01229 825085
Art Gene, Bath Street, Barrow-in-Furness,
Cumbria, LA14 5TY England, UK
When we Were Here
When We Were Here is an exhibition of new and existing works by 6 (inter)national artists who were all artists in residence at Art Gene during 2005/6. Including Installation, Photography, Sculpture, and Video work, When We Were Here presents an insight into what can happen when artists spend time making work in a new environment.
Now Here’s Your Chance, Paul Moss, Art Gene Gallery
When we Were Here
When We Were Here is an exhibition of new and existing works by 6 (inter)national artists who were all artists in residence at Art Gene during 2005/6. Including Installation, Photography, Sculpture, and Video work, When We Were Here presents an insight into what can happen when artists spend time making work in a new environment.
Art Gene is a place where practice can be explored, ideas exchanged and tested in often unexpected and surprising ways through engagement with a challenging & inspiring context. Whilst Art Gene is clear that artists working within the residency programme do not have to respond specifically to Barrow as a subject, without exception all 6 artists have made new works that both relate to and ask questions about the changing architectural, geographical, and social landscapes of Barrow and its surrounding area.
Artists
John Dummett
John Dummett has assembled a new installation, Thought For All, using everything from garden gazebos to fake flowers and party balloons. His work investigates both art historical, and current communication systems continuing an enquiry into how public monuments can behave as the public representation of a community.
Carole Romaya
Carole Romaya works with traditional and found material to explore ‘dumb’ reality and romantic aspiration. Her ‘drawings’ entitled 28 Views of the Moon are projections of the moons surface onto light sensitive interior of envelopes, a discovery on every level. Her replica sculptures of street furniture and signage ask us to question how nostalgia fits within re-generation.
Image gallery below:
Now Here’s Your Chance, Paul Moss, Art Gene Gallery
Milestone 10, by Carole Romaya,
Paul Moss artist and curator exploring the meaning behind works in the exhibition with local school children.
Thought for All, by John Dummett,
Line of Height, by Minna Kantonen. Mayor’s Office, Town Hall, Barrow-in-Furness, UK
Alison Unsworth
Alison Unsworth’s work Gold Standard explores the generic and ‘placeless’ use of the black and gold colour scheme used on street furniture throughout the UK. The street lamp looms over a miniature black and gold landscape and assumes the scale of a monument casting an orange glow over this ‘world’.
Minna Kantonen
Minna Kantonen’s photographs also play with people, places, and systems. Whilst in Barrow she persuaded local people from a range of organizations to pose for her Lines of Height series. The resulting works, which add a new order to things, ask direct questions about the role of hierarchy in contemporary society. This same subject is given a more organic and personal twist in her self-portrait Antlers.
Paul Moss
Paul Moss is interested in everyday systems, and how changing their use can ask questions about how we perceive our immediate environments. In the new collage …a Hundred Ways to Kill a Love, he has extracted symbols from Microsoft Word, given them the ‘disco’ treatment, and used them to animate a series of found and made drawings relating to maps and architecture. In the installation, Now Here’s Your Chance, he challenges us to think about change by literally moving a mountain to cast a shadow over a hidden landscape.
Milena Bonilla
Milena Bonilla’s custom made postcards, each including the phrase ‘any place like this’ invite us to take a closer look at the existing landscape, whilst her video animation triptych Monstruo provides a more intimate take on building and dismantling using craft materials and subtitles.
Educational Events
A series of engagement events exploring the meaning behind works in the Gallery. Artist and curator Paul Moss worked with schools groups and college students capturing their comments and drawing out their impressions and experience of their home town and how they felt things could be improved in the context of regeneration.
External Links
Workplace Gallery
Paul Moss
Milena Bonilla
Milena Bonilla
Carole Romaya
Image gallery below:
A Hundred Ways to Kill a Love (Detail), by Paul Moss, 2006
Line of Height, by Minna Kantonen, Finland
Line of Height by Minna Kantonen. Forum 28, Barrow-in-Furness, UK
Image below (footer)
Thought for All (detail), by John Dummett
