Liz West to be included in Drawing for Scuplure exhibition at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre

Drawing for Sculptre
20-21 Visual Arts Centre
Exhibition opens 10 June - 7 October 2017  

Featuring everything from rough sketches and experimental artworks to detailed technical drawings and three-dimensional digital models, Drawing for Sculpture includes work from over 20 sculptors who use drawing as part of their creative process. Encompassing a wide range of materials and techniques, the show includes well-known names from Peter Mountain to Liz West.   

For many artists the disciplines of sculpture and drawing as inextricably linked. Some sculptors use drawing as a way of experimenting with ideas without the constraints of having to produce completed 3D objects, while other’s produce drawings as objects in themselves, embodying the same engagement with shape and material that they explore in their sculpture. Drawing for Sculpture features maker’s drawings across a wide variety of approaches, materials and techniques, accompanied by a series of maquettes and small sculptural objects in the gallery showcase. More information HERE.  

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

Liz West to be included in major exhibition at Compton Verney

Seurat to Riley: The Art of Perception
Compton Verney
Exhibition opens 8 July - 1 October 2017  

Liz West's work is to be included in Compton Verney’s summer exhibition which will take you on a fascinating and stimulating journey that looks at the ways in which our visual perceptions have been explored by artists.   

From the Impressionists onwards, artists have been inspired by the colour theories of scientific thinkers such as Michel Eugène Chevreul. The most famous examples are the pointillist works of Georges Seurat and his associates, in which colours other than those actually painted on the canvas are generated in the eye of the beholder through the application of small dots of primary colour.   

During the 20th century, and culminating in the famous Op art movement of the 1960 onwards, the scientific and philosophical interest in perception extended into ways of communicating movement via static art forms. Early explorations of this can be seen in work by artists such as Helen Saunders, M.C. Escher and Josef Albers using tessellation, pattern, line, mathematics and colour, and sometimes optical trickery, to convey the sensation of movement.   

This fascination with the optical in art remains strong amongst artists and makers today and this wide-ranging show features of the works of artists working since the 1960s, such as Jim Lambie, Christiane Baumgartner, Daniel Buren, Liz West and Lothar Götz. Their work is shown alongside later works of those who became stars of the ‘Op art’ movement in the 1960s and who continued to develop and explore new possibilities:  Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Jesus Rafael Soto, Julio Le Parc, Peter Sedgley, Jeffrey Steele and Carlos Cruz-Diez. More information HERE.  

Compton Verney 
Warwickshire 
CV35 9HZ

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.