Leo Fitzmaurice’s new commission fuses design, architecture and art
Transformations 3: Panoramia by Leo Fitzmaurice
The Lowry, Salford Quays
Sat 1 May – Sun 5 Sept 2010
Private view: Thu 13 May
The Lowry's Promenade Gallery will become a work of art as Leo Fitzmaurice moves in to combine the building’s architecture with his unique interpretation of commercial packaging.
For his Transformations 3 commission, Fitzmaurice will create artwork based on the design of 35mm photographic film boxes. The artist will translate the designs of these familiar packages on a spectacular scale, while highlighting and adding to the Promenade Gallery’s architecture. Everyday material that we take for granted will be transformed to produce a sensational effect. Vibrant colours will engulf the space with a striking fusion of design and architecture.
Fitzmaurice goes further commenting “The outcome is somewhere between graphics, sculpture, architecture, theatre design, and landscape painting.”
Leo Fitzmaurice has exhibited in China, New York, Zurich and Norway as well as extensively in the UK. Fitzmaurice has, for the last few years, been based in Liverpool where he has worked on projects such as Further Up In the Air. Most recently he has worked with Locus Plus on a book project ‘Post Match’ for the Durham Literary Festival 2009. A project where Fitzmaurice takes cigarette packets, sourced from around the world, and turns them into tiny ‘replica’ shirts. A text in the book by Mark Wallinger comments on the ‘concision’ of this work in which he transforms the mundane into the remarkable. It is planned that Fitzmaurice’s Transformation of the Lowry’s Promenade Gallery will be just as distinctive.
The Transformations commission aims to create site-specific work for The Lowry’s Promenade Gallery and it presents a rare opportunity for artists to experiment and test new approaches to their practice. The Transformation commissions have been funded over three years by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Overlooking the new MediaCityUK and the future northern HQ of the BBC, the sheer height of the Promenade Gallery walls lend themselves to being transformed. The other quality of the space is its light and the way it links the inside and the outside of the building, allowing what’s on the inside to merge with the docks, the water and the city beyond. The light and the mood of the space changes with the weather throughout the day.
Posted on Monday, 15 February 2010 under Press Galleries Press