'Other Transmissions' heads to the Whitworth and Grundy Art Gallery
Other Transmissions: Conversations with Outsider Art
(Preview Thursday 13th February)
Friday 14 February to Sunday 14 June 2020
the Whitworth | The Collections Centre
Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6ER
‘Other Transmissions’ artists; Joe Beedles, Andrew Johnstone, John Powell-Jones, Frances Heap, James Desser, Amy Ellison,
Other Transmissions: Conversations with Outsider Art brings together a group of six artists – Joe Beedles, James Desser, Amy Ellison, Frances Heap, Andrew Johnstone and John Powell Jones, who have created original artwork in response to The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection (MKOAC), housed at the Whitworth. The MKOAC is the largest collection of ‘Outsider Art’ in a public gallery in the UK and features work by artists who are self-taught and have may have been historically marginalised from, or have faced significant barriers to, the art world due to health, disability or social circumstance.
The ‘Other Transmissions’ exhibition is the result of creative collaboration on equal terms between a mixed group of learning disabled and non-learning disabled artists. The artwork has developed from conversations around labelling, categorisation, the power dynamics of the art world and the meaning of collaboration. The artists have spent time with the MKOAC, researching collection pieces and having engaging conversations on how artists are labelled, and how this can sometimes define their work and themselves as ‘different’. The artists have explored how the category of ‘Outsider Art’ can be seen, in their words, as either ‘isolating’ or ‘liberating,’ or perhaps both. The artists concurrently spent five months in a shared studio space at Venture Arts producing collaborative work. The diverse work they have produced spans sound, film, digital artwork, drawings and sculpture, as well as costumes for performances.
Untitled, Andrew Johnstone. On display as part of ‘Other Transmissions - Conversations with Outsider Art’
Each of the artists has selected a number of artworks from the MKOAC, which they have co-curated into a display alongside their own work. Some of the collection artists featured include Madge Gill, Albert Louden and Michel Nedjar.
Other Transmissions is a partnership project with Venture Arts, a Manchester based visual arts organisation that works to build the work and careers of learning-disabled artists. The exhibition originated from a project that took place in 2018-19 called Conversation Series II, which was a partnership project between Venture Arts, the Whitworth and Castlefield Gallery.
Elements of the work will also go on display at Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (7-21 March 2020).
Conversations Series II: Other Transmissions
Grundy Art Gallery
7 – 21 MARCH 2020
To devise and deliver our year-round programme, Grundy Art Gallery works in partnership with a wide range of local, national and international individuals and organisations to ensure that our activity is of interest and relevance to as wide a sector of the community as possible. It is this approach to collaborative working that has brought us to Venture Arts, Castlefield Gallery, the Whitworth and their partnership project, Conversations Series II – Other Transmissions.
From October 2019 to February 2020, artists with and without disability have met regularly at The Blackpool Centre for Independent Living as part of The New Langdale’s communication through art programme. The New Langdale is a community based daytime service for adults with a learning disability which provides a wide range of stimulating and outcome based activities. Here, working with Blackpool based artist Tina Dempsey, and supported by the group’s regular coordinators, participants have been making new work together, testing out new approaches, techniques and materials. This process has been accompanied by research visits to Grundy Art Gallery and the Whitworth in Manchester; where participants experienced a talk and tour of The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection and a visit to Venture Arts studios in Hulme, to see the facilities, meet other artists, and to hear more about their work.
Conversations Series II: Other Transmissions is presented by Grundy Art Gallery as part of its participation in Access Fylde Coast, a Coastal Communities funded project that is being led by Disability First, Blackpool. It follows on from Grundy Art Gallery’s summer 2019 presentation, NDACA - Art, Anger and Rights from the Disability Artsmovement, an exhibition curated in partnership with the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA).
Grundy Art Gallery is Blackpool’s art gallery and offers a year round programme of contemporary visual art exhibitions and events including solo and group exhibitions together with talks, workshops and educational activities. The gallery is housed in a Grade II listed Carnegie building and has a collection that was commissioned by Blackpool Council in 1908, following a bequest by brothers John and Cuthbert Grundy. Grundy Art Gallery is an Accredited Museum. It is supported by Blackpool Council and also receives regular funding as one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations.
www.grundyartgallery.com
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