Bideford Black: The Next Generation Eight new art commissions for Burton Art Gallery

Eight contemporary artists are exploring a scarce local pigment, Bideford Black, to create new artworks examining science, industry and society. Selected by open call last autumn, the artists’ work will feature in a special exhibition at the Burton in October 2015 and become part of the gallery’s permanent collection.

Devon-based artist Tabatha Andrews works in a range of media including drawing and casting forms in paper.

Artist duo ATOI, based in Cornwall, are exploring the transformation of material from one form to another. The pair are experimenting with using Bideford Black in false diamonds and even as a surface for martial arts.

Artist Luce Choules explores physical and emotional geography through experimental fieldwork. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Luce is developing Seam, a choreographed exhibition for Bideford Black; The Next Generation.

Inspired by Bideford’s historic industries and their workers, and society’s pre-occupation with the natural, London-based artist Corinne Felgate will set up a temporary cottage industry at a North Devon location. Using only local natural materials, Felgate will create 100 small objects for applying ‘Bideford Black mascara’.

Prompted by Bideford Black, and using a shared sketchbook, artists Neville Gabie and Joan Gabie are holding a ‘dialogue of ideas’ with Cultural Geographer Ian Cook (University of Exeter). Together, the artists explore the physicality, social and geological significance of Bideford Black, creating an artist’s film and drawings.

Lanarkshire-based artist duo Littlewhitehead are interested in the environmental processes forming Bideford Black: what would the Carboniferous period have sounded like? Their developing commission is tightly under wraps, but may incorporate experimental sound recordings or Bideford Black discs resembling vinyl LP records.

Lizzie Ridout will set Bideford Black within a new taxonomy - or story - of the colour black. Incorporating her research into the subject, the Cornwall-based artist will create a printed publication, presented as a sculpture, pieces of which audience members may be able to take away.

The final artist, Sam Treadaway is working with Bristol botanists to create a scent inspired by Bideford Black. The scent will be interactively transmitted into the gallery space using a bubble-blowing machine developed by roboticists from the University of the West of England.

Film-maker Liberty Smith is documenting the Bideford Black: The New Generation project. As well as filming the eight artists and artist duos as they research and create their work, Liberty will film the landscape around Bideford and the North Devon coast. Smith’s film will be premiered as part of the project exhibition in October 2015.

Bideford Black: The Next Generation is a Burton Art Gallery project managed in association with Flow Contemporary Arts and Claire Gulliver. It is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

We are grateful for the support of the Friends of the Burton Art Gallery and Museum.

Bideford Black: The Next Generation

Exhibition

Opens 3 October 2015

Burton Art Gallery & Museum, Bideford, Devon, EX39 2QQ

Free

T: 01237 471455

E: burtonartgallery@torridge.gov.uk 

BURTON ART 
GALLERY

& MUSEUM

Project managed by Flow Contemporary Arts in collaboration with Claire Gulliver

Luce Choules gives a talk at the Burton, one of the 8 new artist commissions for Bideford Black: Next Generation commissions

In October 2015 the Bideford Black Project opens at the Burton Art Gallery in Bideford. 8 new artist commissions and a brilliant film-maker will reveal their year long research, and it's going to be good.

One of the artists, Luce Choules, gave a talk at the museum last night, about another project of hers, Guide74.

Luce spends a lot of  time doing fieldwork and her presentation consisted of a series of photographic images accompanied by her reading her own writing, and that by others. All the photos, taken in Chamonix, drew the audience into the place, and allowed us to be there with her as she read. Not crossing the landscape, as Richard Long might do, but immersed in it. There. In contact with the place. Not capturing it, controlling it or using it to frame the artist.

Luce's performance was gentle, sensitive and most of all compelling. It was as if the landscape was sharing itself through  her images and choice  of texts. It was laid out for the audience to visually explore, from long shots of mountains, to micro imagery of lichens.

Luce is an intrepid traveller, she crosses glaciers, sleeps in huddles with others on icey precipices - not my idea of fun at all. But somehow, thinking  about the experience, I feel I was there, if only in empathy and imagination.

