- Venue
- Salisbury Arts Centre
- Starts
- Tuesday, March 15, 2022
- Ends
- Saturday, May 7, 2022
- Address
- Salisbury Arts Centre, Bedwin Street, Salisbury, SP1 3UT
- Location
- South West England
- Organiser
- Wiltshire Creative, Salisbury Arts Centre
As a cultural organisation Wiltshire Creative recognises that in recent years a considerable blow to all areas of the arts industry has been dealt, and this was particularly felt amongst the students who experienced their creative learning via Zoom instead of the expected route of hands on skills and idea development: students who had their final exhibitions cancelled or moved online. We know that a tremendous effort has been made in making the virtual platform work and as a positive consequence many graduates reached a wider audience than they would have otherwise.
However, there are disciplines for which learning on the virtual platform is inadequate compared to the actual touch of the material and the immersiveness of a face to face encounter.
In the last two years publicly funded organisations have come in for criticism from various angles. One such was the accusation of stubborn gatekeeping by these organisations and the lack of commitment to work with emerging artists. Wiltshire Creative is a publicly funded organisation with a core commitment to working with young artists or artists entering their careers and to providing experience/ job opportunities for those who wish to work in the arts.
The panel of selectors for Gates Wide Open Exhibition comprised Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente(who are The White Pube) and @sadgrads2020 – Jody Mulvey.
This panel represents contemporary voices of professional arts activists who fight for the exposure and correct treatment of emerging ideas and talents. They had the difficult job of selecting the four artists for the Salisbury exhibition out of 87 strong submissions. The resulting selection of artistic practices is exciting and diverse.
The selected artists are Claudio Pestana, Kialy Tihngang, Li An Lee and Liv Collins.
Claudio Pestana’s work explores how a foreign non-binary person fits in within the ancient and symbolic traditions of conservative cultural markers of the English countryside. In the series ‘Fag Attacks the Country’ Pestana explores the intersection between their Queerness, the rural, and the tradition of portraiture and landscape painting subverting the tradition of the ‘conversation piece’.
The artist and designer Kialy Tihngang is interested in the inability of the human hand to replicate the accuracy and cleanness of mechanised objects, the inability of mechanised objects to replicate the spontaneity and rawness of the human hand, and the tension elicited when those principles are played with. ‘Useless Machines’ exhibited here are a darkly humorous response to electronic waste dumping, the neo-colonialist practice of wealthy countries dumping their electronic waste (such as old phones and laptops) in poorer countries, typically of the Global South. This artwork is a commentary on the endless overconsumption of useful machinery that we generate in affluent countries.
Li An Lee’s practice examines the development of a person’s character/self-development and the flow of input into a life. Lee’s work highlights play as part of the everyday life of a child, and examines how the environment hinders independence. Her photographic installations and sculptural light boxes also act as documentary portraits capturing an aspect of the wonderment of childhood. Each image freezes a moment of movement, capturing every day from a unique angle, effecting surveillance and the ‘mother’s gaze’.
Liv Collins is an emerging writer and feminist curator whose artistic practice revolves around themes of celebration, giving, and queer identity. Collins’ practice is an intersection of poetry and visual art. She aims to break through the turgid boundaries of modern poetry, through the creation of playful and accessible poems. The piece in this exhibition is called ‘linguistic confetti‘. It is an immersive artwork created amid the pandemic. The work navigates the experience of not being able to see her Welsh grandparents for over a year and is about celebration, cultural identity and play, as much as it is about loneliness, isolation and longing.
Gates Wide Open is an exhibition exposing the concerns of emerging creative voices.
Childhood, identity, societal structures, power, and waste are topics which often present material for artistic interpretation. In this exhibition these topics are subjected to new angles of enquiry and translated into current creative language.
The exhibition curator Mirka Golden-Hann said: ”It is inspirational and gives hope that the current creative voice represented here is driven by societal critical commentary but is able to present its active inquiry from the position of intelligent and deeply inquisitive humour.”
Jody Mulvey said: “It was fantastic to be a part of the process for this exhibition and see such strong applications from emerging artists across the UK. The standard of the applications was really a testament to the resilience of the artists who, despite such difficult circumstances to continue their practice, have managed to transition into the industry during the pandemic. Huge thank you to the team at Salisbury Art Centre for inviting me to be a part of this!”
Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente said: “All galleries should be making an effort to help the current generation of students whose careers have been hindered by the pandemic. The best way to do this is through exhibition opportunities and we are glad Salisbury Art Centre is taking the time to do exactly that.”
By Mirka Holden-Hann
The exhibition dates at Salisbury Arts Centre are 15 March – 7 May 2022 the Arts Centre opening times are Tuesday to Saturday 10am-3pm.
