
| J.M.W.Turner, Rome from Monte Mario, (c.1819). |
Alongside the works of Morris and Turner are pieces by contemporary artists such as Imran Qureshi. Iwona said: “He has an extraordinary skill for depicting chrysanthemums and turning those into quite a shocking image of political trauma. That image is really about partition, and it’s a bloody footprint. But when you look more closely, you see that it made of these beautifully, exquisitely rendered chrysanthemum petals embossed with gold.”
 |
| Imran Qureshi, This Leprous Brightness, |
But it is the historical scope of the exhibition that make it such an engaging and surprising experience for the audience. Iwona said: “You have these great, acknowledged art historical giants like Turner, but seen at their most intimate – the sketch. The deftness with which they capture something with pen and ink, or with watercolour, juxtaposed with some of the most important developments in modern and contemporary art.
“It has a strong locus of the British art scene and within British collections. We’re sad not to have Van Gogh or Mondrian, or the Barbizon school, but we do have a Degas and a Matisse. We’ve tried to map the key moments right up to Richard Long, perhaps one of the greatest post-war British artists, who uses his body as a form of mapping. He describes his journey across the moorland to create a sort of conceptual sculpture.”
In Cloud Country breaks the trend for exhibitions to focus on oil paintings or sculptures, and instead relishes in the spontaneity and potential associated with works produced on paper. Iwona said: “What's thrilling about working with works on paper is that they are rarely seen except for in small galleries and storerooms. There’s this ‘what if?’ potential about them – they’re quite utopian. They’re about grabbing something fleeting – they’re about the possibility of something more. And that somehow gives them a tremendous energy which oil paintings lack.
“I hope people come away feeling excited and maybe even grab a pen themselves, and find themselves drawing and reacting to the natural environment around them.”
In Cloud Country is on display at Harewood House until June 30.
Features: The top 5 apps for visually impaired Android users
With everyone banging on about how great iPhones are, spare a thought for those of us who can’t see their fiddly little screens. Here are my top five free apps for visually impaired Android users.
1. Walky Talky
There are dozens of free satnav apps out there, but few of them are of use to a visually impaired user who doesn’t drive, but needs help with navigation. What makes Walky Talky stand out from the pack is that it is made for walking and using public transport. It constantly updates you on your location – even down to the house number you’re walking past, and vibrates if you're going the wrong way.
2. Catch Notes
This is your basic note-taking and memo app. It’s infuriating to try and take notes on a touchscreen phone, especially if you are visually impaired. But with the app’s compatibility with Google’s latest voice recognition software, it can transcribe your natural speech in real time. Great for budding novelists – and just think, even with the occasional lapses in accuracy, you’ll still write better than Stephanie Meyer.
3. Ideal Accessibility Installer
4. Your Magnifying Glass
Using a smartphone to enlarge print is simple, yet ingenious, and Your Magnifying Glass is simply brilliant. Utilising your phone’s camera, you can zoom in and out over text, freeze the image, flip it, invert the colours, light up the page with the camera’s flash, and then save the image onto your Google Drive to view later.
5. Audioboo
There is a large visually impaired community on Audioboo, and the Android app gives you access to all of the site's features through a user-friendly interface. It’s perfect for catching up with the audio version of the Guardian, packages from Radio 4’s Today, and podcasts from all manner of people – I recommend Sean Dilley and Documentally.
Visit:
Google Play Store.
This article was originally published by Leeds Northern.
1. Walky Talky There are dozens of free satnav apps out there, but few of them are of use to a visually impaired user who doesn’t drive, but needs help with navigation. What makes Walky Talky stand out from the pack is that it is made for walking and using public transport. It constantly updates you on your location – even down to the house number you’re walking past, and vibrates if you're going the wrong way.
2. Catch Notes
This is your basic note-taking and memo app. It’s infuriating to try and take notes on a touchscreen phone, especially if you are visually impaired. But with the app’s compatibility with Google’s latest voice recognition software, it can transcribe your natural speech in real time. Great for budding novelists – and just think, even with the occasional lapses in accuracy, you’ll still write better than Stephanie Meyer.
3. Ideal Accessibility InstallerBeneath its clunky interface lie some great features for visually impaired and blind Android users, including KickBack, SoundBack and TalkBack. The installer allows the user to add audible, vibration and spoken elements to any Android device.
Using a smartphone to enlarge print is simple, yet ingenious, and Your Magnifying Glass is simply brilliant. Utilising your phone’s camera, you can zoom in and out over text, freeze the image, flip it, invert the colours, light up the page with the camera’s flash, and then save the image onto your Google Drive to view later.
5. AudiobooThere is a large visually impaired community on Audioboo, and the Android app gives you access to all of the site's features through a user-friendly interface. It’s perfect for catching up with the audio version of the Guardian, packages from Radio 4’s Today, and podcasts from all manner of people – I recommend Sean Dilley and Documentally.
Visit:
Google Play Store.
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Friday, 10 May 2013
Art: Jewish artists celebrated in Leeds
It is 150 years since the first synagogue was built in Leeds, marking the Jewish community’s official establishment in the city. And now a new exhibition celebrates the landmark by showcasing the community’s contribution to the Yorkshire art scene. Jon Cronshaw hears more from curator Layla Bloom.
Jewish Artists in Yorkshire is based around the major Jewish artists in the University of Leeds’ art Collection, including Jacob Kramer, Philip Naviasky and Willy Tirr. Layla said: “We felt this would be the perfect opportunity not only to celebrate the artists in our collection, but also to pay tribute to some of the great patrons in our history. The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery is named after some fantastic Jewish patrons – so we’re really thankful to them as well as the artists.”
As well as important artworks from the Leeds collection, other works by Jewish artists are also Represented, including Jacob Epstein’s stunning bronze portrait of physicist Albert Einstein (1933) and Jacob Kramer’s painting about Jewish identity, ‘The Jew’ (1916). Layla said: “We were sure from the start that we didn’t just want this to be about the local area. So we’ve got artists featured like Jacob Kramer and Jacob Epstein who are well known internationally. But we also wanted to feature them alongside artists who are well-known locally, as well as some contemporary artists who aren’t as well-known as they should be, but hopefully will be in the future.”
The grouping of artists based on religious or ethnic grounds can be incredibly tricky for a curator and in the past has inflamed racial and religious tensions. Layla outlined the careful balance that needed to be maintained: “We were trying to show the diversity of the community. There were a lot of people who were concerned when they heard about the exhibition that we were trying to pigeonhole people into some kind of ethnic stereotype. That’s not the case – what we’re here to do is celebrate a very diverse community, and one that is very important to Leeds.”
The range of artists represented in the exhibition all have their own unique relationship to their Judaism. Layla said: “The artists interpret the world in many different ways - some through the lens of their Jewish identity, and some not at all. It can be just a religion for people, it’s certainly an ethnic heritage for a lot of people, and some people have very little connection to it – but it’s up to the individual artist to define for themselves.”
The response from the wider community in Leeds has been an enthusiastic one. Layla said: “I’m overwhelmed - this is the most popular exhibition opening we’ve ever had. I don’t know the numbers yet, but we ran out of wine! We had to bring out the kosher wine which we were reserving just for the religious people – and that was only 15 minutes into the exhibition opening.”
The exhibition has encouraged members of the local Jewish community to donate paintings to the gallery’s collection so that they can be seen by the wider public. Layla said: “People have a lot of pride in their heritage. We’ve had a lot of people from the community who heard about the exhibition and got really excited about it. We’ve had two people give gifts of paintings by Jewish artists for our permanent collection.”
Jewish Artists in Yorkshire is on display at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, until June 30.
More information:
The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery.
Follow: @SaBGallery.
Jewish Artists in Yorkshire is based around the major Jewish artists in the University of Leeds’ art Collection, including Jacob Kramer, Philip Naviasky and Willy Tirr. Layla said: “We felt this would be the perfect opportunity not only to celebrate the artists in our collection, but also to pay tribute to some of the great patrons in our history. The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery is named after some fantastic Jewish patrons – so we’re really thankful to them as well as the artists.”
 |
| Philip Naviasky, Street Scene, Staithes (detail), oil on canvas, Private Collection, Yorkshire © Estate of the Artist |
The grouping of artists based on religious or ethnic grounds can be incredibly tricky for a curator and in the past has inflamed racial and religious tensions. Layla outlined the careful balance that needed to be maintained: “We were trying to show the diversity of the community. There were a lot of people who were concerned when they heard about the exhibition that we were trying to pigeonhole people into some kind of ethnic stereotype. That’s not the case – what we’re here to do is celebrate a very diverse community, and one that is very important to Leeds.”
