Beware of Artists, they mix with all classes of society’
A popular meme from the internet of today allegedly has its origins in a warning from King Leopold of Belgium to Queen Victoria, when in 1845 he wrote
Read More‘dealings with artists, for instance, require great prudence; they are acquainted with all classes of society, and for that reason are dangerous; they are hardly ever satisfied, and when you have too much to do with them, you are sure to have des ennuis’
Place was perhaps the key theme underpinning Griet Beyeart and Silvia Liebig’s 2023 exhibition, ‘Junction’. Consisting of an installation and video art, with an aural landscape created by Beyeart, the exhibition was part of Liebig’s ongoing ‘Neuland’ project.
Read MoreResidents of South Leeds may remember Silvia Liebig from her time spent here in 2019, just before the outbreak of the pandemic. As part of East Streets Arts long running Artist House 45 residency project (2015-19), that also included Lloyd&Wilson, She was a resident of the house during 2019.
Read MoreThe unusual texture of printed plastic, slightly warped due to AI filling in gaps, allow onlookers to discern between works cast in pewter and jesmonite. These ‘copies’ of works usually guarded behind glass evoke cultural memory yet leave viewers with a sense of remembrance just out of reach
Read More2023 was, for me, a tale of two birthdays. It was the year that I turned fifty-one and resigned from my job of nineteen years with the Henry Moore Institute. It also represented thirty-four years, to the day, since I took on my first proper job, beyond a paper round, with Sainsbury’s.
Read MoreRoute Motif represents a first for the artist Chloe Harris and another first for Basement. Chloe is a young artist at the very beginning of her career, educated at Exeter School of Art, and who has recently become a full member of the Society of Women Artists. Over the last three years she has exhibited as an Associate Member in their Annual Group Exhibitions. Her show at BasementArtsProject represents her first solo project as an artist.
Read MoreThe exhibition ‘Squaring the Circle’ by Loane Bobillier comes at a point where we can look back at National and International events of recent years and question our place within the framework of a rapidly changing society.
Read MoreCrazy Eddie can often be found sat in his local coffee shop with a random object before him on the table. The job of understanding comes from observation. Edward Mortimer has been creating sculptural artworks for some thirty years. His works are simultaneously humorous, nightmarish and weird but crucially, always well observed.
Read MoreI have always considered a mix of experience and enthusiasm in the programme to be a healthy thing, as experience riffs off enthusiasm and vice versa.
Read MoreWhilst I always understood that Jacob’s Ladder would be a labour of love for both myself, as BasementArtsProject: the commissioning organisation, and for sculptor Keith Ackerman, I knew that it would definitely take longer than the one-hundred days of the Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019. But we never imagined the three year odyssey that it would become thanks to the C***d pandemic lockdowns.
Read MoreThe clock stopped at the time of birth; marking a transition between worlds as the first breath is drawn.
The anguished screams of birth, become the rhythmic sigh matching the cadence of a weary world
Read MoreHaving worked as a Police Forensic Artist, McDonagh’s current practice is not too far removed from a world in which the gaps in reality are filled in by imagination. She has moved her attention from the world of reconstructing human identities for the purpose of identification, to the reconstruction of abandoned human habitation through architecture and found objects.
Read MoreFor the last few months I have been in discussion with artist Paul Digby about his latest sculpture project ‘Looking To The Future: Emily’, and talking about BasementArtsProject’s position as co-creator on it.
Read More‘Decompressed Time Frames’ (the exhibition formerly known as ‘Compressed Time Frames’) opens with the extension of a work begun as part of the 2017 Leeds Light Night, in which Bradley mobilised his audience, attached by an unsafe rock climbers rope, and traversed the city from art venue to art venue.
Read MoreBeneath the surface of the locked down world the oxygen is running low. The tiny life support capsules sustaining our presence in the airless vacuum of millions of hard-drives, can only sustain three dimensional life for so long. It is time to head for the surface, but not too rapidly.
Read MoreSo how do we get past the problem of perception, access and desire. Life is about dialogue, that is how we learn. We educate ourselves through experience, we find the edge of our zone of comfort and understanding and we push past it, through to what lies beyond.
Read MoreWhen we lose a sense of purpose we lose our sense of the future, and that is where hopelessness slips into the void and feeds our deepest fears. That is the point at which the sun sets never to rise again.
Read MoreIt is hardly surprising, that since reopening BasementArtsProject in August, the nature of the exhibitions have been somewhat political. Pushing through a time of great turmoil and upheaval as we are doing right now, things that have been bubbling under for a long time have quite predictably and reasonably come to the surface.
Read MoreDuring the Lockdown I received an update from the studio of Yol, and just before I left another video update arrived in which he appeared to be trapped inside the Coronaverse. I shall leave you with his emergency transmission.
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