Ged Quinn, The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

Ged Quinn 
The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK 
Through 5 January 2014 

The New Art Gallery Walsall presents a major solo exhibition of paintings by GED QUINN. The exhibition survey Quinn’s practice over the last four years, bringing together paintings from private collections in Europe and America as well as a brand new body of work created especially for this project. The exhibition will testify to the breadth of the artist’s practice and will include landscapes, portraits and still lifes, resplendent in references to history, myth and popular culture from across and through time. The subtle, teasing and at times, unnerving nature of the juxtapositions at play in Ged Quinn’s work, situate him as a leading contemporary painter.

Although Ged Quinn has shown extensively in Europe and America, this is his first solo exhibition in a public gallery in the UK since Tate St Ives in 2004 and Tate Liverpool in 2008 as part of the Liverpool Biennial. 

In Ged Quinn’s more recent works, the mysterious and intriguing scenarios that nestled within the grand landscapes reminiscent of artists like Claude Lorrain and Jacob Ruisdael have emerged to centre stage where references to European history, mythology and Modernist architecture jostle for attention alongside artistic and literary references and homages to filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky.  In one of the new landscape paintings, traditional pictorial devices used to suggest depth or perspective are playfully challenged by the use of filmic text or explicit engagement with the flatness of the canvas.  Ged Quinn’s paintings provide an intellectual space for an interrogation and critique of modernism fuelled by the artist’s own unique perspective. 

Ged Quinn also produces much smaller works including intense portraits and still lifes that are equally as compelling.  Two brand new portraits currently being completed for the exhibition are inspired by the complex and troubled relationship between poet Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor, and Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential 20th century philosophers.  Celan struggled to reconcile his admiration for the writings of Heidegger with his abhorrence of his Nazi past.  The two engaged in regular communication between 1951 and 1970. Typically, Quinn’s intriguing portraits of these figures are loaded with broader cultural references. 

A substantial publication accompanies the exhibition with texts by Michael Bracewell and Dr Brian Dillon as well as colour reproductions of all works exhibited.  The publication is co-published with Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and supported by Walsall Museums and Art Galleries Development Trust. 

GED QUINN was born in Liverpool in 1963.  He has studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford, the Slade School of Art in London, the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. He has exhibited widely and his work is represented in many collections.  Recent solo exhibitions include Bass Museum, Miami, Florida, USA (2012-13) and Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (2012).  He has an upcoming group show, at Galerie Rudolfinium, Viktor Pivovarov and Ged Quinn, Rudolfinium, Prague, Czech Republic (2014). 

Other recent solo exhibitions include Stephen Friedman Gallery (2011) and Wilkinson Gallery (2010).  Recent and forthcoming selected group exhibitions include Looking at the View, Tate Britain (2013), The Future’s not what it used to be, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall, UK (2013), Disaster/The End of Days, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France (2013), Beyond Reality, Rudolfinium, Prague, Czech Republic (2012), Everywhere and Nowhere, Reydan Weiss Collection, Oberstdorf, Germany (2012), Restore us and Regain, Glasgow School of Art (2010), Newspeak:British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2010) and Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (2009) and Made Up, Liverpool Biennale, Tate Liverpool (2008).

The New Art Gallery Walsall
www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk

Brian Griffin Exhibition Black Country at The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

Exhibition: Brian Griffin         
The Black Country                       
The New Art Gallery Walsall       
8 April - 19 June 2011

‘Growing up in the Black Country was the best thing that ever happened to me’. Brian Griffin, 2010

BRIAN GRIFFIN

Brian Griffin, Woman Chainmaker, 2010. 

Archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist.

The New Art Gallery Walsall presents the first UK showing of THE BLACK COUNTRY, a new body of work by renowned photographer Brian Griffin.

BRIAN GRIFFIN was born in Birmingham in 1948 but spent his childhood in Lye, in the Black Country before departing for Manchester College of Art in 1969 to study photography. He has since gone on to become one of the UK’s most established photographers and is renowned for his portraits of musicians, actors, political figures and the business community. However, growing up in the 50s and 60s in the Black Country, surrounded by industry, has left an indelible impression on the artist, to such an extent, that a new body of work restages his childhood memories of living amongst the factories on Stocking Street, Lye. 

‘’Factories were everywhere, even surrounding my school. I was determined not to end up in one but in 1964 I did. Forced out of school by my parents, being an only child, the family needed money and I was a source.  I never realised at the time – wanting to stay on at school to do my A levels – but working in a factory would turn out to be my salvation.’’

The photographic series predominantly focuses on the factory worker, a role he played himself after leaving school at 16, and one both his parents occupied throughout their working lives. Other works depict the Black Country as seen through a child’s eyes. The photographs reveal how the factories, its workers, the surrounding landscape and local traditions, spurred Griffin’s imagination from an early age.

‘’If I opened my bedroom net curtains, sometimes the night sky would be glowing red from the furnaces of Round Oak Steelworks in Brierley Hill. Beyond the steelworks was Dudley Castle the former home of the Earls of Dudley.  Mom and Dad used to say that everything was the Earl of Dudley’s.’’

The Earl of Dudley, Black Country Food, Speedway racing, The Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett, the local pub, the family cat and his early years as a choir boy are also celebrated in the series. Family photographs and Brian Griffin’s written accounts of childhood also accompany the photographs.

Each of the images within The Black Country brings together a careful composition of nostalgia, tenderness and absurdity. Inspired by a range of influences including Caravaggio, Stanley Spencer, Joseph Wright of Derby and religious art, his theatrical scenarios place his life story on centre stage.  

Griffin’s artistic influences will also be explored through a display of works from The New Art Gallery Walsall’s collection. The accompanying exhibition curated by Griffin, will include works by Jacob Epstein, Odilon Redon and Georges Rouault.

Also showing: Toby Ziegler, The Alienation of Objects, 8 April - 19 June 2011

THE NEW ART GALLERY WALSALL
Floor 3, Gallery 1
Admission is free

www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk