EXHIBITIONS IN 2003:

Exhibition
JOE MAGEE
Seeing it in Black and White
University of Bath Library
14 November - 12 December 2003

Joe Magee's work has appeared in newspapers worldwide for over ten years; publications include The Guardian, Libération, New York Times and Boston Globe. He has worked in a variety of ways (including digital animation and film) but as an artist preoccupied with the political, there is no more creatively productive process than that of providing illustrations for opinionated newspaper columns on social issues of the day. The body of work shown here was selected by the artist from numerous digital prints, silkscreen, linoprints and stencils. This exhibition gives the viewer the opportunity to see the image up close - the higher quality print processes revealing more about the work than is ever permitted by newsprint. The starkness and immediacy of these images result from the artist's political passions combined with the limits, pressures and power relations encountered in the newspaper format.

Magee describes the work as:
“...all done to tight deadlines and low budgets. The degree of artistic freedom depends on the publication and the individual commissioner. Some commissioners are happy to let you express yourself - others need to feel they are in the driving seat”.

See Joe Magee's website.

Exhibition
CHILA KUMARI BURMAN
Recent Work
University of Bath Library
10 October – 7 November 2003

Chila Kumari Burman is a distinguished artist with a distinctive style. Working with family photographs and influenced by contemporary pop, graffiti art and film culture, she combines imagery to create intensely coloured pieces teeming with detail. Burman grew up in a working-class Liverpudlian community, part of a Hindu-Punjabi family. The work shown in this exhibition continues to develop her on-going work around representation and the multiple self-identities associated with South Asian women. Her work explores serious and complex contemporary questions with engaging buoyancy and humour. She has exhibited in Europe, Canada, Pakistan, South Africa and Cuba. In the 1980s she was part of two ground-breaking exhibitions of black women artists' work; Black Women Time Now and The Thin Black Line. She has also produced artwork for book jackets including Anita and Me by Meera Syal (Flamingo, 1996).

Exhibition
DEBORAH JONES & the Kinder Garden Nursery
5X5X5
Walcot Chapel, Bath
6 - 19 May 2003

This exhibition was part of an innovative action research project in Bath and North East Somerset inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to early years education. In Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy, an artist is a full-time member of staff in each preschool. 5x5x5 is an on-going project involving five early years settings, five artists and five cultural centres working collaboratively in five 'triangles' (a partnership of one from each group). The University of Bath's involvement consisted of its Creative Arts Department (now ICIA) as a cultural centre, working with artist Deborah Jones and the children and staff of the Kinder Garden Nursery, Bath, on a visual arts project. 5x5x5 aims to develop children's creativity and transform educational practice by establishing creativity as an essential foundation of early learning.

5x5x5 is funded by NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts), Bath and North East Somerset Council and South West Arts.

Exhibition
DAVID BAINBRIDGE
Art and Old Labour
Walcot Chapel, Bath
4 – 27 March 2003

Despite their appearance, these works were produced comparatively recently. The media employed is taken from the English graphic arts tradition. This visual style’s connection with ‘the pre-industrial’ introduces an element of dissonance to the collection of works in that the artist uses the media favoured by the English neo- romantic but produces the look of Soviet Stakhanovite manufacturing imagery.

The principal works in the exhibition were the set which make up the Retort Series. The retort in question is a piece of equipment used in the production of smokeless solid fuel. The series consists of eight images of a retort in various locations. Its presence in these places imprints certain social achievements on them - achievements associated with employment and pollution control.

American minimalist Don Judd said that he wanted to produce art about which nothing could be said that was not a description of it. The Retort Series and other work in the show aspire to a similar condition – with the other works revealing something of the complexity involved.

New Work Premiere
JANE CALOW
Traject
The Guildhall, Bath
23 January 2003

Traject: A way, or a place of crossing over.

Traject is an artwork by visual artist Jane Calow that explores the idea of a ‘moveable site’ through an artist’s book and the conversion of seismic data into music, highlighting themes of spatialisation and displacement.

Jane Calow produced an artist’s book, working with composer Kathy Hinde and Dr Sheila Peacock (School of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham) on a process that generated music from seismic readings taken from a filled-in underpass/shopping area in Birmingham. The computer programme used to translate the data into music, was specially designed for the project by Computer Scientist, Dr Chris Hinde, (Loughborough University of Technology).

At this event cellist Juliet McCarthy performed 9 musical ‘interruptions’, followed by a discussion with the artist and her collaborators.

Exhibitions in 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000