Sunday 16 September 2012

Inception receives glowing reception


Inception receives glowing reception

Posted on Monday 10th September 2012
MayorArt400
Mayor of Bolton, Cllr Guy Harkin at Inception exhibition

University of Bolton MA Fine Art students, Siobhain Moakes, Sharon Forrest, Tracie Shaylor and Stuart John Hine, have received a glowing reception for their latest exhibition, Inception.

Also known as the Encompass Collective, their final year show is being held at the University’s Innovation Factory and saw the town’s Mayor, Councillor Guy Harkin open the exhibition.
After a look around the show – which is home to art tackling concepts ranging from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder to biogenetics and science fiction – Cllr Harkin said: ‘It gives me a great pleasure to open this show. It has a wide depth and variety that showcases the huge amount of artistic talent we have right here in Bolton.’
So impressed was the Mayor that he purchased a piece or art from each artist and urged the exhibition’s patrons to put their hands in their pockets as well.  
The artists’ tutor and Fine Art lecturer at the University, Alan Buckingham was equally impressed with the standard of the show. He said: ‘These four students are brilliant and the ambition of this show is just incredible. To fill a space this size with original work of such a high standard is a testament to the work and effort they have put in, but also a testament to their obvious talent.’
And while the patrons were full of praise for the artists, the artists themselves – while sharing feelings of pride – were also sharing feelings of relief.
Sharon said: ‘It is going really well! At first it was just a big relief that we got everything up on time. But now we’ve had a chance to relax, take it all in and see other people enjoy our work, it is a great experience.’
Siobhain added: ‘We’re delighted at the response we’ve got so far, people seem to be really relating to the art and concepts we’ve created. It’s always difficult opening a show. As much as you love the work you create you can never anticipate what other people will think.’
Stuart said: ‘We’ve all worked very hard to get this done to this standard and to see the space filled with people, including my friends and family, is the best reward.’
John Merrill from the prestigious National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) was also at the opening. Speaking of the exhibition, he said: 'It is a very good show. It is nice to walk around such a great space and take in what is a very high standard of work.'
John was also attending the show to present Tracie with the final cheque of her NADFAS bursary which she won in 2011.  
He added: ‘I’ve always been impressed by the breadth and depth of Tracie’s ideas. The concepts of her work and the different mediums she uses to portray them are always very original. And the enthusiasm she has for creating her work is always in abundance and it's hard not to get caught up in it.’

Bolton News

Following on from the success of their interim Exhibition ‘ Encompass’ at Falcon Mill, Bolton which featured work by international artists, Sharon Forrest, Stuart Hine, Siobhain Moakes and Tracie Shaylor are working towards their final MA exhibition ‘Inception’ at the University of Bolton. Alan Buckingham, Senior Lecturer at the university said: This is a ‘must see’ exhibition, show-casing the work of four highly successful artists who have already taken the region by storm following the success of their interim show “Encompass” at the Falcon Mill in Bolton. The group will present the exhibition ‘Inception’ at the Innovation Factory, University of Bolton. A private view will be officially opened by the Mayor of Bolton on Thursday 6th September 6.00pm to 9.00pm Further details of Inception Exhibition can be found at: inceptionartexhbition2012.blogspot.com/ Forthcoming events from Encompass Collective can be found at: encompassartexhibition.blogspot.com/ and @Encompass_Art



http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/events/Bolton/789972.Inception_MA_Fine_Art_Exhibition/

Monday 10 September 2012




Siobhain Moakes  Sharon Forrest  Tracie Shaylor  Stuart John Hine

The Four MA Fine Art Students from The University of Bolton. Only a few days left to view the Final MA show 10 am - 4pm , closes Thursday 13th September.

Thursday 30 August 2012

We have a new fan of our art ! 

Zak Dingle, Mr. Steven Halliwell, was so impressed with the Encompass Exhibition...
that he is returning for a second visit to view the MA finale!

It's going to be a star studded night with soap stars and football players, along with the Mayor and Mayoress cutting the red ribbon to open the show.

Tracie Shaylor will also be presented with her final cheque for completing the course from NADFAS (national association of decorative & fine arts societies) for being the overall Northwest winner of the MA bursary 2011-2012.


Don't forget to put on your best frock or suit on for the Paparazzi... Thursday 6th September at 6pm - 9pm, It's going to be a great night !

Thursday 16 August 2012




Mayor to Open The Show

Following on from their phenomenally successful  Exhibition ‘ Encompass’  at Falcon Mill, Bolton which featured work by international artists, Sharon Forrest, Stuart Hine, Siobhain Moakes and Tracie Shaylor are working towards their final MA exhibition  ‘Inception’  at the University of Bolton.


Alan Buckingham, Senior Lecturer at the university said:
This is a ‘must see’ exhibition, show-casing the work of four highly successful artists who have already taken the region by storm following the success of their interim show “Encompass” at the Falcon Mill in Bolton. “Encompass” featured the four MA students, Sharon, Tracie, Stuart and Siobhain exhibiting alongside international artists David Mach, Ed Pien and others including Robyn Woolsten, Winner of Liverpool Art Prize 2012 and will be featured in a BBC television documentary being screened in the autumn.
This new show in the Innovation Factory will be a major exhibition showing a substantial body of work produced throughout the 12 months of the MA programme. The artists in the show have already won many prestigious prizes and awards, including the winner of the NADFAS best Fine Art student award, winner and runners-up in the 53 Degrees North exhibition and Bolton Open, Neo: Artists, and many others.
Although this will be the group’s final exhibition as MA Fine Art Students, Sharon, Stuart, Siobhain and Tracie, now known as part of The Encompass Collective, state this is only the beginning and they already have a number of forthcoming events and exhibition organised. 


