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Arts Festival to host specially commissioned Ikia Exhibition
A specially commissioned exhibition
themed around local and international retail giant IKEA will form part of
Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival 2015. The festival returns to
the Town next month for the 5th consecutive year, and new for 2015
organisers Culture Warrington are working in partnership with 'North',
which will deliver an exciting new dimension to the event.
'North' is a new initiative aiming to build strength for
contemporary art in the North of England. Together, Culture Warrington and
North will highlight the breadth of talent within the region, as well as
attracting national and international artists with support from Arts Council
England.
A key focus of the partnership is a specially
commissioned exhibition entitled:- 'The Dream Of Modern Living?
Contemporary Artists Explore IKEA'. It will take place between
Friday, 2 October and Saturday, 14 November 2015, at Warrington Museum and
Art Gallery. Admission is free.
In 1987, Britain's 1st IKEA opened in Warrington. Since then, the store has
found a place in the thoughts and memories of local people. Warrington IKEA
is said to have the highest visitor numbers of any store in the country and
allegedly the lowest spend per head, suggesting that people go not just to
buy furniture but to see and to experience designs, ideas, even food from
elsewhere.
Paul Carey–Kent is the curator for 'The Dream Of Modern Living?'
A former editor of Art World magazine, he now writes for publications
including:- 'Art Monthly', 'Frieze' and 'Photomonitor'.
He has become increasingly involved in freelance curatorial projects since
2013, and currently has shows in London and Berlin as well as Warrington.
Earlier this year he created:- 'The Absence of Presence' for
Berloni and 'Weight for the Showing' at Maddox Arts.
Paul wanted to explore artists' reactions to
IKEA as a business, lifestyle and aesthetic. Their responses range from
using IKEA products as art materials to reinterpreting the furniture, from
attempting to live in store to subverting the catalogue of which more than
200 million copies are printed each year. The artists are:- Guy Ben Ner,
Ryan Gander, Clay Ketter, Artist Anonymous, Marie Karlberg, Joe Scanlan,
Sara McKillop, Frédéric Pradeau, Mary Griffiths, David Ricakard and Stuart
Hartley.
Curator Paul Carey–Kent commented:- "The Dream Of Modern Living?
exhibition is going to be something very different for the Warrington
Contemporary Arts Festival; and North is delighted to be working in
partnership with Culture Warrington on this project. It's a show about the
power of transformation in which IKEA provides the raw materials; literal
and attitudinal; from which the artists set out. They get to some rather
interesting places, inside and beyond the store."
The wider Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival features a full programme of
cultural events, exhibitions, performances, workshops and seminars from
Friday, 2 October 2015, through to Saturday, 31 October 2015, at various
locations across the Town including:- Pyramid Arts Centre, The Gallery at
Bank Quay House and Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, which will all become
festival hubs for the event.
Festival highlights include a Cultural Crawl of host venues; Glastonbury
favourite and raconteur Mik Artistik at Pyramid Arts Centre; physical
theatre company Tmesis; Long Shot Micro Film Festival; Capriccio
experimental music workshop; and a spooky silent disco. The full programme
is available
online. |
