Virginia Bodman

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NCA CURATES NO LAST DANCE

NCA GALLERY THURSDAY 25TH APRIL - SATURDAY 18TH MAY

OPEN: THURSDAY - SATURDAY, 12 - 5PM

EVENTS:

OPENING CELEBRATION: SAT 20TH APRIL, 4 - 7PM

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE - SYMPOSIUM: SAT18TH MAY, 2 - 5PM

LATE SHOWS: SAT 18TH MAY, 6 - 11PM

A group exhibition and a one-day symposium exploring how time is intrinsic to the act of making and viewing painting. The exhibition will showcase exciting approaches to painting that will be a stimulus for discussion about how artists sustain a motivated and ambitious practice with or without public recognition.

The curation of the exhibition has been informed by the writing and practice of Isabelle Graw and Charlotte von Heyl. Isabelle Graw is an art writer who is interested in painting as a “formation”, something that continues to maintain itself under new historical conditions. As well as offering a way of discursive communication, painting operates at a non verbal level through bumps, marks, material and colour. Artist Charlotte von Heyl suggests that the moment of beholding a painting is the most important for her. That activation of the space between the viewer and the picture externally by its material presence and internally through shifting thoughts as the mind wanders is crucial. This process with a painting is not one the beholder can take away, but one that needs to be replayed and updated again and again whether positive or defensive.

In an interview, Phyllida Barlow (1944 - 2023) observed that many artists' work is never, or rarely gets seen. She raises interesting, but rarely discussed ideas about an artist’s visibility and the inherent heroism in working with little external validation. This point was echoed in a series of conversation events held at NCA leading up to the exhibition, which identified questions of artistic visibility and agency as a central concern. These conversations also played an important role in the curation of the exhibition and will be explored further in the symposium.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Helen Baker / Virginia Bodman / Debbie Bower / Annette Chevallier / Sarah Cooney / Charles Danby / Jennifer Douglas / Bob Edgson / Natalie Gale / Rachel Gibson / Ian Gonczarow / Lorraine Lawler / Rachael Macarthur / Paul Merrick / Abdullah Quresi / Ellen Ranson / Louise Scott / Andy Sheridan / Helen Smith / Sue Spark / Flora Whiteley / Becky Woodhouse

Furious: paintings by Virginia Bodman, 20 July–7 August 2021

Bodman is one of the few artists who has shown in all of Globe Gallery’s various venues and her show will be the last at its current site on the 7th Floor, Commercial Union House, 37 Pilgrim Steet, Newcastle, NE1 6QE

The gallery is situated in a Brutalist-style building (1971) in the centre of Newcastle and offers panoramic views of the city. The building once described as ‘a concrete bungle’ is an entirely appropriate setting for the work as the paintings not only ‘take-on’the scale and physicality of the architecture but also critique ideas current in the period that the building was planned and built.

Furious includes paintings from three bodies of work: StudioStudioStudio, Heaps and Propositions. Some of the paintings in this exhibition were made meditatively, some in a furious state of mind and other painted furiously. Bodman invites you to decide for yourself.

Please check Globe Gallery website for opening times as they may vary.

https://globegallery.org/portfolio-item/furious/
https://www.facebook.com/theglobegallery

Gallery text available here for additional reading: FURIOUS_gallery_text.pdf

My work is now available at Rise Art:
https://www.riseart.com/artist/113777/virginia-bodman

Artist Talk and Brunch with Virginia Bodman

Join us for a free artist tour and brunch with Virginia Bodman to hear more about the ideas behind her current exhibition, Studio Stories, here at the Customs House.

Book your place via Eventbright here >

Saturday 25 February
11am - 1pm
FREE

Virginia Bodman’s painting-centred practice includes prints, 3d object making and drawing, she is fascinated by the histories and processes of painting and often uses colour and the materiality of paint as critical tools, making aesthetically provocative work to stimulate debate about painting and social issues. The exhibition Studio Stories is in two parts. The main gallery contains a selection of paintings made since her last Customs House exhibition, Home Ground in 2006. For the artist the studio is a powerful place, a place to imagine and tell stories, a space that can be a landscape, a body, a dance floor, it’s somewhere to reflect on life away from the everyday. In the Upper Fusion Gallery Virginia Bodman offers a first glimpse of recent work from the ongoing series Studio Stories in the form of circular drawings on canvas based on objects that she made from discarded paintings and other studio detritus.

The exhibition runs until 2 April.

About the Artist:
Virginia Bodman studied painting at Birmingham Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, London. She was Abbey Major Scholar in Painting, British School at Rome,1981-3 and first artist-in-residence at Durham Cathedral, 1983-4. Awards include: Major Artists Bursary, Northern Arts, 1994; Leverhulme Fellowship, 1996-7; Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship, 1999-2000 and Rootstein Hopkins Award, 2000-1. Her work has been widely exhibited in Britain and abroad, most recently in Light/Dark/Dark/Light, (solo) Globe Gallery, Newcastle, 2014 and Whose Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? (3-person), OBS Gallery, Tonbridge, 2016. She has been a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Sunderland since 1990.
For further information on Virginia Bodman’s practice, please visit; www.virginiabodman.com

Book your place via Eventbright here >