- Venue
- Cullercoats Studios
- Starts
- Thursday, September 11, 2014
- Ends
- Sunday, September 21, 2014
- Address
- 45 John Street, Cullercoats, Tyne & Wear NE30 4PL
- Location
- North East England
- Organiser
- Curated by Jill Gibson
‘Dirty Pretty Things’ is an all-female exhibition and is a response to the limited exhibiting opportunities currently available to female artists, specifically, but not uniquely, to the North East. It is a common fact that today amongst the top selling commercial UK painters, only five of them are women. One of the aims of Dirty Pretty Things is to try to re-dress the balance within this region. As Kat Banyard states in her book ‘Equality Illusion,
‘for too long women artists have felt like the supporting act’.
This exhibition will hopefully go a little way to help re-dress the balance.
Curator, Jill Gibson, a former graduate of Glasgow School of Art was keen to use this exciting new space as a showcase for a number of newly emerging regional artists alongside well established and well-known artists currently working in the UK. This is an exciting opportunity, not only to exhibit new talent, but to showcase the new exhibition space.
The building itself was in a derelict state, elderly, and in many ways, the crumbling walls and faded grandeur of some of the annex rooms have helped define the nature of the show.
‘I wanted to capture the uniqueness of the building, running in tandem with the selection and showing process. Many of the rooms are raw, elemental even, and yet allude to the domestic. There are currently six women working in the studios and some of their work is defined directly by the context in which it has been produced. This was the starting point for the show’s overall theme, and the rooms have dictated the direction of the exhibition: entropy, decay, ugliness with worn surfaces suggestive of the inevitability of change and lost time.’
The women selected for the show are all involved in this dialogue, as well as giving a consideration to the erotic, the visceral, and a desire to confront the promotion of objectification and sexualisation of women across the media, combining a violent brutality with humour and sensitivity.
This is no white cube! The walls have a faded beauty and this ambiguity is echoed in the work of all of the artists. There is a consideration of the transient nature of beauty; the temporary, the fleeting….seeing the remnants of….the remains of what once was…slowly changed, and rapidly changing.
Everything is defined by its context….and there is a sense of the reconfiguration of a once decaying space….a make-over.
Selected Artists:
Virginia Bodman
Rebecca Brown
Kimberely Emeny
Jill Gibson
Lee Maelzer
Janina Sabaliauskaite
Holly M Scott
Melissa Tivnen
Tracey Toffield
Juli Watson
This exhibition is about offering ten female contemporary artists, pursuing similar themes, an opportunity to show their work. And for the public, is a unique opportunity to see it.
For further information about Dirty Pretty Things, the artists involved in the exhibition or Cullercoats Studios, please contact Jill Gibson, email: [email protected]
Jill Gibson
Curator
