Featured artist at Edinburgh Printmakers

I’m this month’s featured artist at the lovely shop which is part of Edinburgh Printmakers… on until July21st.  Pieces from my series of screenprints depicting learned animal performers are on the walls and my performance related mini-prints are also available.

Openings and closings and in-betweens

For the past few weeks I’ve been quite pre-occupied with preparing to set up the exhibition at Artsdepot, but now that it’s up and the private view has happened I’m slowly getting my life in order again and starting to process all of the other stuff that’s been happening and is happening soon. The opening turned out to be a lot of fun, and despite not knowing that many people in London it was really great to have the support of a few good friends.

Exhibtion at Artsdepot: Images © Sharon Whyte 2010

I was fortunate enough to be in London at the same time as the Roundhouse CircusFest was on, so I was able to make it along to a couple of the events that were being presented by Professor Vanessa Toulmin of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield. One was a talk on ‘peculiar entertainments’ featuring many of my favourite types of acts from the history of performance (plus some very rare film footage) and the other event I was able to attend was a symposium on the tradition of the ‘showwoman’ which Professor Toulmin had organised along with Marisa Carnesky (currently Performing Arts Fellow at the NFA). The day featured presentations on the personal experiences of showwomen including Sandra Wright, Anna Carter, Carol Gandey, Rose English, Petra Massey, Lucifire and Miss Behave, as well as a performance by Empress Stah which I sadly had to miss so I could go to my own private view. It was a really valuable and rewarding event and provided some interesting insights for my research.

The rest of my time down there, when I wasn’t with friends, was spent wandering around the V&A – amazingly I had never before managed to get as far as the Theatre & Performance section so spent a good portion of my visit there.

Images from the Theatre & Performance section of the Victoria & Albert Museum

So now I’m back home and back at work on the new screenprints. I’ve been making a piece featuring the great Adelaide Herrmann using one of the images that I’ve kindly been given access to by The Magic Circle in order to produce this series on female magicians. It’s one of the most complicated prints I’ve done to date, as it consists of ten layers (I usually only work with between 4 and 6) which are quite intricately intertwined, meaning that technically it’s more of a challenge than previous pieces. I’m loving it so far, and will complete the final layer this week. I’ll also begin work on the third piece in the series this week too – so time to start thinking about getting those proposals in for exhibiting next year.

Some bits of news to finish with…

My current exhibition at Artsdepot finishes on May 30th, after which I’ll be exhibiting A Sage of the Stage for (I think) the final time at Edinburgh Printmakers from July 1st – 20th. I’ll also be showing four pieces in the upcoming Out of the Blue Studio Artists exhibition at the Drill Hall from May 28th – June 10th.

I’ve also started an Edinburgh non-fiction writers group with my friend Gillian of Harlots, Harpies and Harridans which will have its inaugural meeting on May 19th at The Meadow Bar – you can find out all about it at Stranger than Fiction.

Exhibiting in London in May

The learned animals go on show again in May for my exhibition at ArtsDepot in London. The full series will be exhibited along a single wall in this busy theatre/arts space in North Finchley – it’s a great place, lots going on and some good entertainment on offer, so why not take in a play while you’re there! The opening is on Tuesday 4th May from 6pm – 8pm and I’ll be there, so come and say hello.

One of the prints, Extraordinary Story, made it into the magazine Artists & Illustrators this month too, in the Portfolio section (which translates to a full page showing the artwork with description).

Exhibition opening Saturday

This Saturday I have new exhibition opening in Glasgow, my first for the Mansfield Park Gallery who are now representing me on the west coast. Myself and two other female printmakers are featured, recent graduate Rebecca Scott uses linocut to document a year in the life of a fox through the changing seasons while Fiona Watson exhibits her Aviary Suite. I’m delighted to be featured along with these two other artists, where I’ll be showing prints from my Sage of the Stage, not a Beast in a Cage series depicting the spectacle of the Victorian entertainment of learned animal performers.

ONE, TWO, THREE …

AT THE MANSFIELD PARK GALLERY

6th – 20th March 2010

Image © Sharon Whyte 2010

“Three female printmakers, each with a very different vision and technique. Sharon Whyte presents us with the Victorian spectacle of ‘learned animal acts’, recent graduate Rebecca Scott uses linocut to document a foxes year through the changing seasons while Fiona Watson exhibits her ‘Aviary Suite’.”

As one exhibition is about to end…

The past few weeks have been so busy it’s actually difficult to remember what’s been happening. After the opening of the exhibition in Glasgow I had one day off (where I basically felt ill all day) and then went headlong into more deadlines and festival activities. The talk that I did at the West Port Book Festival went really well and thankfully drew in a large audience. I really enjoyed it, and it was great to have to put so much thought into what I’ve spent the past 2 and a half years working on and actually talk about it. I even managed to include a taster of what an actual learned pig act might have been like with the aid of a toy pig, some number cards and a very silly magic trick. Not sure the audience were entirely convinced of the sagacity of the stuffed pig but they seemed to like it nonetheless.

On the exhibitions front the show in Glasgow is now in its final week and will finish on the 5th September, after which it will all go up to Inverness for the touring show Now You See It with Highland Council until February 2010. And I’m pleased to announce that I now have a space in London to exhibit the series in May 2010 at artsdepot, which looks like a great venue and I’m really looking forward to that.

In the meantime, three pieces from the series will go on show in Newcastle at a group show on a vintage theme called Past in Present at The Art Works Galleries during September and October. My friends Annabel De Vetten and Chantal Powell are also going to be in this exhibition. The opening for that is this Thursday but unfortunately I won’t be able to make it down.

