Catch This: Toby Ziegler

Toby Ziegler's sculptures explore the relationship between the computer-generated and the handmade, the exotic and the commonplace. Ziegler uses computer-aided design to render unique forms as geometric line drawings. He then works from the drawings to reinterpret the forms in three dimensions. The Arts Council Collection acquired Portrait of C.L. in 2006, just months after the work was made. This huge pineapple stands over two metres tall and is made entirely from tessellated plywood triangles stuck together with dark, oozing resin. Portrait of C.L. was presented alongside small-scale work from the artist's studio, on public display for the first time.

Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection

Grayson Perry's selection from the Arts Council Collection featured figurative painting, bronze sculpture and documentary photography from the post-war period until c.1980. As the artist explained, 'Unpopular Culture stems from a notion that, in Britain during the period represented by this show, stories about art did not feature daily in the broadsheets nor did contemporary artists crop up frequently in gossip columns. A time when modern art did not attract crowds and was seen as a more rarefied activity, practised and appreciated by bohemians and intellectuals. The exhibition also refers to a feeling that many artists then made art that could be characterised as subtle, sensitive, lyrical and quiet in contrast to today when much art can seem like shouty advertisements for concepts or personalities. As a group, for me, these works conjure a nostalgic picture of a post-war, pre-Thatcherite Britain, more reflective, more civic and more humane.'

Perry's subtle and insightful assessment of post-war British art is augmented with two new works that he has made in direct response to the Arts Council Collection and the themes raised by the exhibition.

Tour details

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea (10 May - 6 Jul 2008)

Harris Museum, Preston (19 Jul - 14 Sep 2008)

Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury (27 Sep - 8 Nov 2008)

DLI Museum & Durham Art Gallery, Durham (29 Nov 2008 - 4 Jan 2009)

Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton (16 Jan - 15 Mar 2009)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth (21 Mar - 10 May 2009)

Scarborough Art Gallery, Scarborough (16 May - 5 Jul 2009)

Longside Gallery, Wakefield (18 Jul - 25 Oct 2009)

Victoria Art Gallery, Bath (7 Nov 2009 - 3 Jan 2010)

Mead Gallery, Coventry (23 Jan - 13 Mar 2010)

Catch This: Tania Kovats

During a residency at the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford in 2006, Tania Kovats drew inspiration from the Uffington White Horse, a 2500 year-old drawing carved into an Oxfordshire hillside. She collected a range of objects on a theme of the white horse, and made precise drawings which employ the conventions of cataloguing archaeological 'Small Finds'. Her entire collection was housed in The Museum of the White Horse, a museum dedicated to the white horse and to landscape. The museum occupied the interior of a mobile horse-box and stopped off at various museums, hillsides and racecourses during 2007. Catch This offered a unique opportunity to see the newly-acquired Small Finds drawings alongside a range of objects from The Museum of the White Horse.

Catch This: Lucy Skaer

Lucy Skaer's diverse and incisive practice has earned her international recognition. Skaer represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and major exhibitions of her work took place in 2008, in London and Edinburgh, and at the Berlin Biennale. Catch This presented three recent works by the artist that demonstrated her interest in sculpture, drawing and film. The Great Wave (Expanded), 2007, a large scale, intensely wrought drawing based on Hokusai's famous woodblock print, was presented alongside two works: a short film titled Leonora (The Joker), 2006 and Leonora (The Tyrant), 2006, an antique table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The 'Leonora' works were inspired by a meeting with the surrealist artist and novelist, Leonora Carrington.

Hilary Lloyd has gained significant recognition for short films featuring urban young people engaged in mundane everyday activity. Summer, 2008 saw the presentation of her influential 'video sculpture', Colin #2, 1999. The work features two monitors back-to-back: one shows a young man taking his vest off with a balletic, concentrated slowness; the other documents the same process in reverse. Shot in real time using a static camera, the film captures the intense concentration of both the protagonist and the artist, while touching on issues of voyeurism, fetishism and the value of time.

Karla Black's sculptures are made from some materials more commonly found in a domestic environment than in an art gallery. Unused To, 2007 was acquired for the Arts Council Collection last year and Catch This marked the first UK presentation of this work. Made using a variety of materials including sugar paper, ribbon, chalk, paint, body cream, hair gel and polythene, this most delicate sculpture was specially installed at Longside Gallery by the artist. Black has described her works as 'physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relating', and her use of domestic and perishable substances has feminine and bodily connotations.

The Gathering charted the provenance of over thirty works selected from the past forty years of the Arts Council Collection. Tracing seminal moments in the Collection’s history, the exhibition revealed how and why particular works came to be acquired and brought back some of the voices of the artists and selectors involved in this complex process.

The Gathering was the first project to take place as a result of Select.ac – the Arts Council Collection’s biannual curatorial competition for postgraduate students, designed to nurture the next generation of curators in the UK. The winning proposal was from Robert Dingle, a student on the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, London.

The Gathering featured works by the following artists: David Batchelor, Victor Burgin, Adam Chodzko, Keith Coventry, Tony Cragg, Martin Creed, Matthew Darbyshire, Richard Deacon, Peter Doig, John Frankland, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Richard Long, Mark Neville, David Noonan, Peter Sedgley, Jane Simpson, Bettina von Zwehl, Mark Wallinger, Rebecca Warren, Catherine Yass.

Anne Hardy’s photographs depict fictional spaces which have both a magical and naturalistic quality. Constructed within the studio using a range of materials, from disintegrating found objects to natural forms, these spaces uncover the uneasy relationship between the natural and artificial. The resulting photographs also portray the artist’s interest in the interaction of individuals with the built environment:

‘I see each work as being equivalent to something like a short story. There is relationship in my mind between the literature and the work, in the way that writing can present a parallel and alternate yet compelling version of the world around you.’

This exhibition will present recently acquired photographs from the Arts Council Collection alongside recent work from the artist’s studio.

ACC New Acquisitions: Rod Dickinson & Tom McCarthy

In this extensive multimedia installation by Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy, Martial Bourdin’s 1894 failed attempt to blow up the Royal Observatory is re-imagined as a successful attack.

In Greenwich Degree Zero Dickinson and McCarthy rework newspaper reports from the time and manipulate film and photography to fit their version of events.This piece is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy, where re-enactments aid their investigations into mediation and repetition, control and reality.

Wakefield Express article

Henry Moore is an important figure for the Arts Council Collection. He was a key advisor to the acquisitions committee during the early 1950s, shaping the Collection by advocating the acquisition of a significant group of post-war British sculpture. His representation within the Collection is also very strong, with sculptures and works on paper spanning five decades.  

Seen together the works on display present a succint history of Moore's practice between 1927 and 1962; key creative departure points and themes can be explored in both two and three dimensions. Many of the works trace Moore's investigation of human and organic forms towards a point of abstraction.

Tour Details

Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (31 March - 3 November 2011)

Canterbury Royal Museum and Art Gallery (5 September - 28 October 2012)

Victoria Art Gallery, Bath (3 April - 23 June 2013)

The Hunt Museum, Limerick (24 August - 3 November 2013)

Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead (8 February - 13 April 2014)

Harewood House, Yorkshire (14 June - 2 November 2014)