 |
| Jacob Kramer, The Jew, 1916, oil on canvas, University of Leeds Art Collection. © Estate of John David Roberts/By courtesy of the William Roberts Society/Photo: Norman Taylor |
The response from the wider community in Leeds has been an enthusiastic one. Layla said: “I’m overwhelmed - this is the most popular exhibition opening we’ve ever had. I don’t know the numbers yet, but we ran out of wine! We had to bring out the kosher wine which we were reserving just for the religious people – and that was only 15 minutes into the exhibition opening.”
The exhibition has encouraged members of the local Jewish community to donate paintings to the gallery’s collection so that they can be seen by the wider public. Layla said: “People have a lot of pride in their heritage. We’ve had a lot of people from the community who heard about the exhibition and got really excited about it. We’ve had two people give gifts of paintings by Jewish artists for our permanent collection.”
 |
| Joash Woodrow, Mr Woodrow’s Shop, Chapeltown Road, Leeds, c. 1945, gouache on paper, Private Collection © The Bridgeman Art Library courtesy of The Joash Woodrow Family |
Jewish Artists in Yorkshire is on display at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, until June 30.
More information:
The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery.
Follow: @SaBGallery.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Reportage: Zines celebrated in temporary Bradford shop
A new temporary zine shop is set to open on Bradford's Market Street for one week only from May 13.
Bradford Baked Zines is a week-long event that celebrates self publishing and DIY cultural activity.
Artists, musicians and zine makers will be setting up stalls selling their unique wares of self-bound books and magazines.
A zine is simply a do-it-yourself magazine which came to prominence during the 1970s punk scene.
As well as functioning as a shop, there will be a zine exhibition, library, workshops, and series of talks, discussions and presentations about self-publishing and DIY culture.
The shop is located at 13 Market Street at one of Fabric Art's empty shop spaces.
Visit: bradfordbakedzines.wordpress.com.
Bradford Baked Zines is a week-long event that celebrates self publishing and DIY cultural activity.
Artists, musicians and zine makers will be setting up stalls selling their unique wares of self-bound books and magazines.
A zine is simply a do-it-yourself magazine which came to prominence during the 1970s punk scene.
As well as functioning as a shop, there will be a zine exhibition, library, workshops, and series of talks, discussions and presentations about self-publishing and DIY culture.
The shop is located at 13 Market Street at one of Fabric Art's empty shop spaces.
Visit: bradfordbakedzines.wordpress.com.
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Art: Sensuous sadness of artist’s sculpture
Since his death in August 2012, Hans Josephsohn's reputation as an artist has continued to grow, and with his latest exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, his legacy as one of Switzerland’s most important modern sculptors will surely be cemented.
Born in the East Prussian town of Königsberg in 1920, Josephsohn was an unusual artist who dedicated his career to producing intimate sculptures of people who he loved and cared about.
Josephsohn left home at the age of 17 to study art in Florence. This would be the last time he ever saw his family, who ended their lives in the Nazi death camps, a fate which inevitably had a profound effect on his work.
Clare Lilley, head curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, explains: “His work is very sensuous and there’s an incredible intimacy in the work. But there is also an inherent sadness. For me, even before I knew anything about him, I saw this melancholy – if it touches you, it absolutely touches you.”
It was this profound loss that also affected how Josephsohn worked on a day-to-day basis, and the way he interacted with other artists. Ulrich Meinhertz, the head curator at Kesselhaus, a museum in Zurich dedicated to Josephsohn’s life and work explains: “Josephsohn was only interested in his own work. He did not look around at the art world. He would look at his own early pieces and try to solve their problems. So we get a series of more or less similar pieces on the same subject with slight differences. In the exhibition, you will see a row of seven big busts which at first view seem quite similar, but then when you look closely, you will see how he was finding new solutions for similar problems.”
Clare agrees, emphasising Josephsohn’s unique position in the art world: “He never worked with anyone else, which is very unusual for a sculptor. In one sense he was a bit insular, but in another it meant that he wasn’t prey to fashion. He would do his time in the studio every day and then go home – he was incredibly disciplined.”
