Guest post by Susan Burns
A visit to Bradford’s Art Gallery at Cartwright Hall in Lister Park is charged with great memories of community projects based here in the past and the works in the gallery, alongside its situation in the grandeur, stillness and beauty of Lister Park on a misty Saturday in January contain almost all the dangerous romanticism that I love about this city.
The first art we encounter is actually outside the gallery: ‘Torsos’ by Sophie Ryder, an unexpectedly humorous welcome by this pair of galvanized steel wire figures – the Lady-Hare and the Minotaur – placed on plinths at the entrance to the gallery. Cartwright Hall itself purpose built and its surrounding formal gardens and sculpture trail speak to a civic engagement that is authentic and everywhere the connection between art, industry, landscape and the identity of place predominates.
I’m here to meet artist and printmaker June Russell and to experience her new exhibition ‘Being There’. As it’s been a while since I’ve been here, I am very glad to have this reason to go back. ‘Being There’ is a selection of prints, hand-made books and other artworks using a variety of techniques to explore the artist’s recurring themes: the imagery of landscape and meanings of place. These art works are mostly based in the landscape – both urban and rural. More, they seem to be about time – they lead the viewer to a moment in time – emanating from observation to explore the natural world and our relationship to it. Each of the works employs a still, subdued palette and a rich transcription of the place it details. Russell is fascinated with the line in the landscape, whether hedgerows or walls; paths or power lines; drying sheets blowing on an Aegean washing line; the shapes of a waterfall; the window frames of a Yorkshire mill. I love the inky waterfall in Cyprus ‘Falls’ (pictured). Above all the work is all about the ink – you almost feel as if your fingers are smudged after spending a while in the company of her work.
June has mastered a variety of traditional and contemporary printmaking methods and is experimenting further – there’s a useful brochure to accompany the exhibition and a display case about her processes n which the artist explains the difference between them. I learn some new words that I love the sound of: drypoint, intalagio. I’d describe this work as being rich in inky form – you can almost feel the ink on your fingers after dwelling a while with this wonderful work. Her work in alive to possibility – these works say – get outside, look around.
It is hardly surprising that a lot of this work has sold. In a real fun moment, a visitor to the gallery bought ‘Husbandry’ right under our noses. The buyer was from New Zealand and she loved the evocation of landscape There’s no better endorsement of ‘home grown talent’ than to witness a visitor from another land, another culture appreciate and buy the work!
Elsewhere in the gallery, there’s much fabulousness to experience, some of it curated around past and present Bradford connections. Cartwright Hall has been collecting prints for a century or more and the Print Room contains works by master printmakers, many of which be viewed on the neat computer interactive. Bill Viola’s theatrical video ‘Observance’ on loan from Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery is a startling artwork – a multi-cultural group of actors step forward to look at ‘something they’d rather not see’. The watcher, presumably. Unsettling. Salima Hashmi’s ‘Zones of Dreams’, a giant map of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, is magnificent and points to the inter-connectedness and spirit of this city’s heritages. And boy oh boy how much do we love the early ‘kitchen sink’ works by Bradford’s own genius David Hockney? All in all not a bad Saturday art adventure.
Do get along to catch June Russell’s exhibition before it closes.
Being There by June Russell
Cellar Gallery, Cartwright Hall
Until 9th February 2014