If you get a chance to see her performance, please do.

NOTE: this post was written by Carolyn Black of Flow Contemporary Arts and was first posted on her blog . Flow Contemporary Arts has been contracted to deliver the project in association with Claire Gulliver

Bideford Black artist Luce Choules to talk at the Burton on 11th March 2015

One of the 8 artists selected to make new work for the Burton's collection, Luce Choules will be giving a talk at the museum:

Luce Choules 

Guide74 performance lecture

11th March 7pm 

Burton Art Gallery & Museum, Bideford, Devon

Free (Booking advised)

"intellectually invigorating, visually engaging and aesthetically challenging" Dr Harriet Hawkins, Director MA Cultural Geography, University of London

Guide74 is an artist project exploring spatial dynamics in the high mountains using experimental fieldwork. Using a format of photographic image, spoken word and physical objects, Guide74 leads an audience on an expedition to the Alpine regions of France – a journey of many parts exploring ideas of interrelated geographies and events. For more information visit: www.guide74.com

While this event is not specifically about Luce's commission for the Bideford Black project, it will give a flavour of how she works and thinks. For the Burton project, Luce is developing Seam - a scripted large-scale, dynamic photographic installation (conceived as an event throughout the exhibition), and associated items. Find out more about her work here.

Do join us.

This is a free event, but please book a place by phoning or emailing Burton Art Gallery.
T: 01237 471455
E: burtonartgallery@torridge.gov.uk 

"Exploring, mapping and observing our landscape and environment Luce Choules' fascinating work develops an earthy and earthly poetics that advances debates between geography and art in intellectually invigorating, visually engaging and aesthetically challenging ways."    Dr Harriet Hawkins, Director MA Cultural Geography (Research), Royal Holloway, University of London

"Luce Choules is an artist at the forefront of re-imagining traditional fieldwork by exploring both physical and emotional geographies through her collaborations with map-makers, writers and explorers in the landscapes where she lives, works and explores herself.”  Shane Winser, Expeditions and Fieldwork, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

Next Generation Artists Selected

We are pleased to share with you the names of the artists and the film maker selected for the Bideford Black: Next Generation commissions.

We were delighted by such a high number of applications – all of which were excellent and which made the selection process very difficult. The panel felt that the selected artists went above and beyond the criteria as set out in the brief. We anticipate that their work will provide a fascinating addition to the existing Burton collection and offer a real insight into this distinctive local pigment.

The selected artists are:

Tabatha Andrews (Devon)

ATOI (Cornwall)

Luce Choules (Essex)

Corinne Felgate (London)

Neville & Joan Gabie (Gloucestershire)

Littlewhitehead (Lanarkshire)

Lizzie Ridout (Cornwall)

Sam Treadaway (Bristol)

Our film maker is Liberty Smith. Liberty presently lives and works in London and went to school in Hartland, North Devon, just up the road from Bideford. She will be creating a wonderful documentary film to record the artist’s progression over the coming year.

We welcome The National Trust and Ian Cook of Exeter University to the project and thank them for supporting the artists in their research and development phase.

We anticipate the final works will open to the public in the autumn of 2015 – exact date to be confirmed.

Updates on the project and the artist's progress will be posted here, so keep reading.

Any enquiries please contact Carolyn Black, Project Manager The Next Generation: Carolyn@flowprojects org.uk

Bideford Black - the new generation + Richard Long

We're grateful for the many applications we received for the artist and film commissions for this project. The selection has finally been made and we will tell you more once the programme begins to take shape.

Why not come to The Burton Gallery in the meantime and see the Richard Long show, part of the Artists Rooms tour from Tate? His work is very much about earth materials and black mark making. It's a real treat to see his work in Bideford - it runs until December - how fantastic to have it so close to home for people in North Devon.

