WINTER 2024 PROGRAMME

20 Jan-30 Mar 2024

The Game (Part II), 2015, Sculpture. Credit: Courtesy Grundy Art Gallery Collection, Blackpool Council

Overview

EXHIBITIONS

20 January to  30 March

Including over 250 artworks, these exhibitions, which include Grundy’s annual Open Exhibition, its annual Schools’ Exhibition, a collection spotlight display and an exhibition exploring Blackpool Borough’s former architect JC Robinson, will all take place between 20 January to 30 March.

Open 2024

Grundy Art Gallery’s Open Exhibition is a favourite feature in Blackpool’s creative calendar. Anyone aged 16 years and over based in Blackpool and the Fylde coast area can submit their work for display. There is no selection process and no fee to enter. Regularly showing upwards of 100 artworks in a range of artistic mediums from painting to photography and from sculpture to sound, the Grundy’s annual Open Exhibition always provides an interesting and diverse dynamic display.

Squad Goals schools’ exhibition and Collection Spotlight

Every year the Grundy invites local schoolchildren from across Blackpool and the Fylde coast to make new artworks for display in the gallery. This year, children from Hawes Side Academy and Woodlands School in Blackpool have worked with the Grundy’s learning and engagement officer to create their own interpretation of a football club shirt. Taking inspiration from football-themed artworks that they saw on their visit to the New Contemporaries exhibition at the Grundy in autumn 2023, children have used colour, symbols and patterns to express their individuality. From favourite people and pets to favourite foods and films, these energetic and joyful designs colourfully communicate things that matter to these young creatives.

Collection Spotlight: Joe Fletcher Orr, The Game (Part II), 2015.

To accompany Squad Goals, the Grundy is also showing the sculpture, The Game, (Part II), by Joe Fletcher Orr from the Grundy Art Gallery Collection. The artist made this work in 2015 for a group exhibition called Modern History. The artwork uses a shop bought football as a canvas, onto which the artist then invited all of his fellow exhibitors to place their signature. Joe Fletcher Orr is a regionally based artist with an international profile. He uses wit and humour to ask questions about what contemporary art is, and what it can be.

Collection Spotlight is an ongoing series of displays that highlight specific works from the Grundy’s collection or explore particular artforms and themes.

Sharing Space: Architect JC Robinson Through a Diverse Lens

JC Robinson was Blackpool Borough’s architect in the 1920s – 1940s. From schools to swimming baths, markets, memorial halls and more, JC Robinson is responsible for the design of some of the town’s most iconic buildings. Using painting, photography, sculpture, moving image, oral history and archival materials, this exhibition sees contemporary Blackpool based practitioners, returning to the site of these buildings to reveal and reinterpret their stories.

Sharing Space includes work by The New Langdale Photographers and artists from the pARTnership. The New Langdale is a Blackpool Council day service for learning disabled people. The pARTnership offers bespoke creative and career development opportunities for contemporary visual artists with a learning disability.

The project is led by Blackpool based photographer, Claire Walmsley Griffiths supported by photographers Elizabeth Gomm and Donna Hannigan and is funded by Arts Council England via their National Lottery project programme.