Guest blog by @AlisonJMcIntyre
Woolgather (it means ‘to engage in fanciful daydreaming’) are an artist collective who formed in 2008 aiming to get art out of galleries and into the rest of the world. Even when they did their first art exhibition in 2011 they took over a shop space slap bang in the middle of pedestrianised, shopaholic Leeds and as a result 50% of visitors had never been to an art gallery before; that’s an impressive statistic.
Despite being an artist myself, I am naturally suspicious of ‘art’, and visual art in particular; whenever I come across a new group or exhibition I’m scanning for ‘art guff’ and pretention. Often the visual art world (galleries and critics particularly) does itself no favours whatsoever by writing and talking about its own work in completely impenetrable ways. As a result we all feel quite confident engaging with books, music and other art forms (except opera maybe!) but ask someone to express an opinion about visual art and we’re all immediately terrified of looking like idiots or getting it wrong.
Woolgather are trying to build something very different to this common visual art experience. They started creating work as a fluid group of fine art students at Leeds Met, doing interactive projects for Light Night in Leeds and performance pieces for festivals among other projects documented here, www.woolgatherart.co.uk
After graduating they developed the idea of the Woolgather Art Prize, now in it’s second year, from a frustration with the lack of opportunities for recent graduates in Leeds. The three members of Woolgather I met today, John, Chris and Annie, are the core group behind the Art Prize (though they were extremely keen to recognise the massive amount of support and help they get from other people). Being rather dedicated and determined perfectionists they decided that the solution to not finding anywhere in Leeds to exhibit their own work was to create something they would like to exhibit work in. Ironically, but I think fairly typically, they now find themselves spending so much time organising they have little time left to make their own work.
So, here are some Woolgather Art Prize facts:
• You can only enter one piece of artwork.
• Any visual art form is accepted.
• It’s free to enter.
• There is a selection process which is handled sensitively with the audience in mind to create the best show possible.
• You will also be asked to write for a publication/website, make a short video and talk about your work in public.
• Everyone who comes to see the exhibition gets to vote for their favourite piece of work.
• Prize money is £1000, £500 and £250.
• 2011’s prize was Leeds based, this year it’s (inter)national!
Untitled from Woolgather Art Prize on Vimeo.
All Woolgather’s past projects have been self-funded, they even stumped up the prize money themselves last year by working extra shifts and taking out loans, but they won’t survive if they try to carry on like this. So they have applied for three years of funding from Leeds City Council, as well as to the Arts Council to help fund the prize this year. They also have a Sponsume page so YOU can help them carry on creating interesting and accessible visual art projects in Leeds. You can donate as little as £5 to get a mention in the Art Prize Programme, or as much as £500 for a weekend away with Woolgather. I’ve donated enough to get a 20 second hug from my chosen Woolgather member! They’re trying to reach £3000 by the 24th March and I think they’re well worth backing so that we can keep talented and interesting graduates like Chris, John and Annie in our city.