Liz West Introduces her new Studio Manager: Emma Colledge

I am so proud to introduce to you to my new studio manager Emma Colledge. She is an huge asset to my studio team. I thought you would like to get to know her a little so I asked her to answer some questions about what makes her tick... Enjoy!

DOB: 27.06.1992
From: Preston, Lancashire  

1.  Do you have a favourite colour? Why? 
Purple. Fun fact: purple dye was discovered when trying to invent a cure for Malaria.  

2. Which is your favourite work of Liz's? Why? 
Through No.3. I experienced it first hand on my daily commute to work and it never failed to brighten my day.     

3. Where do you find inspiration? 
In people, rather than places. I read a lot of autobiographies by funny people or have a rant with friends.      

4. What did you train in? 
I studied Drama at University of Manchester, focusing on production and playwriting.   

5. What did you do before? 
I’ve worked as a producer for a site-specific theatre company and as a project manager for visual arts events. 

6. What do you do in your spare time? 
I started climbing (bouldering) last year, so spend a lot of my spare time trying not to fall off walls.  

7. Do you have a favourite quote? 
“Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have.” (Amy Poehler)  

8. What song is your current obsession or what music are you listening to? 
I listened to Wanderer Wandering by Slow Club roughly 15 times yesterday. The rest of the time I’m listening to a back catalogue of Woman’s Hour and Desert Island Discs podcasts, because I’m slowly turning into my mother.  

9. In your opinion, what is the most important issue facing the arts today? 
Across the sector, it’s funding and how broader cuts are undermining the value contributed by the arts. But ensuring your practice is commercially viable can be both a necessary evil and a source of creative opportunities.    

10. What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? 
Often putting adventure before stability – but you only live once!  

11. Have you ever experienced creative block? If so, how did you overcome it? 
Yes, all the time. For me, it’s accepting defeat, taking a step away from it and trusting that you’ll get it when you come back to it refreshed. Even if that has to be 6am the following morning.  

12. Who are your favourite artists or practitioners? 
Two physical theatre companies, Rash Dash and Theatre Ad Infinitum.

Liz West presents new permanent commssion Sevenfold at The Met Theatre in Bury

 Liz West | Sevenfold
The Met, Bury

Commission opens 9 December 2016  

Liz West’s Sevenfold revealed as centrepiece of The Met

When The Met opens its doors in December 2016, following a £4.6 million refurbishment, at the centre of the historical building will be a newly commissioned art installation by internationally renowned artist, Liz West. The installation, Sevenfold, will mark the completion of this project to transform one of the North’s leading cultural live music, theatre and arts venues located in the heart of Bury.
  
The site-responsive piece will inject vibrant colours and a sense of illusion into the magnificent entrance and staircase of the Victorian neo-classical building.  Light is very important to Liz’s work, and this is a space that is flooded with natural light, which Sevenfold will draw upon to highlight the architecture and magnificence of The Met’s 1840s architecture.   

Sevenfold takes its reference from Newton’s rainbow sequence of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Seven (six prisms in the main installation plus one mini above the reception desk) individual and vast prisms have been created that use mirrors to further radiate colour and reflect elements of the beautifully restored architecture. As visitors ascend the staircase they find themselves at eye level with the artwork, giving the chance to marvel Sevenfold at its luminous best.  

David Agnew, artistic director of The Met, says, “We wanted to celebrate the light and sense of rejuvenation that the restoration of this stunning building has opened up and embraced.  The vision of this project is to use the past to illuminate the future, which Liz’s piece perfectly embodies.  As people enter the building they’ll be able to enjoy the visual spectacle of Sevenfold as it radiates against the vastness and intricacy of the Victorian plasterwork.”   

Liz West says, “I am delighted to be given this opportunity to make my first permanent installation, it is an honour to be asked to make a new work in such an magnificent and multi-purpose setting. The light-based, theatrical and immersive nature of my work ties in perfectly with The Met and the buildings use. I hope that visitors enjoy my work for many years to come and are able to see new elements within the installation every time they look at the piece.”   