A Few Images From The Encompass Exhibition Our Interim Show, 
Looking forward to our final show as students with Inception and many more new photographs!


















Review Dave Gledhill






‘Encompass’

It’s difficult to isolate one element in this interim exhibition of University of Bolton MA students work (they will be showing at the University in September) as the key contributor to its remarkable quality. Currently enjoying a very eco-conscious refurbishment programme, Falcon Mill where the show takes place is an impressively sturdy looking building of its type and the gallery space has an unusually high ceiling and a wonderfully light filled and airy ambience. The guest contributors, some of them internationally known and the students themselves have risen to the occasion and the work is uniformly excellent. Any potential problems with the thematic mix of the project have been neatly circumvented by allowing each artist plenty of space to breathe and where necessary positioning distinctive works next to highly complementary neighbours. The hang itself is of an immaculately professional standard and reminiscent of displays in other major converted industrial spaces in the region such as Tate Liverpool. With its concrete floor and acres of whitewashed walls it also competes with newer ‘faux-brutalist’ commercial spaces such as Gagosian at Euston or Hauser and Wirth in Saville Row.

The combination of all these factors would be enough to reward the visitor even without the overwhelming sense of optimism that the site generates. Once this has been imbibed the art can be seen to be entirely consonant with this sense of cultural renewal; innovative, critical where justified, but always beautifully judged and most importantly, brimming with confidence.With northern town centre shop closures running at twice the national average, the cultural industries here need to work together with the private sector to produce mutually beneficial projects and initiatives. At Falcon Mill the coincidence of socially responsible redevelopment and a new spirit of self-reliance in the visual arts has been a fortuitous one.

When artists curate each other into shows there are often more oblique affinities to be encountered between their work than in many of the more institutionally generated subject driven surveys. There are common approaches here; Siobhain Moakes, Stuart Hine, Sharon Forrest, Tracey Shaylor and Ed Pien incorporate and acknowledge the mediation of photographic imaging in their work. Denis Whiteside, Ian Irvine, David Mach and Robyn Woolston produce witty de- and re- constructions of generic print genres such as the colour chart, the greetings card, the paperback cover or the architectural plan. The results are by turn, humorous and thought provoking. Kerry Phippen and Valerie Halliwell share a sense of personal mythology that manifests an emotive force in images of childhood and motherhood. Phippen’s mixed media pieces and Halliwell’s large canvasses explore the full range of expressive graphic and painterly effects and reclaim an emotive terrain largely abandoned in recent figurative painting. Jason Simpson, Adrian Moakes and Robyn Woolston use less traditional materials to convey the organic principles of growth, diversification and adaptation which in this setting take on a metaphoric force. Woolston’s installation interweaves building society billboard posters with supermarket elevation drawings, neatly conflating the economic forces that shape the urban environment. Pete Marsh and Stuart Hine employ an impenetrable chiaroscuro which is as crucial to the power of the work as the forms that struggle to emerge from it.

These factors alone would pull together a display as varied as this but then some of these ideas are in circulation and widely addressed. However, above and beyond this there is an extraordinarily confident sense of understatement in much of the work. Siobhain Moakes multi-panel aerial landscape of Manchester derived from ‘Google Earth’ twists, folds and contorts this prosthetic view of her hometown, employing  a spontaneous brushy shorthand to mimic the limitations of the human sensorium in processing this spectacular representation and by implication, the wider realm of digitised information. Pien’s blurred black and white photographs from a winter train journey evoke a similarly vertiginous disorientation to the familiar. Also working in monochrome, Sharon Forrest depicts a parade of Gurkhas that march towards, and on a second canvas, away from the viewer, camouflaged fatigues dissolving into hatched charcoal marks that infer a society unconvinced of the justification for conflict and unconcerned for the fate of its own veterans. Stuart Hine’s appropriation of the standing portrait format as developed in the high renaissance and extended through Velazquez and ultimately Manet, sees the artist subverting the class profile of this conventional genre while working with photo processing programmes to create a kind of holographic typology; eyes blackened out, body postures eloquent of pride, vulnerability and defiance. The vivid impact of these larger than life characters is echoed by Tracey Shaylor’s series of brushed aluminium photo-discs which churn with disquietingly fleshy forms, undistinguishable as limbs or organs but unmistakeably human. One can’t help but associate these brooding meditations on corporeality with ongoing debates regarding genetic research, an impression reinforced by the clinical perfection of the medium. Amanda Rae’s heads encased in resin produce a comparable effect of unsettling fascination. The ambiguity of these pieces links them with the other work on display, all of which celebrates a species of visuality that eludes literal translation and is all the richer for it.

Any artist curated exhibition of contemporary work across as wide a range of media as this that coheres visually, formally and thematically at one or another level is a testament to the spirit of co-operation and mutual support of the core organisers. In this case, an exceptional crop of MA graduates have engaged with unconventional media and processes whilst exploring complex issues in an open and non-didactic manner. The resulting work forecasts a return to health for the cultural life of the region.

David Gledhill

This review by Dave Gledhill of our interim show is a taster of our final forth coming MA show as Students. Don't miss the opportunity to judge for yourself!

Tuesday 7 August 2012

After the major success of “Encompass”, the time is nearly upon us for our final MA show in ‘The innovation Factory’ at The University of Bolton.

It has been a great year and there has much success for the invited international artists who showed in the Encompass fine art exhibition and for us.

The private view for ‘Inception’ is an open invite to all those who wish to celebrate our completion of this curriculum and view new and previous works completed throughout the MA Fine Art course.

Friday 27 July 2012

PRIVATE VIEW
Thursday 6th September 6pm - 9pm
EXHIBITION
Friday 7th - Thursday 13th September
10AM - 4PM
Innovation Factory, University of Bolton