Liz West presents Our Colour Reflection at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre

Liz West 
Our Colour Reflection
14 May - 25 June 2016

20-21 Visual Arts Centre is delighted to present Our Colour Reflection, an ambitious new work by artist Liz West. The installation will transform the interior of the former St John’s Church building housing the gallery by using over 700 mirrors to reflect the gallery lighting into the roofspace, projecting colour up into the historic interior. Viewers will see themselves in the mirrored surfaces as they explore the space - creating a dialogue between viewer, artwork and architecture. 

Liz West creates installations that use light and colour to transform spaces, and people’s experience of them. She aims to provoke a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer, tapping into our deeply entrenched relationship with colour, and exploring how it can move viewers, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.

Based in Manchester, Liz West studied at The Glasgow School of Art. Previous large-scale works have included Your Colour Perception, which had visitors returning to Manchester’s Federation House time and time again to witness the space saturated in colour, and her acclaimed installation An Additive Mix at the National Media Museum. Recent months have seen her shortlisted for the prestigious Aesthetica Art Prize, receiving a Bursary Award from the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and complete a major public-realm commission in the Spinningfields district of Manchester.

Our Colour Reflection has been made possible by funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

Friday 13 May 2016 
Launch Event 7pm to 10pm  
Coinciding with the national Museums at Night event, Liz West and 20-21 Visual Arts Centre invite you to the launch of Our Colour Reflection. The event includes activities suitable for all ages, and include interventions by video and installation artist Gillian Hobson from 8.30pm. 

Saturday 25 May 2016 
Drop-in Family Workshop with Liz West 10am to 4pm
 Join artist Liz West to create a new temporary artwork in the gallery education room. Suitable for all ages. Children remain the responsibility parents/ carers at all times. 10am to 4pm, free, drop-in.

20-21 Visual Arts Centre 
Church Square
Scunthorpe
North Lincolnshire
DN15 6TB 

Open Tuesday to Saturday
10am to 4pm
Free Entry 
Tel: 01724 297070 

About 20-21 Visual Arts Centre 20-21
 Visual Arts Centre is a North Lincolnshire Council cultural services venue and is supported by funding from Arts Council England as part of their National Portfolio of venue. Set in the neo-gothic former St John’s Church building just outside Scunthorpe town centre, the building hosts a busy café and shop and hosts a varied programme of contemporary art, design and craft exhibitions. Since opening in 2001 the gallery has received over 500,000 visitors. The building has recently undergone a £600,000 refurbishment.

Day 7 - Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Residency

On the last day on my residency at the Merz Barn in Cumbia it was time to reflect on my thoughts over the duration of the week. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had stapled a huge sheet of plastic to one of the gallery walls and had been writing the contents of my head on it all week with a permanent marker pen. It had grown quite a lot, as I had added to it whenever creatively conducive thoughts popped into my brain.

At the beginning I really struggled to write anything, but by reading, thinking and talking I managed to squeeze out lots of interesting ideas, starting points, questions and suggestions.

Before I set off to the Merz Barn, I had been questioning what, how, when, where.... I had been trying to think about my practice conceptually, formally and aesthetically and question myself on all accounts. I was trying to get to the bottom of why I was doing what I was doing, without losing any integrity and my personal interests: - I wanted to come away from the residency with some starting points for the future, not end points to a final work or to draw a conclusion. I wanted this residency to help challenge my ideas of thinking and allow me time to question my main concerns.

 

On the last day of my residency, Mark Devereux of Mark Devereux Projects was due to visit both fellow resident artist and buddy Alana Tyson and I for a critical feedback session. Alana laid out her works in the gallery space and I was ready to show Mark some of the photographic projects I had done over the course of the week - it was the sheet of plastic with my scribbles on that he was more interested in talking about.

Firstly, he asked me to talk through everything I had written down and add to the diagram if I needed. By saying my internalized thoughts out loud, I heard them for the first time (sounds obvious, I know). I further emptied my head during our conversation - this was a relief as it had been swirling for weeks regarding the questioning of my practice. Mark added to the wall diagram, picking out pivotal things I was saying and adding his ideas too. By the end of the session my mind was spinning again but this time in a good way instead of a confused way.

I had begun to realise what my focus was; I had even managed to pin it down to just one word: Luminous! I had thought about which of my previous works were the strongest and why, I had clearer ideas for the future and for possible lines of inquiry, I also had room to add to the sheet; which is exactly what I am going to do when I get back into my studio at Rogue.

It was through externalising my thoughts that I had come to realise that it wasn't the objects within my work that was of deep interest; they have been there as a device to stabilize the lighting elements and to create bridges for the colours to balance from. It is the purity of colour and how it effects our senses within an immersive environment that is of real interest. How do different colours affect us mentally, psychically and spiritually? How do our eyes respond to light? It is artificial light that interests me the most; where the colour choice is the saturate hues available in chemical manufacture, that I will investigate with rigor, intregue and delight.

The pieces of work I have made up until this point have lead to more sculptural end-points, where the lamps act as divisions or additions within the space; never-the-less illuminating it. It has been a frustration of mine that when people visit my works/exhibitions they sometimes fail to notice the glorious reflections and reverberations of colour around the room. Colour theory at work. It is my job to direct people to look at what I want them too, as well as their surrounds.

I want to take away any structures and investigate the impact of coloured light on us as a pure form. Light fills spaces, like a painting or sculpture or video or a performance. Only in my future inquiries it is the viewer becoming the performer and the walls becoming a huge light painting.

 

Then in was Alana's turn to have a critique. She learned lots of things too, you can read her blog from our time at Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn here: alanatyson.tumblr.com