Eduardo Paolozzi – General Dynamic F.U.N.

By janetuplin | Published August 18, 2011

The Ropewalk gallery in Barton on Humber is hosting a new Hayward Touring exhibition of screen-prints by Eduardo Paolozzi as part of a national tour.

General Dynamic F.U.N. which opens on Saturday, September 10, is a series of 50 screen-prints and photolithographs which were created between 1965 and 1970.

Here Paolozzi employs the technologies of mass-reproduction and gorges on its idols – the household names and familiar faces of consumer advertising, high fashion and Hollywood.

The artist’s friend and sometime collaborator, J.G. Ballard, described General Dynamic F.U.N as a ‘unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds’.

The Ropewalk’s Exhibition’s Officer, Richard Hatfield, said Paolozzi, who died in 2005, was equally revered for his mechanistic sculptures and his kaleidoscope print projects.

“It’s not surprising that he described himself as ‘a wizard in Toytown’ as he transformed the mundane, the derelict and the mass produced into images that zap with electric eclecticism and impress with their graphic complexity,” he went on.

The prints bear idiosyncratic titles such as Totems and Taboos of the Nine-to-Five Day, Twenty Traumatic Twinges and Cary Grant as a Male War Bride.

“For Paolozzi, the modern age, exposed as ephemera, is a necessarily fragmented collision of visual stimulus and influence, and his work is a ‘health warning for an uncreative and thriftless society’”, Richard went on.

This  Hayward Touring exhibition from Southbank Centre, London, is on behalf of Arts Council England.

The exhibition is open daily until Sunday October 9 and admission is free.  The Ropewalk is open from Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm and on Sundays and Bank Holidays from 10am to 4pm.

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20:20 Print Exchange

The Hallmark Room is hosting a wide selection of affordable prints during August. Thirty-six Print Workshops have taken part in this year’s 20:20 Print Exchange and The Ropewalk Print workshop has been twinned with Fife Dunfermline Print workshop.

Ropewalk Printmakers Keith Charlton, Janet Cox, Tim Needham, Jane Parker, Veronica Pettifer, Jan Stead, Sue Stephenson, Nic Stoker and Gordon Williams and have all produced print editions measuring 20cm x 20cm for the project.

The display also includes a selection of prints from the 415 artists that have taken part both nationally and internationally, including prints from Moscow and Hong Kong and the United States.

The Print Exchange started in 2009 with 10 artists from Salford exchanging prints with counterparts in Southampton.  Since then, more than 133,000 prints have been created especially and exchanged. For more information on the 20:20 Print Exchange go to www.2020printexchange.com

All the prints are for sale. If you are interested in print making, then check out www.ropewalkprintworkshop.org.uk

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Twink Addison

A Little Country Living

An exhibition of photographs by Twink Addison.

Twink was born and brought up in South Somercotes in Lincolnshire. She went back to live there with her late husband John, when she was in her twenties. They settled into a small draughty cottage at the end of a farm track.

Life is solitary without being lonely.

The landscape is generally agricultural and the sea is not far away. The seasons are experienced at full strength. She has a close acquaintance with the local fauna and flora, whether dead or alive.

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“This representation of the emergency services as statuesque, massively sculptural figures in splendid isolation. They are isolated pictorially, and this actually reminds us that these crucial and often very separate roles that our emergency services play in our lives can be isolating and at times, traumatic. They are ordinary people who perform extraordinary roles and in my experience possess extraordinary abilities and determination.”

Professor Neil Powell, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Norwich University of the Arts.

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Nautical

In the Box Gallery this month we are celebrating all things nautical. Dive into ceramics by Pru Green and explore the Cornish coast with ceramics by Rebecca Harvey. There will also be the opportunity to browse our selection of quirky wooden figures, mobiles and boats by artists Susan Evan and Tony Bellar.

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Landscapes have always inspired Lucy. She has a passion and pull toward remote or isolated places, nature and our place within our environment; of how we choose to live carefully within it so that we leave as little damage as we can. Lucy endeavours to capture the feeling of isolation and the wildness of a place so that the viewer can imagine that they hear the breeze blowing through the grasses, the wind scouring across the beach or the call of a wading bird in the dunes. These places arouse different feelings: comforting, unsettling, eerie, lonely, peaceful, they can bring solace and rest, inspiration or a decision to be made. Lucy has woven these feelings into her landscapes and will continue to capture the moment each time she visits a new place. Each landscape is worked from personal photographs taken during travels around Britain.

“It is like I am revisiting the place again. I wish to convey this through each unique landscape”.

 

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