Distance 2 Sofia Art Exhibition

John McClenaghen ,one of our researchers in Fine Art who was among 40 artists chosen to represent the Visual Arts in Wales at the National Eisteddfod this year also held a joint exhibition at the Akademia Gallery, National Academy of Art, Sofia, Bulgaria, 19 September - 4 October 2011. The exhibition comprised assemblages’ prints, and installation by two UK artists John McClenaghen, Programme Leader for Fine Art at Glyndwr University and Alec Shepley, Head of School of Art and Design at the University of Lincoln. The exhibition forms a part of a much broader research project in which the two artists are investigating the presentation of the fragmented work and the ‘unfinished’ project. Aspects of dilapidation, ruin and entropy are explored and much of the work in this exhibition focuses on the notion of the ‘ruin in reverse’ - coming into being as opposed to being left to decay. The work resulting from the research project demonstrates a seemingly endless preoccupation with cutting, placing, re-cutting and re-placing, joining and un-joining, telescoping between making and un-making, and the eventual ‘dis-assembly’ or collapse of the outcome. The exhibition and the broader research project will be accompanied by a publication with foreword by artist and curator John Ploughman to be produced in collaboration with the National Academy of Art, Sofia. A joint lecture by both artists was held in the gallery to discuss the aspects of the work in more detail and provide a forum to debate the media, materials, processes and ideas involved and the contextual underpinning. As a result of this visit CIMPH at Glyndwr have been invited to take part in the DA international digital arts festival next year. We have also agreed to collaborate with the National Academy of Art, Sofia on Distance 3 which will be a research and exhibition project, pairing Bulgarian and UK based artists who share similar concerns initiating long Distance creative dialogue and resulting in an Oriel Wrecsam touring exhibition. These are some of the images from the exhibition and lecture in the Akademia Gallery on the 19th of September 2011.