The refurbishment project has allowed a re-imagination of The Met, which occupies the space of Derby Hall.  Built by the 13th Earl of Derby, Derby Hall shares its architect, Sydney Smirke, with the circular reading room at the British Museum.  It’s always been one of Bury’s grandest civic buildings having begun life as a Public Rooms, it’s also been used as the Town Hall, council building and since 1979, as Bury Metropolitan Arts Association.    

To see more about the plans for the building visit www.themet.biz/better To see more about Liz West’s work visit www.liz-west.com

 

Photographs of Through No.3 in Spinningfields

Image credit: MDP Photography

Exhibitions & Events in March

Your Colour Perception  

Your Colour Perception was installed in Castlefield Gallery’s 5000 square feet New Art Spaces Federation House fourth floor gallery in Manchester for a 2-day only exhibition on 31st January and 1st February. The work was developed in direct response to the space prior. West reacted to the architectural space using colour and light to create vast immersive installation art. 

West transformed Federation House into a sensory, visceral experience by overloading it with artificial chromatic light in which to test the psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual responses visitors experience during their encounter. This work utilises the darkness outside to raise the strength of the illumination and colouration in the work. Using this enormous space to install a light work in the darkest Winter months allowed the colour to bleed with more saturation than if displayed any other time of the year. 

Amongst the appreciation for Your Colour Perception were articles on BBC News: The Big Picture, Frame Magazine, urdesign mag, Professional Lighting Design Magazine, Illumni, Creative Boom, The Creator's Project, Hi Home Magazine (Russia), Trendland and Design Boom to name a few. As a result Liz will be collaborating with the International Association of Lighting Designers and BDP in April for an artists talk in Manchester. Details to follow.    

Unnatural Pleasures, Radiant Space, Plymouth 
27 February - 17 April 

The latest in the R[eff]uge series, supported by Arts Council England and Plymouth University, UNNATURAL PLEASURES focuses on synthesised experiences and the discomfort which is often the unfortunate by-product of attempts to comfort ourselves through man-made items. Liz West has made new site-specific work Complementary Afterimage which uses multiple fluorescent sticklights to create intense colour blocks flooding the entire space with purple light. Featuring work by Liz West, Alana Tyson, David Sargeant, Johanna Schmeer and Yvette Hawkins.   

Subjective Mixtures #1, Bloc Projects Billboard Commission, Sheffield 
2 - 30 March  

Liz West’s new work Subjective Mixtures #1 was created in situ for the Bloc Billboard on Jessop Street, Sheffield. West explores drawing as something not confined to two dimensions. During the creation of her work, whether making arrangements of objects and lights or drawing on paper, she uses elements of composition and arrangement to experiment with colour and space, often creating work is that is harmonious with its surroundings and examines our own deeply entrenched relationships to colour. 

West uses light as a material that radiates outside of its boundaries and containers, highlighting its significance within our understanding of colour. Her interventions and installations forge new spaces and environments, in which colour floods a physical site through a rich layering of light or disrupts the flatness of white paper.    

Through - Liz West, &Model, Leeds 
 11 - 29 March 

Within physical architectural spaces, Liz West uses light as a material that radiates outside of its boundaries and containers. She playfully refracts light through using translucent, transparent or reflective materials, directing the flow of artificial light. These ephemeral interventions forge new spaces and environments, by flooding a physical site with a rich mixture of light. This project forms part of a recent series of spatial light works based on the artist’s research into colour theory and light fields. The saturated light in this work casts sumptuously vivid colour reflections out of its containing space, through the windows, and reflects onto the road below. In the evening the darkness outside raises the strength of the illumination and the colour intensity in the work. 

This work will be viewable from outside the gallery only.     

No Grey Areas, Ha Ha Gallery, Southampton
28 February - 14 March

A group exhibition in black and white featuring new monochrome work by Liz West. No sweet fades or indefinite transitions of colour. A sophisticated stripping down with the saturation off and the contrast from one to the other is complimentary and resolute. 


Fingers Crossed Pt.2, The Engine Room, Manchester
13 March

The second in a three part series of one-night-only group exhibitions featuring new work by Liz West. Each exhibition explores different approaches to luck, chance, accidents, fate, coincidence and superstition as a subject or a part of the creative process.