Open Up North - Winners Announced
3rd October 2011
The First ‘Open Up North’ Art Competition – Winners announced
Exhibition runs from 1 October – 10 November 2011
The winners of the very first Open Up North art competition were announced at the opening of the exhibition at the Brewery Arts Centre on Saturday 1 October. "Cut Throat Rock is painted from a watercolour I did on the cliffs of Dubh Ch
ealla head, part of the Iveragh peninsula in Co. I have painted a great deal in this particular area returning 6 or 7 times since my first visit in 2005... It is one of my favourite places to be anywhere." Chris Rigby
Chris has exhibited all over British Isles and beyond including London, Bath, Scotland, Northumberland and France with solo shows in Dublin, Co. Kerry, Cornwall,Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria. Kendal based, Monica Metsers, took second prize for her painting Lechuguilla (The Chandelier Ballroom). Monica was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1980, but has lived in the Lake District for the majority of her life. She graduated from the University of Dundee with a Masters Degree in Fine Art in 2005 and has been steadily exhibiting her ‘dreamscape’ paintings since then. Monica also worked as an assistant Curator on Open Up North, unaware she was a prize winner.
“Lechuguilla was inspired by a cave in Mexico of the same name, which boasts the stunning geographical phenomenon 'The Chandelier Ballroom.” Monica Metsers
Third prize went to the Ulverston based artist, Tina Balmer, for a still life, Blue, Black Jug, Nasturtiums. Although Tina sometimes paints dogs, carefully capturing their individual personalities, her main subject is flowers.
“Sometimes my paintings move towards abstraction, then return to something more figurative – it’s all in the process of trying to capture the essence of the object – whether flowers, animals or figures… I like to have objects or flowers that have belonged to someone special or which they have given to me. The table came from my dear friend and mentor, the artist Margaret Traherne who died in 2006.” Tina Balmer
The award for Emerging Artist went to the Leeds based photographer, Mandy Barker, for her photo montage Soup: Ruinous Remembrance. Since being awarded a Distinction from the MA Photography course at De Montfort University this year Mandy’s work has received world-wide recognition. She was awarded First Runner-Up in the Blurb Photography Book Now Student Category celebrated in New York, and over the summer she has exhibited at The Cork Street Open, London and has been short-listed for The Environmental Photographer of the Year 2011. Mandy Barker’s current project, SOUP, is a based on the description given to plastic debris suspended in the sea, with particular reference to the mass accumulation that exists in an area of The North Pacific Ocean known as the Garbage Patch. Open Up North has been developed by the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal and funded by The Foyle Foundation giving the opportunity to show 150 selected works of art by both non-professional and professional artists from across the North of England. The exhibition takes place around Kendal the Abbot Hall Coffee Shop, Artisan at Booths and the Brewery Arts Centre exhibition spaces: Intro Café, Warehouse Café and Sugar Store Gallery. The exhibition runs from 1 October – 10 November 2011 The Brewery Arts Centre developed the idea of Open Up North after receiving many enquiries from non-professional artists wanting the chance to have their work shown in a professional gallery context. The project has received funding from The Foyle Foundation and the Brewery Arts Centre hope to repeat the exhibition every two years.
“We had 384 entries for the competition and we were delighted with the variety and high standard of the artworks. It’s the first major step to affect a renaissance in the visual arts at the Brewery.” Jamie Barnes, Curator, Open Up North.
206 artists put a total of 384 artworks into Open Up North. Of the artists, 28 were from South Lakeland, 59 from the rest of the LA postcode, and 32 from the CA postcode. The remainder of the entrants were spread evenly throughout the rest of Northern England. The Judges
The independent judges were Jo Volley - Artist and Senior Lecturer at
Slade School of Art, Anthony Luvera - Artist / Writer and Lecturer at
University for the Creative Arts Farnham, and Helen Watson - Artistic Director
of the Abbot Hall Art Gallery. ENDS
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‘Open Up North’ Contact Curator: Jamie Barnes
[email protected]
