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22 Mar 2011

Curator Talk and Portfolio Critique at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery


Saturday, 9 April 2011, 2-4pm

Talk and Portfolio Critique by Curators James Moore and Dawn Woolley


James Moore and Dawn Woolley will be giving an introductory talk about the projects they have worked on, focusing on the current Virtually Real show, addressing practical issues like the process of writing proposals, arranging funding, and project management in artist-led activities.

James Moore and Dawn Woolley are practising artists who have worked together as curators since 2003, and recently guest curated 'Virtually Real' for The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.

Their exhibition projects originate from concerns and ideas within their individual art practices, which they explore through small group exhibitions. Past projects have included Show Home, an exhibition exploring domesticity and the uncanny set in a vacant apartment, and Making Love To My Ego, a self-portrait exhibition.

The talk is free, no booking is necessary.
The talk will be followed by a limited number of one-to-one portfolio review sessions for students and emerging artists.


To reserve a portfolio review session please book your place by e-mailing Zsuzsa (libzmp@leeds.ac.uk) or by phone (0113) 34 32777.

You can also book online by clicking here.





Photo: Sea Wall, by James Moore, 2010, oil on canvas © The Artist

2 Mar 2011

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
Lewis Carroll

The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery turned into a magical Hall of Mirrors yesterday when the long-awaited 'Virtually Real' exhibition opened its doors to the public. Artists and curators Dawn Woolley and James Moore, as well as Grant Miller, one of the exhibiting artists straight from Kansas (no, Toto could not make it) were talking about their work to a captive audience among strange tales of the illusory and the deceptive, where human eyes flutter uneasy: is it real or am I being tricked here?

Some of the art on display is unrelenting like the Moebius strip, for example, Miller's precision of architectural elements making up the infinite impossibility of Escher, or James Moore's realistic paintings capturing the fictitious spaces of video games and CGI. Bruce Ingram's bonsai trees seem to blossom incongruence right in front of our eyes.

Some, on the other hand, wink and nudge: spectators are in on the joke when they spot the minute imperfections that give away the optical illusion: the edges of the cardboard cut outs in Dawn Woolley's work or the dollhouse details in Petros Chrisostomou's imagined spaces. Julia Willms plays on our modern discomfort about blurring the boundaries between inside and outside (flapping pigeons. Ew.), but remains seated in domestic familiarity.

But the playful and the confusing side by side, address serious questions of the traditional aesthetics of representing space in art, in a world of instant facsimile spaces created with the ease of digital photography and CGI. The curators created a coherent space with a consistent subject matter, where the seamless juxtaposition of artworks invites the audience to think and question received modes of interpreting landscapes and interiors.

The exhibition's comment board with its red and blue comment cards ('like' and 'dislike', respectively) adds an interactive angle to the show: the stark utility of the hooks to hang the cards on demands honesty and openness in the midst of uncertainty and illusion.

Following the tremendous success of Aubrey Beardsley's decorative world of the grotesque, the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery continues to enchant and whizz the audience to a land of the impossible. Come and step through the looking glass with us once again: this little gallery is truly big on the inside.
Have a look at the catalogue of 'Virtually Real':