Next week I’ll be in London where I’ll be meeting up with Roxana Halls once again to see her studio, which I’m very excited about. I’ll also be going to see The Bay, a play that my friend Rachel Stevenson is in, which was running at Te Pooka’s Big Red Door during the festival and has now transferred to Theatre 503 in London and runs until 11 September.

Incidently, it’s a bit late now, but I really meant to write a blog post earlier in the festival and mention some friend’s exhibitions and events such as Carmen Moran’s mini exhibition Kunst Im Klo (Art in the Loo) at the Glasite Meeting House, Madeleine Shepherd’s exhibition and collaboration with Writers Bloc Alba Ad Astra at Transreal Fiction and Gav Inglis series of spoken word nights Underword at Fingers Piano Bar. Oh well, better late than never? Hmmm.

Exhibition and private view

My exhibition is now up and running at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow until 5th September (open daily 10am – late). The private view took place on Monday night and was a really great night – thanks to everyone who made it along. Loads of people came through from Edinburgh which was nice!

A catalogue is available for the exhibition, with a 15 page introduction explaining what the project is all about. It’s available from www.blurb.com as a lovely full colour high quality perfect-bound book at £12.95 or as an e-book (no cover with the e-book) for £5 from www.lulu.com – in both cases just type in Sharon Whyte to find it (or use the link on the left for the blurb one).

Here are some images from after setting up and from the private view. You can see all of the images on my flickr photostream.

All images © Sharon Whyte 2009

West Port Book Festival and other news

So happily I can now reveal a couple of things that I’ve been keeping under my hat recently, one is that A Sage of the Stage, not a Beast in a Cage (I’m suddenly starting to regret choosing such a long title for this series since I’ve now had to type it so many times!) will go on tour from September as part of an exhibition organised by the Touring Exhibitions Unit of Highland Council called Now You See It! which will start off on 19th September at the Swanson Gallery in Thurso, moving on to Inverness Museum and Art Gallery on 14th November and then finally onto the St. Fergus Gallery in Wick on 16th January 2010. I’m really delighted to have been asked to take part in this magic themed exhibition – I think it’s going to be fantastic! I’ll be putting up more information about it as and when I get it.

The other thing is that I’m going to be doing a talk (eek) at the West Port Book Festival in Edinburgh on 14th August, along with my good friend, magician, musician and book collector, Gordon Bruce. I’m thrilled to be appearing at all but to get to do this talk along with Gordon is really quite amazing for me. Gordon is a legend in the magic world! So no pressure then *gulp*. I’ll be talking about the learned animals series and what went into creating it, as well as telling a little bit about the subject matter and the books that I used and that inspired me to do it in the first place. Some of the pieces will also be on show throughout the three days of the festival at various venues as part of the Magic Trail. Also appearing as part of the trail will be fabulous magicians in the form of Eireann Leverett, Neil Stirton and Paul Besly.

The programme is out now and should be available at all shops in the Grassmarket and the West Port and probably anywhere in Edinburgh where flyers and leaflets abound. You can also view all of the events on the website.

West Port Book Festival programme – front cover

Cut-Click Exhibition

Tonight is the opening of the Cut-Click 1st anniversary group exhibition at the Abbey Walk Gallery. Sadly I can’t be there but they are posting up photos on Twitpic as the evening goes on. Here’s one that shows my print The Learned Cats from the series A Sage of the Stage, not  a Beast in a Cage displayed in the middle.

Image from Cut-Click exhibition at Abbey Walk Gallery © Caroline Twidle 2009

Exhausted

I’m feeling completely worn out this week. Last weekend was the first public outing for the new series of screenprints at The Magic Circle as part of the Collectors’ Day event – which was brilliant but also very tiring in terms of the amount of effort required to transport everything to London, set it all up and then get it all back to Edinburgh. It was great to be there though and to get some very very positive feedback on the project and meet lots of interesting people, as well as get to listen to some great talks on magic history.

Munito, Life and Talents; screenprint, image © Sharon Whyte 2009

Since I’ve been back I’ve been struggling to do anything useful at all. The sun is out and I hate being stuck indoors doing the kinds of things I really need to be doing such as continuing to look for venues to exhibit in, putting together a catalogue for the show in August, sending out more funding applications etc etc. I’m also desperate to get back into the print workshop and do some actual proper work for a change – this year has been far too much about the administrative side of being an artist for my liking so far and I can’t wait to get stuck into the next project.

Some more good news has been forthcoming recently, however, firstly that I’ve been chosen to take part in the Cut-Click exhibition at the Abbey Walk Gallery…

And that on the horizon there is the possibility of a touring exhibition of the Highlands – more news on that as I get it. It sounds very exciting though and would mean that the series would be permanently on show from August this year until February 2010 as it would follow on almost immediately from the show at the Tron Theatre.  There is also another little piece of exciting news for something happening August but again I don’t know if I’m officially allowed to talk about it yet – so much secrecy!

I think one of my main aims for the next week is to make it down to the Ingleby Gallery to see the Francesca Woodman exhibition before I miss it completely. Woodman is absolutely without a doubt one of my all time favourite photographers, her work was introduced to me by my lovely friend and talented author Nova Ren Suma, and I’ve been trying to get to this exhibition since it arrived in Edinburgh in April. I stupidly missed the talk at the Gallery of Modern Art about her work in May (part of the Artist’s Rooms series) so I absolutely cannot let anything get in the way again.

Forthcoming exhibition