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.

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).

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

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.