Other Trees, Other Hockeys. (and one really big Hockney painting of loads of massive trees!)

I was back at Cartwright Hall today, for the training to be a volunteer tour guide. Hockey’s Bigger Trees Near Warter arrives next week and in conjunction with this, the gallery are running two short tours, Other Hockneys and Other Trees. And a bunch of volunteers, including myself, are going to be your lovely tour guides!

We all met this afternoon to meet each other and be taken on the tours by Claire, the Learning and Outreach Officer for Bradford Museums and Galleries. First we went upstairs to the Connect galleries, which house a really diverse and really interesting collection of artworks, all with some connection to Bradford and its people. There are five ‘stops’ on the Other Hockneys tour, taking in a selection of his work from throughout his career showing his different ways of working and his mastery of many different mediums. Downstairs, past the main gallery where Bigger Trees Near Warter will be in pride of place, is the temporary exhibition Other Trees, where the second tour takes place. This is a selection of works, (painted, carved, weaved and stitched) from the collections of Bradford Museums and Galleries, some of which haven’t been displayed for years. Unsurprisingly, all of the works in this gallery are of, or inspired by, trees. There are some really lovely things in there, and a little mystery in the shape of two carved columns. These columns were donated anonymously, and no-one knows who made them or where they came from. So come along and have a look – we want to know if any Bradfordians  recognise the columns and can tell us their story! We also want to hear from anyone who knows Hockney himself, or has an interesting tale to tell about the artist or his works, and we’ll weave these into our tours as the weeks go on. Hopefully, you can tell us some things, that then we can tell everybody else!

The Other Trees and Other Hockneys tours are running every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, at half past two and three o clock, from next weekend until the end of November. Bigger Trees Near Warter is in residence at Cartwright from 1^st October to 4^th March, and the Other Trees exhibition is on until 26^th February. Come along and see us – and hopefully I’ll have done all my homework and learned all about Hockey and trees by then!

http://www.bradfordmuseums.org/venues/cartwrighthall/index.php

Getting hammered at Cartwright Hall

I was at Cartwright Hall in Bradford today, for a meeting about being a tour guide for the giant Hockney work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which is soon to be installed in pride of place on the ground floor. But it’s not there yet, and while the gallery staff are busy preparing for the paintings arrival (it’s a bit of a diva apparently and demands its own micro climate!) the main exhibition space downstairs is screened off. But, if you go inside and turn right you’ll find an exhibition that is very different, and I think incredibly beautiful.

Marcus Levine’s ‘Hammered’ is a collection of his nail sculptures. This sounds a bit industrial and dull, but in fact they are lovely. The majority of the pieces are pictures, but instead of using a more traditional medium Levine creates his art by hammering nails into a plain white background, creating images of the human body, a rose, ballet shoes and a cat! Others are more abstract, and I was fascinated with how a pattern made using something as proverbially hard as nails could look so ethereal, as though it could be blown away as easily as a dandelion clock. These sculptures beg you to run your fingers across them, which is welcomed by the gallery and the artist. I almost expected the brow and lashes of ‘The Eye of the Artist’ to be soft to stroke,  but of course when you get up close the nails revert to being individual pieces of hard metal, cold to the touch.

The level of detail that Levine creates is stunning, in ‘Petra, Study 2’ the woman’s hair cascades down in distinct waves, and her spine and ribs are delicately highlighted by the nails themselves and the shadows they cast. My personal favourite in the exhibition was ‘Tamas, Study 3’, a gorgeous, strong, male nude depicted using 15,100 separate nails.  The contrast between the smooth curves of the human body and the rigid spikes of the nails used to create the picture is really striking – Levine seems to revel in this contrast, choosing to show soft, delicate subjects such as a rose, and a pair of ballet shoes.

Levine’s sculptures would be works of art if they were simply sketched in pencil or charcoal, but the added dimension and tactility that the use of nails gives them lifts them off the page, both literally and figuratively!

You can see Levine in action at www.youtube.com/user/levineArt , and keep up to date with what’s going on at Cartwright Hall at www.bradfordmuseums.org .