Leeds Art Walk - February

I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks about the Leeds art walk that I went on sometime back in February.


Stanley Burton Aubrey Gallery

We started the walk at the gallery in Leeds University; there was a short talk about some work that was on show by Wilhelmina Barns Graham. She does a lot of work on landscapes mostly set in St Ives.
I like that a lot of her work is colourless, it forces you to focus on the shapes and forms of the work. She studies the shapes of nature looking at lines and contours.


She also paints views of Lanzarote which is somewhere that is particularly familiar to me considering the many times I visit the place each year. It's not somewhere that I think is beautiful or picturesque but I can understand why Wilhelmina would paint this place due to the amazing shapes of the deserts and volcanic spaces that she seems to take interest in.

I quite enjoyed seeing her work but the talk was quite boring. It was set out well as an exhibition because the curator Dave Louis had put her work into sections depending on when they were done and the different styles as her work progresses.


Leeds Art Gallery

We also went to the art gallery to see the northern art prize. To be honest I wasn’t particularly blown away by any of it, the one thing that I did enjoy was ‘these are the days’ 2008-9 by Matt Stokes which was a film of a band playing and was shown in a large room projected onto one of the walls. It had a really good atmosphere but when you stand alone in the room, it really doesn’t work; you need to have a crowd stood there to get into the gig atmosphere.

There was also an animation that I enjoyed called ‘The Four Horsemen – War’ 2009 by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson which was different flowers mutating into different shapes to form depictions of insects.


It was shown on four screens set within a white cube in the room containing lots of old paintings. The cube blocks the light to the paintings and looks an eye-sore in that room; it really doesn’t fit. The animation inside is great but the cube that it is set in needs to be moved to another room that is more appropriate.


The Howard Assembly Room

We then moved onto the Howard Assembly room to the opening night of Janet Cardiff’s “The Forty Part Motet”. This was a fantastic opportunity to see the sorts of people who are part of the art world in Leeds.
The piece was of 40 loud speakers mounted on stands placed in an oval with each voice of a choir playing from each stand. If you stood in the middle you could hear the choir as a whole.

The room suited the work because it reminded me of a church, the roof was rounded which helped make the sound bounce around enhancing the piece. The lighting in the room helps to set a relaxed atmosphere. The ceiling was lit and there were soft lights around the room.

It was interesting to note how the piece had been put together with the wires on show but tidied away around the edges leading to a computer which controls each speaker. I was concerned about tripping over the stands but it would be difficult to change that without making it so that you can’t go near the speakers, which is the whole point.








It was very noisy the night while I was there due to the fact that it was an opening, so I would like to return when it is much quieter. I was imagining the piece if I was in the dark, I was thinking about how it would be nice for there to be spotlights above each speaker and when someone is singing on that speaker it lights up.

There was a nice image as a woman who was listening to the piece rested her head on one of the speakers, shut her eyes and smiled, it kind of summed up the atmosphere and was probably the sort of reaction that the artist had hoped for.