BURTON ART GALLERY
& MUSEUM

Kingsley Road, Bideford, Devon EX39 2QQ

Telephone: 01237 471455
Email:burtonartgallery@torridge.gov.uk
Admission is Free
Open Daily 10am - 4pm
Sundays 11am - 4pm

Bideford Black - the Next Generation. Not the first, and not the last, to use this medium

Claire Gulliver and I (Carolyn Black of Flow Contemporary Arts) have been appointed by the Burton to take the Bideford Black project onto another stage. The Next Generation - is not the first project that the Burton has initiated relating to artists using Bideford Black. It is a development from the work done by many local artists, including Peter Ward on this blog, and in his studio too. It's inspirational to see and meet so many artists who have worked with BB as a medium. The exhibition at White Moose in Barnstaple showed some of them in 2013.

Thanks to ACE funding and support from the Friends of the Burton, Claire and I are managing the new commissions on behalf of the art gallery, working closely with Warren Collum. 8 artists and 1 film maker will be selected to stretch this pigment to its limits. Coming from an industrial background, the pigment played a part in the economic foundation of Bideford. We're excited by the possibility that artists can explore new ways of using it. Beauty, fragility, density, darkness, earthiness and stickiness are just some of the qualities it possesses.

As a natural pigment, it has some very specific qualities. It holds social history in its tacky texture; crumbling memories of ancient geology; grains of physical hardship in its mining; but it can also be part of an unknown future. Since it was first used in industrial paint and mascara, the world has developed unbelievably fast. Technology is everywhere, new materials and compounds are being discovered, some of which may (or may not) be combined with the pigment in some way. We need to understand more thoroughly the nature of the material and hope to be able to share a material analysis in due course.

In the meantime, we encourage artists to think beyond the page or the pedestal, challenge the preconceptions we have about what pigment can be used for.

Download the brief here and share your ideas with us. Don't be afraid to suggest something unusual or challenging, the criteria for selection are stated in the brief - beyond them anything may be possible.

The nature of black: Artist commissions to explore new ways of working with scarce pigment

The Burton Art Gallery & Museum has secured Arts Council England funding to commission eight artists and a film maker to make new works for the collection and to develop new ways of using Bideford Black.  Eight artists and a film maker will explore new ways of working with a scarce pigment as part of a project launched this week. ‘Bideford Black - The Next Generation’ is a Burton Art Gallery project produced and curated in association with Flow Contemporary Arts and Claire Gulliver.

The artists will be selected by open call and the project partners are confident they will be both surprised and excited by proposals from emerging and established artists from across the UK and beyond. The new commissions will join examples of existing works made with Bideford Black in the Burton’s collection.

Warren Collum, Exhibitions Officer, said: “We are grateful for the support of The Friends of the Museum who also contributed, to ensure the budget is suitable to attract high-calibre artists to make art with, or about, this unique and adaptable black pigment”.

The project connects the heritage of the Bideford area with the use of its local pigment by artists past and present - commissioning and documenting its creative possibilities. ‘Biddiblack’ is the local name for Bideford Black, a coal-like mineral traditionally prized by artists for pigment and mined at Bideford until 1968. ‘Bideford Black: The Next Generation’ will reinterpret Bideford Black for a contemporary audience, stretching its uses and creating fresh artworks for Burton Art Gallery’s collection.

The specially commissioned film will document the creative process - from the artist’s preliminary ideas, right through to the final works - for exhibition in the Autumn of 2015. Devon-based artist Peter Ward, who uses this unique pigment in his own artworks, conducted some fascinating research about Bideford Black:

Running alongside seams of anthracite across North Devon is a black clay-like material that was mined for 200 years in Bideford for its uses as a strong black pigment. The unique ‘Mineral Black’, or ‘Biddiblack’ as it was known, was commercially produced for applications in the boat building industry, for colouring rubber products, for camouflage on tanks in WWII and was even bought by Max Factor for the production of mascara. The mines were closed in 1968 when the production of cheaper oil-based blacks and the depletion of the seam made the operation financially unviable, but many locals still remember the ‘Paint Mines’ and have tales to tell of using the paint or going into the now defunct mine shafts.

Follow the progress of the The Next Generation project on this blog.

DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION BRIEF & GUIDELINES (opens in another site)