Though Josephsohn is fast becoming regarded as an incredibly important artist, he only started to see success in the last decade of his life. “In his own country, he had very little success,” says Ulrich. “He was well known in the inner-circle of the art world, but he was not very successful in a commercial sense. Sometimes he couldn’t afford to cast his work, and he didn’t sell many of his pieces. He was very happy when people began to recognize his work at the end of his life.”
But Josephsohn did not measure success in terms of financial gain. “For him, it was important to do the pieces and have the opportunity to show them, and obviously to sell them,” says Ulrich. “But not because of the money, because a buyer will exhibit the piece elsewhere. He was very proud that he had found this success.”
Ulrich and Clare are both pleased they are able to exhibit Josephsohn’s work in the open air. “I knew right from the beginning that I wanted to put Josephsohn’s work in the formal gardens,” says Clare. “And I also knew that I didn’t want it to be a large indoor show. One of the reasons that I wanted to show him outdoors was because of the relationship between his work, the architecture of the formal terrace and the soft nature of the garden below.”
Josephsohn opens on May 11. The works in the Bothy Gallery are on show until November 3, and those in the gardens until January 5 next year.
This article was originally published in the Yorkshire Post.
Born in the East Prussian town of Königsberg in 1920, Josephsohn was an unusual artist who dedicated his career to producing intimate sculptures of people who he loved and cared about.
Josephsohn left home at the age of 17 to study art in Florence. This would be the last time he ever saw his family, who ended their lives in the Nazi death camps, a fate which inevitably had a profound effect on his work.
 |
| Hans Josephsohn (1920-2012) |
Clare Lilley, head curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, explains: “His work is very sensuous and there’s an incredible intimacy in the work. But there is also an inherent sadness. For me, even before I knew anything about him, I saw this melancholy – if it touches you, it absolutely touches you.”
It was this profound loss that also affected how Josephsohn worked on a day-to-day basis, and the way he interacted with other artists. Ulrich Meinhertz, the head curator at Kesselhaus, a museum in Zurich dedicated to Josephsohn’s life and work explains: “Josephsohn was only interested in his own work. He did not look around at the art world. He would look at his own early pieces and try to solve their problems. So we get a series of more or less similar pieces on the same subject with slight differences. In the exhibition, you will see a row of seven big busts which at first view seem quite similar, but then when you look closely, you will see how he was finding new solutions for similar problems.”
Clare agrees, emphasising Josephsohn’s unique position in the art world: “He never worked with anyone else, which is very unusual for a sculptor. In one sense he was a bit insular, but in another it meant that he wasn’t prey to fashion. He would do his time in the studio every day and then go home – he was incredibly disciplined.”
Though Josephsohn is fast becoming regarded as an incredibly important artist, he only started to see success in the last decade of his life. “In his own country, he had very little success,” says Ulrich. “He was well known in the inner-circle of the art world, but he was not very successful in a commercial sense. Sometimes he couldn’t afford to cast his work, and he didn’t sell many of his pieces. He was very happy when people began to recognize his work at the end of his life.”
But Josephsohn did not measure success in terms of financial gain. “For him, it was important to do the pieces and have the opportunity to show them, and obviously to sell them,” says Ulrich. “But not because of the money, because a buyer will exhibit the piece elsewhere. He was very proud that he had found this success.”
Ulrich and Clare are both pleased they are able to exhibit Josephsohn’s work in the open air. “I knew right from the beginning that I wanted to put Josephsohn’s work in the formal gardens,” says Clare. “And I also knew that I didn’t want it to be a large indoor show. One of the reasons that I wanted to show him outdoors was because of the relationship between his work, the architecture of the formal terrace and the soft nature of the garden below.”
Josephsohn opens on May 11. The works in the Bothy Gallery are on show until November 3, and those in the gardens until January 5 next year.
This article was originally published in the Yorkshire Post.
Saturday, 4 May 2013
Features: It’s all about the buzz – training to be a journalist in the digital age.
For the past month, the Leeds Trinity University postgraduate journalism trainees have been running a fully functioning newsroom.
Each week we have been producing a hyper-local newspaper, Leeds Northern, which covers the Horsforth, Rawdon, Otley and Yeadon areas north of the city. We also produce a weekly magazine, Yorkshire Voice, which has features, reviews and opinion pieces relating to Yorkshire.
