Opening Event at the Old Fire Station, Warwick Street, Carlisle, Cumbria CA3 8QW Friday 4th December at 7pm Exhibition runs from Saturday 5th - Sunday 13th December 2015 Open daily from 10am - 5pm Artists Exhibiting: Geoff Barnfather David Chapple Di Clay Annette Crompton posthumously Cumbria Film Collective Caroline Dalton Nick Dodds Jane Dudman Anne Duffy Karen Faulds (posthumously) Roger Galloway-Smith Rosie Galloway-Smith Ben Gates Mark Gibbs Rachel Gibson Lee Holden Jan Kelsey Jon Lambert Exhibition Sponsors:
Marilyn Laugesen Tom Leathley Pui Lee Roger Lee Gillian Naylor Olga Kaliszer TBC Pecker Shorts Kevin Phillips Bill Reed Renuka Saxena Marion Smith Snรฆbjรถrnsdรณttir/ Wilson Sue Stockwell Paul Taylor Ros White Malcolm Wilson Janis Young Music by No Soap No Radio
FOUnDING WOrdS
“Who can join the studio?” I asked Roger. “Anyone who will pay the rent” was his blunt reply. Despite this pragmatic starting point it quickly became apparent that West Walls had an additional element that many other studios lacked – it was a group with its own dynamic, and the people who worked there shaped each other’s work, and lives. When Roger announced he was leaving West Walls to expand into Shaddon Mill, Sue Stockwell and I volunteered (in the “any volunteers step forward” and everyone else takes a step back manner) to take on the day-to-day running of the place, it seemed logical that this tight-knit community of people should explore ways to collaborate on projects. One occasion where this already happened was on the annual open days, which we were obliged to hold to fulfil our grant requirements. Allowing people into the freezing garret of the original West Walls Studio in pre- C-Art days had an interesting effect – for a start anyone with the nerve to enter the shadowy door and climb the rickety iron stairs seemed to have their romantic preconceptions of artists’ studios confirmed through a haze of woodsmoke, turpentine and oil paint, whilst the artists, whose relationship to any notion of ‘the public’ was probably equally hazy, found themselves talking to people about their dreams and ambitions for the artefacts they were creating and reassessing their practice in a wider context, not of New York or Berlin or Saatchi, as they may initially have hoped,
but of the people of Carlisle. Ben Gates on the ground floor had already broken ground in this respect, getting people to dance to free jazz on ‘Flam’ nights at the Brickyard. Under the influence of his mix of ‘sociable realism’, high art and light entertainment we started considering how we could make a visit to the studio as rewarding as possible, opening up the first floor delivery doors into a temporary street theatre, decorating the outside of the building with giant flying ducks, curtains, wallpaper and windmills, auctioning off paintings on the street to passers-by and holding an artists’ world cup competition complete with penalty shoot-out in Orchard Dyke car park. When a leaflet from the Campaign for Drawing fell through the letter-box publicising the Big Draw it seemed to chime with the direction that we as a group were heading, and between 2003 and 2008 on a non-existent budget West Walls won five Drawing Inspiration Awards, which led to us recreating events that had taken place initially in Carlisle City Centre in venues like Trafalgar Square, The National Gallery, The British Museum, and Somerset House in London. The studios hosted artists from across Europe who came to contribute to Di Clay and Jane Dudman’s live art events. Studio bands rehearsed on different nights of the week. And day after day, artists dressed like Shackleton braved the fierce cold and damp to pursue the adventure of mapping their imaginations and exploring the world through making. So - who can join the studio? West Walls established that a studio is more than just a building, that in some ways it can be a negotiation of what an artist is, what they are for and how they relate to the community they live in- a negotiation which remains ongoing.
JAn KeLSeY
Roger (Lee) started scouting for potential studio space when we were in our second year of the First Fine Art Degree at Cumbria College of the Arts in 1993/4 and found us this burnt-out building on West Walls. It had no floors and smelt of soot. Undaunted, this group of students and tutors made it into the first artists’ studio in Carlisle. ‘Firsts’ are good. No one has done it before so it gives you license to make mistakes, like the disastrous heating system that was installed. West Walls was always inexplicably colder on the inside than the outside so that we could exploit the ‘suffering for our Art’ principle favored historically by ‘serious’ artists. Painting in coats, hats, scarves, doc martins and hot water bottles was de rigueur. However, we could also take all the credit when it went well, like successful community projects and studio open days and were gratified when the public were genuinely interested in our work. We were a community of artists who believed in the romantic notion that Art could help make the world a better place. We were broke, we were cold but we also laughed, argued, had great parties, made work, learned and developed our crafts and our visual language and some of us discovered what we wanted to do next. Roger sailed off on his boat to explore the world and currently lives in America with his two sea cats. I learned that I profoundly believed in the importance of being able to think and act creatively and wanted to encourage this skill in others and became a teacher.
BrIGhT fUtUReS FuNd
The University of Cumbria’s Bright Futures Fund is wholly funded from philanthropic gifts and is used to support projects that will enhance the professional development and employment prospects of our students and graduates. West Walls Studios have provided numerous opportunities for developing and showcasing creative talent from our academic course programmes over the last two decades and we are therefore delighted to be able to provide financial support towards this Retrospective exhibition.
“...Their work demonstrates the skill and versatility of these contemporary artists and shows what lies at the heart of West Walls; people who are committed to developing professionalism and want to make things happen here in our city - encouraging community participation and enjoyment.