Artist: Liam Spencer (1964-)
Title: Salford Quays (Sunset)
Year: 2012
Medium: Oil painting
Dimensions: H: 39cm W: 113.4cm
Accession Number: US2014-3
Acquisition info: Commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection in 2012.
Artist: James Chadderton
Title: Media City (from the Manchester Apocalyse series)
Year: 2012
Medium: Giclee print
Dimensions: H: 85.8cm W: 105cm
Accession Number: US2012-97
Acquisition info: Commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection.
Artist: Yan Xing
Title: Letter to Mr Robert Peckham
Year: 2012
Medium: Digital print (limited edition of 20)
Dimensions: 26 x 40 cm
Accession Number: US2014-4
Acquisition info:
Yan Xing is best known for his performance, video, and installation works that are often underpinned by elaborate, eccentric and fictional back-stories. This Limited edition print represent a thank you letter from the artist to an Asia-based curator, Robin Peckham. Although Peckham is a real person and the statement is signed by the artist, it is unclear whether the circumstances described in the artwork are a true reflection of Yan Xing’s situation in 2012. That year, he had his first UK solo show at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Manchester, won the Chinese Contemporary Art Award for Best Young Artist Beijing; received a nomination for the Future Generation Art Prize from the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; and was a finalist in the Focus on Talents Project from Today Art Museum, Beijing.
Letter to Robert Peckham reads:
‘At this occasion, I would like to thank Mr. Robin Peckham, who helped me when I most needed encouragement and made me persevere more strongly. I think it was a particular stroke of good luck to have encountered him at a time in 2012 when I was suffering the greatest hardship. As I conclude, I should therefore like to convey my gratitude to him in this special way’.
Exhibitions include: PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary Art, St. George’s Hall, Liverpool (2018); Dangerous Afternoon, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2017); Archive 56: Yan Xing, Video Bureau, Guangzhou, China/Beijing, China (screening) (2016); Yan Xing, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, USA (2016); Nuit et brouillard, Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne, Switzerland (2016); Performance of a Massacre, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2016).
Artist’s website: https://www.yanxing.com/
Artist: Matthew Houlding
Title: New Olympia Building 5
Year: 2012
Medium: sculpture (perspex, cardboard, MDF)
Dimensions: h57.5 x w46.5
Accession Number: US2012-170
Acquisition info: Purchased in 2012
Artist: Han Feng
Title: Shoe for Bird
Year: 2012
Medium: Mixed media sculpture
Dimensions: 60 x 185cm
Accession Number: US2013-05
Acquisition info:
I want to make a bigger, prettier and more disturbed virtual world. My work is about dream-making, about the story of navigating and searching in a paradoxical world. Han Feng
Han Feng’s practice spans painting, sculpture, installation and mixed media. Through the Shoes for Birds series, Feng imagines how birds might respond if given choices of the human world. If birds wore shoes what type of shoes would they wear? On the one hand, Han Feng’s Shoe for Bird may be understood as a quirky and lighthearted investigation into this ‘what if…’ question. A white leather, lace-up boot is the answer given. But this surreal object should not be taken at face-value, and like much of his work in painting and installation addresses broader issues including the opposition between the organic or natural, and the man-made; and the nature of freedom and constraint. The artist explains:
These shoes and clothes for birds are a metaphor. They reflect the human world, I would like to raise the question that if we were all birds whether we would choose to fly or sacrifice our natural ability to fly, in order to put on a glamorous outfit.
Han Feng attended the Art Institute of Harbin Normal University, before graduating with an MA from Art Institute of Shanghai University. He won the Grand Jury Award in the 2008 Annual Creative New Artists Competition, M50 Art Gallery, and the First Prize in the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize (China) 2010. Britain’s Saatchi Gallery and Japan’s Aichi Triennial both exhibited major works of Han Feng in 2013.
Han Feng has had solo exhibitions at ShanghART, Beijing, China (2017); CFCCA, Manchester, UK, 2012; Aroundspace, Shanghai, 2011; Flying circles, MOCA, Shanghai, 2010; Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2009.
Shoe for Bird has been exhibited in PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary Art, St.George’s Hall Liverpool (2018) and What’s in Store?, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford (2017).
Artist: Sarah Hardacre (b. 1977)
Title: Forget Mermaids
Year: 2012
Medium: Screenprint
Dimensions: H: 73cm W: 73cm
Accession Number: US2013-10
Acquisition info:
Hardacre is an alumna of the University of Salford graduating with first class honours in Visual Arts in 2008.
The image in the background of Arms Open to Welcome the Sun is of a photograph of Brydon Close, Salford (located near the University of Salford).
Sarah Hardacre sourced the photographs from these screenprints and others for this series from the Local History Library based in Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
Artist: Sarah Hardacre (b. 1977)
Title: Arms Open to Welcome the Sun
Year: 2012
Medium: Screenprint
Dimensions: H: 73cm W: 73cm
Accession Number: US2013-11
Acquisition info:
Hardacre is an alumna of the University of Salford graduating with first class honours in Visual Arts in 2008.
The image in the background of Arms Open to Welcome the Sun is of a photograph of Brydon Close, Salford (located near the University of Salford).
Sarah Hardacre sourced the photographs from these screenprints and others for this series from the Local History Library based in Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
Keywords: Print, Pop, Women Artists