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Hello I'm Lisa
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art here
at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
I'm here in the Waterhall today
to talk about the new exhibition that's on
it's called For the Record
and it celebrates the Waterhall gallery reopening
as a space to show our collection of modern and contemporary art.
Also in the show are select loans
from the Arts Council Collection
and we are also showing two regional artists work
Barbara Walker and Faye Claridge.
So For the Record addresses themes
of tradition, preservation and questions
why and how we document the world around us.
Specifically looking at real and imagined spaces,
people, memories and phenomena.
A key starting point for this show
was our collection of work by Estella Canziani.
Estella Canziani was an artist, a folklorist, a collector
who donated a large collection
of her work and a variety of objects
that she made and collected whilst travelling
around southern France and northern Italy
at the beginning of the 20th Century.
In this show I have juxtaposed her work
alongside a contemporary artist called Alice Channer.
Here we're showing her Smooth Metal Body piece
that references a sculpture in the British Museum.
And the drapery on that sculpture
she has then translated digitally
and so we have that hanging alongside some works by Estella.
So the idea by juxtaposing these two artists together
is to create what I think will hopefully be
a unique dialogue between them
thinking about ideas of fashion illustration
documentation
and also contrasting the way that they approach
the documentation of costume
with Estella in the early 20th century around 1907
and looking at Alice Channer's approach
and her way of translating digital imagery.
So that really set the prescient for the rest of the show
which is really about bring artists together that
we think may have not been shown together
and actually by juxtaposing those works and
bringing them in the same kind of context
we may begin to see and address the ideas
and themes of their work in a new way.
So some other collaborations in the show
when you come in the exhibition you see a sculpture
by Kerry Stewart called This Girl Bends.
And I have juxtaposed that against a
couple of photographs by Clare Strand.
Who's work looks at the alleged connection
between adolescence and the paranormal.
Also in the show we have on loan a work by Mary Kelly
which is part of her Post Partum Document series.
This was a very iconic work in the 1970s
as part of the feminist art movement
And there is 18 slate and resin tiles
which again really emphasises the point of why
artists such as Mary Kelly
and the rest of the artists in the show
are documenting and choosing to preserve
a certain experience or certain moment at a particular time.
Also in the show we have work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Who was nominated for the Turner Prize last year.
So her work we have positioned against new work by Barbara Walker
who's a regional artist based in Birmingham.
And their exploration is really looking at
fictional scenarios and fictional spaces.
We are also showing some photographs by Dayanita Singh
it is her Dream Villa series
which is now part of our collection.
So we are showing some of those works
alongside Ana Maria Pacheco.
And that really looks at the ideas
of documenting very isolated spaces
forgotten places at night
which works very well with the dark and
mysterious work of Ana Maria Pacheco.
So overall there's artworks by 22 female artists in the show
and also the variety of mediums is very broad.
There's lots of sculpture which I think mixes very well
with our strong prints and drawings collection here
and our paintings collection.
So I hope that you will come and see
the exhibition here in the Waterhall
it is on until the end of June.
And also I hope you will enjoy it
and see some work from our collection
that you may not have seen before.
Thanks a lot.