Trace
Date: Sep - Dec 2010
We trace our roots as we trace textures with our fingers. The senses and our relationships with places and artifacts of history and life today are explored in this new exhibition featuring the work of three artists: Barrie West, Sally Hall and Stephen McNulty.
Barrie West describes how this exciting collaboration has come about, “I think the three of us seek, in our own individual way, to make tangible the intangible. Within contrasting printmaking disciplines, we attempt to explore the essence of history whether it be contained within the memory of a personal past or locked within an object or artifact.”
Stephen McNulty adds, “Don’t you think that printmaking always evokes that sense of history? It is difficult to envisage making a print without some knowledge of the etchings of Durer, Rembrandt and Goya.
Sally Hall, “To me, the history of the object is very important too, for it is this echo of the past which stimulates the creative process. The link between the three of us, to me, is in the recognition of the historical artefact or memory and in our diverse approaches in exploring this in our practices.”
Barrie West
Barrie spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Torquay, during what have been described as the Golden Years, on the English Riviera. He moved to the North East and into a career in teaching and the guidance and counselling. His research during his Bachelor of Education degree course, led to a fascination with developmental psychology and how it had affected his own personality. This was to prove a major influence on his creative side. More and more he explored the notion that we are our histories and evolved a technique in his work which allowed him to gradually peel back layers to that which lay below. A psychological archaeology, exposing layers hitherto concealed, formed the central strand of his research.
Barrie West has exhibited widely in England and aboard, including venues in France, Belgium and Germany. His work can be seen in many private and public collections including; Marie Curie Cancer Care, Newcastle, the Alzheimer's Society, Sunderland, Palmers Hospital, and St Clares Hospice, Jarrow.
Stephen McNulty
Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1950 McNulty studied Fine Art at Newcastle Polytechnic and post-graduate studies in printmaking at the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited extensively in the U.K. and in Australia, Norway, Romania, Russia and the U.S.A. His work is in a number of public and private collections including; The Arts Council of Great Britain, British Rail, Imperial College, London, and Northern Arts. He is the current Programme Leader for the B.A.(Hons) Fine Art Programme in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland.
McNulty often uses grids to structure his image. Is this just a formal device, or is it metaphorical? Is the grid there to keep the artist at a particular distance from the spectator, or is it meant to encourage the visitor to peer through it, perhaps to find the key to unlock and open it? It is the conversation and the relationship that matters rather than the identification of the object.
Sally Hall
Born on the Wirral in 1978, Hall lived in Cheshire and then Newcastle upon Tyne where she began her productive teaching career in 2000. Hall considers herself to be an artist educator and sees her teaching practice and her art practice to be integrally linked.
Hall’s main concern and enquiry for this body of work is the recording and visual record of the past. She is interested in surfaces, form, fabrics, memories and artefacts that are collaboratively used to inform her practice. Her work traces the surfaces of selected objects to exploit their visible and hidden histories. These histories become the content and the narrative that are depicted.
