Inspire. Visual Arts (FCO, 2003).pdf

“Tate Modern has changed the place of the

visual arts in our culture”

Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota

Part of the Family of man

series in Aldebergh by

Barbara Hepworth

St Ives potter Bernard Leach

Below: Public sculpture at the

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

There are around 34,000 visual artists and

25,000 craftspeople in the UK

The UK Cultural Sector, Policy Studies

Institute, 2001

July 2002 saw the opening in the

north-east of England of the Baltic

Centre for Contemporary Art

(above), built on the site of a

former flour mill and transformed

into Britain’s biggest visual art

centre outside London. In 2003

work is due to begin to develop the

arts space Arnolfini, on the site of a

six-storey dockyard warehouse in

Bristol, into a national centre of

excellence for contemporary art.

The development was made

possible in 2001 when the project

was awarded a £7.5 million grant by

the Arts Council.

Tate Modern was opened in May

2000 to rapturous reviews, and the

huge public interest in this exciting

art space has not diminished. The

gallery displays international art

from 1900 to the present day,

including works by Salvador Dali,

Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Mark

Rothko and Andy Warhol, and by

international contemporary artists.

In its first year, Tate Modern had

5.25 million visitors, enabling it to

proclaim itself the most popular

modern art gallery in the world,

with a daily average attendance of

8,000. The gallery is situated in a

former power station on the south

side of the River Thames in

London, the focus of local

regeneration.

Tate Britain, situated up and across

the river, is the national gallery of

British art from 1500 to today,

including works by William Blake,

JMW Turner, John Constable,

David Hockney, Stanley Spencer

and Henry Moore. It’s also the

venue for the annual Turner Prize

exhibition, awarded to a British

artist under 50 for an outstanding

exhibition or presentation. The

2002 recipient was Keith Tyson,

who received the £20,000 prize in a

ceremony broadcast live in the UK

by Channel 4.

But the Tate London galleries are

only part of a family of four around

Britain. Tate St Ives opened in a

spectacular setting in the Cornish

seaside town in 1993. In this

intimate space, visitors can view

works by artists and sculptors such

as Ben Nicholson, Barbara

Hepworth and Patrick Heron, plus

ceramicist Bernard Leach,

experiencing the surroundings,

atmosphere and quality of light

that inspired them. Tate Liverpool

is one the largest galleries of

modern and contemporary art

outside London, housed in a

beautiful converted warehouse in

the Albert Dock area of the city. It

attracted more than six million

visitors between 1988 and 1998.

The Chelsea Crafts Fair, held over

two weeks every October since

1979 at the Chelsea Old Town

Hall in south London, is an

international focus for

contemporary craft. It encompasses

both the traditional and the avant-

garde in glass, ceramics, wood,

silverware, furniture, leather,

jewellery and textiles. To ensure an

exciting and extensive range each

year, a panel of specialists considers

more than a thousand applications,

and takes these down to some 220

exhibitors. The fair now has about

25,000 visitors each year.

Wales’ newly-launched Artes Mundi

(Artists of the World) prize, worth

£40,000, is the biggest purse ever

offered to an individual artist. The

biennial competition will be open

to artists worldwide, whose entries

will be shown at Cardiff’s National

Museum and Gallery. The first

prize is due to be awarded in

March 2004, during an exhibition

featuring the seven to ten

shortlisted artists.

The Jerwood Painting Prize, worth

£30,000, has been instrumental in

revitalising interest in this area.

The Jerwood not only

acknowledges the work of

established artists, but has

identified lesser known artists,

underlining its status as an award

for excellence and talent based

onthe work submitted, not the

reputation of the artists. Shortlisted

works are exhibited each year at

the Jerwood Gallery in London,

then tour to the Glasgow Gallery of

Modern Art.

Chelsea Craft fair

‘Culture-vultureing city slickers’by

Adrian Wiszniewski, exhibited by the

British Council

The Tate gallery, St Ives, Cornwall

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park was

established in 1977 as the UK's first

such permanent park, and has

since gained an important

international reputation as a

leading open-air gallery. Over 200

acres of historic landscape are used

for the display of sculpture in nine

distinct open-air spaces and two

indoor galleries. Around ten

exhibitions, displays and projects

are curated each year, with half the

works involving international

artists, some showing in the UK for

the first time. Works in the

collection include Barbara

Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink,

Anthony Caro and Antony

Gormley, while ten to fourteen of

Henry Moore's monumental

sculptures are also displayed in an

area of rough terrain covering just

under 100 acres. Strengthened by

its education and community work,

the park receives over 200,000

visitors a year.

Dali sculpture on the South bank of

the Thames

Cover: Tree roots by Bill Woodrow,

briefly exhibited in Trafalgar Square

The Tate Gallery, Liverpool

!nspire

The New Art Gallery Walsall

opened to great public and media

acclaim in February 2000. Situated

in the West Midlands conurbation,

it houses the Garman Ryan

Collection, created by Lady

Kathleen Garman and Sally Ryan

in the 1960s and early ’70s.

Garman's husband the sculptor Sir

Jacob Epstein is among those

represented in the gallery. Its

philosophy is to be not only a place

for passive spectators, welcome as

they are, but to encourage visitors

to participate in the arts and

express their own creativity in

different ways. The Children's

Discovery gallery engages children

with its interactive features to lead

them to understand how artworks

are made and encourages them to

explore diverse artistic processes

and styles.

Art on the Riverside is the largest

programme of public art in the

UK. Situated along the banks of

the Rivers Tyne and Wear in the

north east of England, the

programme has commissioned

nearly 150 artworks and design

features since its 1995 launch.

National and international artists

have been commissioned to create

large-scale pieces, and local artists

have worked with members of the

local community, some of whom

had lived on estates near the

riverside years before and have

since been rehoused. The

integration of the arts into the

social regeneration of these

rundown areas was present from

the start, rather than being an add-

on when the work was nearing

completion. This may well explain

why so many community groups

were involved in the programme

and why it is such a source of pride

in the region.

Researched and written by Paul Sexton

Picture research M Nicholson

Picture credits

British Council

M Nicholson

Chelsea craft fair

P Dupont

Tate Gallery

Walsall Art Gallery

Ellis Williams Architects

Published by the Foreign &

Commonwealth Office March 2003

www.fco.gov.uk

Details of other FCO Publications are

available from

www.informationfrombritain.com

Visual Arts

‘Angel of the North’ by Antony Gormley, Gateshead

Britain is experiencing a genuine,

powerful resurgence of interest in the

visual arts. The immense popularity of

Tate Modern in London, media

interest in Brit Art and experimental

artists such as Tracey Emin and Damien

Hirst are all playing their part. But

high-profile public art, galleries,

art centres, crafts and many other

artists are also making significant

contributions.

The An Tuireann Arts Centre,

previously the old Fever Hospital,

has been in existence in Portree,

the capital of the Isle of Skye off

north-west Scotland, for a number

of years, but underwent a major

refurbishment and reopened in

1998 with an art gallery, a smaller

gallery devoted to crafts and a

workshop/temporary exhibition

space. Its education department

has organised many events,

including a month-long Scribble

Festival, which set out to involve a

range of community groups in

drawing and received an Innovative

Visual Arts Education Award from

the Scottish Arts Council for its

educational content.

New Walsall Art Gallery children’s section

Centre: St Michael slaying the Devil, by

Epstein, outside Coventry Cathedral

‘Decoy’ by David Leapman,

exhibited by the British Council

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: