Make Room: Interventions into the Garman Ryan Collection

Floor 2 Elizabeth LeMoine

These sculptures, made out of recycled materials, are created from LeMoine’s memories from childhood and young adulthood. The artist describes a need to ‘make an index of all the things, the influences that formed me.’ The scale of the work makes one think of dolls and their accessories, a fitting form for childhood memories to take, giving them a playful and magical quality.

Tracey Emin

It’s What I’d Like To Be, 1998 Lithograph

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Roofscape of Walsall taken from 1968, 2006 Pencil on paper

Commissioned to produce a new work from New Art Gallery Walsall in 2005, Foster spent some time in the local archives where he discovered a photograph of this view of Walsall in 1968. Sixties new wave films such as Billy Liar with its industrial landscapes have always fascinated Forster and the student uprising in Paris in 1968 gives this date an additional resonant coincidence for him.

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Jessica Harrison Eyeball Microscope, 2006 Pencil on paper

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Tracey Emin fully integrates her work and her personal life. Her subject is herself: the traumatic episodes and periods of despair in her past, and the darker moments of her present. Her confessional art-practice confronts the viewer with uncomfortable, intimate scenes which seems to question all traditional codes of feminine behavior. In light of such work which, this rather playful and charming looking drawing which evokes ideas of innocence and childhood takes on a darker resonance.

Monica Bonvicini

Richard Forster

14

Box of tissues, 1998, False eyelashes, 1998, Guitar, 1998, Lab coat, 1998, Pencil, 1998, Pyjamas, 1998, Y-Fronts, 1998, Coat hanger, 1998 Varied materials including rubber, tissue, wood, plastic, cardboard, organza

Religious Art

Illustration & Symbolism

16

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Icon II/VI Washing ‘Dolly’ or ‘Maid’, 1990/1992 Icon II/XVI Leather Cutter, 1990/1992 Icon II/IV Engineers Caliper, 1990/1992 Photograph on hand made paper

Through his photographic art practice Kirkham looks at problems in the representation of industry and its workers. As a former engineer, he is fascinated with the Black Country, with its power, its ugliness and with what he sees as its potential beauty.

He presents us with austere and delicate images of individual tools leaving us to wonder what the tool was for, who used it, and the intense labour involved in its use.

Staton’s print consists of the words “I shall not want” taken from the Bible and printed in the manner of an advertising slogan. She saw the line from the 23rd Psalm on a building worker’s T-shirt and thought it was better than a `Nike’ logo. Her work often looks at and comments on the production, sale and exchange of both high culture and popular culture.

Jo Roberts

22

This work is the culmination of Robert’s project ‘The Waterwoman of Greenwich Penisula’ in which the artist explored the land formed by a large meander of the River Thames. The plastic water bottle serves as a container for a rolled up report of her findings. It reminds us of rubbish often found on a river shoreline or a message from a desert island cast away. Her work raises ecological issues of the use and importance of water.

Terrence Warren

Make Room

Interventions into the Garman Ryan Collection

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Warren’s depiction of nature contrasts with the more traditional representations of carefully arranged and stylised compositions of flowers and still lifes in this room. Instead of focusing on flowers as objects of beauty he portrays wild plants as a living force capable of a physical transformation of their surrounding. The diagonal composition highlights the dramatic character of this image and the explosive force of the world of nature.

Work & Leisure

Gary Kirkham

21

Prevention is Better Than Cure, 1980 Colour etching

Drill 4 Chastity, 2005 Bronze and resin

Bonivicini’s sculptures and installations explore the relationship between the built environment and gender. The artist confronts us with an object whose purpose and meaning seems to lie somewhere between usefulness and absurd. The contrasting fleshy base and the tool-like bronze top of this sculpture conjures uncomfortable references making us feel uneasy. ‘I am making fun of the idea of masculinity’ says the artist, ‘which doesn’t really exist, but is well-represented in the cliché and absurd representations of the construction workers’.

I Shall Not Want, 1998 Lithograph

Water Report, 2008 Plastic and paper

Harrison is known best for drawing and sculpting mutant forms with multiples of eyes, mouths or limbs. Her work confronts issues of nature versus the artificial and aims to raise our awareness and concern. The cartoon style of her drawings and light hearted presentation adds a layer of comedy and accessibility to the otherwise serious and threatening concepts of human mutation and cloning.

Flowers & Still Life

Sarah Staton

Main Hall Children

LIFTS

Richard Wentworth Hazel Jones

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The Wunder Double Deluxe Front Loading Currant Steamer, 1994 Brass, copper and steel Sketch for ‘The Wunder Double Deluxe Front Loading Currant Steamer’, 1994 Pencil, pen and collage

Born in Walsall, Hazel Jones knew and loved Birmingham’s Science Museum and became intrigued with the eccentric and bizarre Victorian inventions at the Royal College of Art in London. Fascinated with things unusual and strange, she produces exquisitely made domestic inventions of her own, which we feel should or could possibly work. They show us that reality can be as extraordinary as fantasy.

8 October 2010 — 8 October 2011

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Essay, 1998 Wood, formica and nails

Wentworth has had a leading role in British sculpture since the end of the 1970’s. His work, which looks in part at objects and their use in our everyday experiences, has altered the traditional definition of sculpture. This piece featuring an orange shelf is representative not only of the artist’s engagement with ready-made objects but also makes for an interesting comment on formal and structured nature of the gallery space as opposed to a domestic setting of a home.

Exhibition guide

Floor 1 Juneau Projects

1

Store Front, 1999-2000 Lithograph

The Garman Ryan Collection was given to Walsall in 1972 by Kathleen Garman and is on display in the gallery in a series of themed rooms. The Permanent Collection is kept mostly in storage and was started

by Walsall Council in 1892 as part of their vision to give the town access to culture.

This collection continues to develop today.

For more information about the collections visit the Art Library or our website artatwalsall.org.uk

Howard Hodgkin

Hodgkin’s experience as an abstract painter inspired by landscape can be felt in this sculptural piece, which by its rich and striking colour resembles a crumpled painting of a sky or a cloud. About his art-making process Hodgkin states; ‘There’s no image in my mind at all, there’s simply feeling.’ According to the artist the ability of conveying a feeling of the sky is more important than a realistic image of one.

01922 654400 thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk

This is a very personal sculpture, in which the artist refers to her instruments of vision by presenting a cast of her camera and her own eye as its lens. This literal integration of her artistic tool and her physical body suggests that one cannot function without the other. Cross’s practice reinvigorates everyday things in disturbing and humorous ways; exploring themes of sexual and cultural identity, personal history and memory.

Figure Studies

Archive Room

Trees

Smalltown, 2008 (detail) Backwater, 2009 Watercolour

The ‘Fabulous’ Freddie Haycock, 1996 (detail) Digital photograph ‘Freddie played for Villa...’

Print and engraving on glass

This piece uncovers layers of family history, overlapping a self-portrait of the artist with his grandfather’s nose and the body of the footballer Freddie Haycock, who was related to the artists’ family. The artist grew up, being told that he looked like the famous athlete. Georgiou states; ‘I want to make images that “fill in the gaps” and construct a “new” family album- a “junction” between the two determining features of identity; history and memory’.

Daniel Sinsel

11

Portraits

Main Hall

Landscape & Townscape

LIFTS

This sculpture seems to resemble the excrement of an animal rather than being a portrait of a ‘pet’. It is an example of how the artist tackles problems of representation in contemporary sculpture through the use of humour and associations. The ambiguity of what actually is the ‘pet’ comes from a layering of meaning where the viewer asks oneself; does the excrement symbolise the ‘pet’ or is the excrement the ‘pet’ itself?

5

Brunelli has developed a style which he calls “animal focused street photography”.

He photographs animals from the backyards, streets and gardens, small villages, farms and near his home in London. He uses different methods for getting a reaction from them which he then tries to capture on camera. The noise of the shutter is very important to him because it startles the animals. He uses an old 35mm camera, with black and white film and always takes pictures in the early morning light.

In Sinsel’s practice wood appears as a reoccurring motif, especially in the form of wind instruments.

The instrument is hinted at without being fully completed. While the instruments have angled mouth-pieces and ducts, there are no finger-holes and they are plainly not hollow. With its realistic representation and isolation from wider context the image of the log encourages the viewer to imagine its environment and complete its’ story.

Animals & Birds

4

Pet, 2007 Bronze and cold porcelain clay

Giacomo Brunelli

10

Untitled, 2007 Photogravure print

Galt is a realist painter working within the traditional genres of portraiture, landscape & still-life. Smalltown was given to the Gallery by the artist, whilst Backwater, a view of Walsall from the top terrace of the Gallery building was commissioned by Gallery. The artist painted them both from the top of the gallery as he only works from life.

These paintings capture the fast changing contemporary landscape of Walsall, creating a modern take on watercolour landscape.

Erika Verzutti

9

This print makes references to the iconic image of Boccioni’s futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, and contrasts it with a female silhouette suggestive of stereotypical and overemphasised racial characteristics. An interaction between the two figures is represented in a series of film still-like-images. The artwork engages with a study of the body in movement as well as making a comment on the political nature of figure representation.

Darryl Georgiou

Eye Camera, 2004 Bronze

3

Dog, 2008 Photographic print

The New Art Gallery Walsall Gallery Square Walsall WS2 8LG

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Dorothy Cross

2

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies, 2002 Paper

Cameron Galt

Juneau Projects is an artistic partnership concerned with exploring the relationship the modern urbanite has with nature and technology, and the alienation one might feel from these realms. They blend traditions of folk art and punk rock within their art practice, creating musical instruments which can be played or looked at as a works of art.

STAIRS

This enables us to view the contemporary works alongside similarly themed historic artworks and allows us to make connections between old art and new art.

Lloyd usually photographs people, who like this shop-front are unknown to her.

She approaches strangers on the street or in dance clubs and takes snapshots of their everyday life. This print is part of a larger work showing the same derelict store front from different angles and varying distances. We do not know what the purpose of the shop was or why it is closed nevertheless the fluorescent shop-sign manages to clearly capture a feeling of the city and the urban landscape.

Nick Relph and Oliver Payne Master Friday, 2008 (detail) Giclee print

ENTRANCE

Tom Ormond

Jordan Baseman

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Upshot Wonderland, 2008 Oil on linen

STAIRS

Make Room uses contemporary works from the gallery’s Permanent Collection to make interventions within the Garman Ryan Collection’s themed rooms.

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Traditional Grip mandolin, 2008 Wood, metal, plastic, paint

STAIRS TO 4th FLOOR

Hilary Lloyd

8

Call Me Mister, 1995 Textiles, coat hanger and human hair

The shirt and tie along with the title, which was taken from a John Wayne film, suggest the theme of masculinity and control, while the small size of the sleeves complicate these ideas.

Here we have the outline of a figure without the figure itself. Baseman blurs the humorous with the horrific, often evoking feelings of disgust whilst highlighting the uncomfortable human fascination with the renewable parts of our body such as hair and nails.

Ormond’s work is often inspired by archival photographs of nuclear explosions and utopian building schemes. Depicted simultaneously in this painting is the construction of a fantastic sci-fi looking building and its destruction. The titles of his paintings convey a sense of optimism whilst also predicting their future unravelling, where the utopian vision turns dystopian.

Alison Jackson

13

Madonna Ironing, 2005 (detail) Lambda photographic print

Jackson’s photographs fictitiously construe the life of modern day celebrities. The artist employs celebrity look-alikes whom she then photographs in invented scenarios.

‘I’m interested in what goes on in people’s imagination. This work has nothing to do with the celebrities themselves... rather it’s about the perceptions of those celebrities in the eyes of the public.’