Each week one of the team acts as editor. We have had to write stories and features, source images, sub-edit and proof each other’s work, and lay it out in Quark. This is alongside our NCTJ exam commitments, and my own role as acting arts correspondent at the Yorkshire Post.
There’s an incredible buzz in the newsroom, and although I am training to be a magazine journalist, we have been encouraged to write for each of the publications. It was such an amazing feeling when I got the splash for the first issue of Leeds Northern and the cover feature for Yorkshire Voice.
I’ve interviewed artists, councillors, aristocrats, playwrights and even a drag queen wrestler. I’ve learnt how to make text come alive on a page. And I am starting to be known on my patch as an aspiring culture journalist.
The watchword for our content is online first. As well as putting together a print magazine and newspaper, we have a regularly updated news website, as well as social media and SEO to manage.
We have also been encouraged to embrace multimedia content. I was initially quite sceptic about this – I saw myself as a journalist, not a broadcaster. But now I have become quite passionate about the importance of supporting content to add further dimensions to my writing.
During our training we’ve had talks from a wide range of online journalists from established organisation including the BBC and the New Statesman, to a blogger who is carving his own niche in the digital world – Documentally.
I’ve been writing constantly for over a decade, and the course has helped to hone and sharpen my existing skills. But when I look back at how I used to curate content on my website, I can see how much I’ve moved on.
In fact, I never used to think of blogging as curating content at all – for me it was a case of writing huge chunks of text with long cumulative sentences and throwing in an image at a push.
Now my website features stand-firsts, embedded audio and video, short paragraphs, and links to other websites. I’ve even learnt how to use Twitter properly, which for someone who went into this as something of a social media hermit, has been an eye opener.
Of course the one thing that is always emphasised is that the best kind of social networking is the kind that you do face-to-face. The words of advice I have received over the past few months from established journalists have been invaluable.
Follow: @Yorkshire_Voice.
This was originally published on the Journalism Diversity Fund blog.
Each week we have been producing a hyper-local newspaper, Leeds Northern, which covers the Horsforth, Rawdon, Otley and Yeadon areas north of the city. We also produce a weekly magazine, Yorkshire Voice, which has features, reviews and opinion pieces relating to Yorkshire.
 |
| Yorkshire Voice and Leeds Northern |
Each week one of the team acts as editor. We have had to write stories and features, source images, sub-edit and proof each other’s work, and lay it out in Quark. This is alongside our NCTJ exam commitments, and my own role as acting arts correspondent at the Yorkshire Post.
There’s an incredible buzz in the newsroom, and although I am training to be a magazine journalist, we have been encouraged to write for each of the publications. It was such an amazing feeling when I got the splash for the first issue of Leeds Northern and the cover feature for Yorkshire Voice.
I’ve interviewed artists, councillors, aristocrats, playwrights and even a drag queen wrestler. I’ve learnt how to make text come alive on a page. And I am starting to be known on my patch as an aspiring culture journalist.
The watchword for our content is online first. As well as putting together a print magazine and newspaper, we have a regularly updated news website, as well as social media and SEO to manage.
We have also been encouraged to embrace multimedia content. I was initially quite sceptic about this – I saw myself as a journalist, not a broadcaster. But now I have become quite passionate about the importance of supporting content to add further dimensions to my writing.
During our training we’ve had talks from a wide range of online journalists from established organisation including the BBC and the New Statesman, to a blogger who is carving his own niche in the digital world – Documentally.
I’ve been writing constantly for over a decade, and the course has helped to hone and sharpen my existing skills. But when I look back at how I used to curate content on my website, I can see how much I’ve moved on.
In fact, I never used to think of blogging as curating content at all – for me it was a case of writing huge chunks of text with long cumulative sentences and throwing in an image at a push.
Now my website features stand-firsts, embedded audio and video, short paragraphs, and links to other websites. I’ve even learnt how to use Twitter properly, which for someone who went into this as something of a social media hermit, has been an eye opener.
Of course the one thing that is always emphasised is that the best kind of social networking is the kind that you do face-to-face. The words of advice I have received over the past few months from established journalists have been invaluable.
Follow: @Yorkshire_Voice.
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