Transformations commission
The race is on to win The Lowry’s Transformations commission
Five shortlisted mid-career artists including two from Manchester are chasing a £20,000 commission to create artwork at The Lowry for the latest Transformations exhibition.
The commission is to create site-specific work for the Promenade Gallery and it presents a rare opportunity for artists to experiment and test new approaches to their practice. Each artist has been given an initial £1,000 to develop their ideas.
A panel including Turner Prize-shortlisted artists Jane & Louise Wilson and Stephen Snoddy, the director of the New Art Gallery in Walsall, will judge the final five proposals on Fri 26 September. The winner will be announced on Wed 1 October and their exhibition will be shown from April 2009.
The artists are Lee Patterson from Prestwich who proposes to transform the gallery into a sound chamber articulated by sounds from The Lowry. Rusholme’s Sandra Decker has plans to install interactive light sculptures. Her work follows the temporary deterioration of her sight in a road accident in 1997. London-based Rajni Shah would like to work with visually impaired people to create narratives relating to what they can see from the gallery. Large-scale works on plinths 3-4 metres in height would be installed if Sarah Staton from Sheffield won the commission. London’s Tod Hanson would construct an enfilade – a view through a sequence of doorways extending the length of the gallery using a multi media installation.
Mark Doyle, The Lowry’s Curator (Special Exhibitions), explains:
“The judges will be looking at the artist’s level of experience, the strength of their proposal and the persuasiveness of their argument for a new approach to their practice at this particular stage in their career”.
The Transformation commissions have been funded over three years by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
The Lowry Centre Trust is a not-for-profit organisation and a registered Charity (no. 1053962). All income supports its world-class Theatre programme, the care and display of the LS Lowry collection and a range of exhibitions and our life-changing Community and Education work.
Posted on Tuesday, 16 September 2008 under Press Galleries Press