The Drumcroon website is currently being rebuilt. We hope to have completed this by Spring 2010. Until then, we are simply aiming to outline the gallery exhibition programme for the current academic year and can only provide limited information about previous exhibitions, artists and outreach work. The new site will hold our extensive archive of exhibitions, as well as information about the new artists in residence. Examples of Drumcroon's outreach programme in schools will also be available. If you would like to request teacher’s notes for specific exhibitions, do contact us directly by e-mail or telephone. Thank you for your patience.
'Place and Identity'Charles Hadcock, Chris Harris, Pat Hodson, Austin-Smith: Lord, Tecla Mashenu Stansbie
18 January – 19 March 2010
Place and Identity is a group show, bringing together diverse relationships and responses to the environment. Chris Harris and Pat Hodson both explore specific landscapes that are personally significant. Chris is inspired by his hometown of Newport, South Wales where a particular view of the sea and sea wall form the basis of his visual language. Pat’s complex layers of text and image make reference to all kinds of physical and imaginary maps and journeys. Her love of pattern and geometry enable her to impose a kind of order over the chaos of random shapes, drawings, poetry and written notes, all imbued with vivid and exuberant colour.
The architects, Austin-Smith: Lord, provide an interesting dimension to the exhibition. Their work involves them directly and tangibly creating the very real spaces that we all inhabit in our daily lives. Buildings can inspire, welcome and enrich. They can intimidate and alienate. They are powerful forms and make a significant contribution to the identity of a place. In sharing responses to architectural briefs, the architects from Austin Smith: Lord illuminate the process by which buildings are conceived and realised.
In the context of considering architecture and its relationship to the environment, the show also includes the work of Charles Hadcock. His recent exhibition at Drumcroon, ‘The Melting Pot’, showed a series of small maquette sculptures and mapped the process of evolving large-scale sculptural works, ultimately placed in the environment. His structures and their relationship to the environment, reference his own body in space, and are directly related to architectural references.
Tecla Mashenu Stansbie’s installation within ‘Place and Identity’ is an attempt to create a space in the gallery for visitors to examine their responses to the exhibition and it is also an opportunity to broaden the scope of the exhibition’s themes. Originally from Zimbabwe and now living and working in Wigan, her work is informed by her African heritage. She is a contemporary artist, working with contemporary, often conceptual ideas and her interpretation of place and identity brings another dimension to the show.
If you would like to visit the exhibition, please contact Debbie Nealis on 01942 321840 or email D.nealis@wigan.gov.uk.
exhibition programme 2010
'Textile Narratives
April - June 2010Val Jackson and Jane McKeating both work with textile and thread to create intensely personal documents of their lives. Stitched books and layered fabric pieces involving dense applique and rich embroidery provide vivid insights into the pleasures and disasters of the daily routines that shape our lives. The work is an intimate celebration of the profound and the humorous-moments in life that map diverse experience.
Private View
'Place & Identity'
A private view has been arranged for the Place and Identity exhibition on Friday 5 February 2010.
6.00 – 8.30 pm
South Manchester Sax Quartet will be playing in the gallery.
