Next Unit1 Exhibition:

The Great Central Open 22 Prize Part II:

Steven Ingman & Mik Godley

HOME INSECURITIES

‘An Exhibition of Contemporary Landscape Paintings'

Preview: Friday 24th June 6-9pm

Opening times: 12pm - 6pm
Sat 25th June
Sunday 26th June
Friday 1st July
Sat 2nd July
Sunday 3rd July

The Yellow Light, Steven Ingman 2011

Steven Ingman: “Wolf Gang”

Steven Ingman’s paintings reflect on memories and self discovery influenced by retracing the steps of a former stomping ground. Close to where he grew up a mile down a beaten track hidden behind a wall of hedgerow is a deserted quarry. This forgotten place now overgrown and left to nature’s devices, is a mixture of fens, marshes and swamps. The densely compacted trees, abandoned buildings and machinery offer a post apocalyptic landscape yet ironically this place offered a gang of kids an escape from reality. Now through adult eyes, Ingman attempts to understand a place he failed to understand as an adolescent.

Recent exhibitions and projects include 2008 Derby Open - First Prize Winner, 2009 Arts Council England Award, Solo show Night Light 2010 Derby Museum and Art Gallery, British Art Show 7 Sideshow - Wunderkammen and Mik’s Front room - Nottingham, Leicester Open - Great Central Award and Attenborough shortlist, Opem 2011 The Collection Lincoln

Mik Godley “Der Riese - the bunker paintings”

Like Ingman, Godley highlights incongruities in ideas of landscape and home – in this case Heimat – though a home he has only visited virtually. These paintings based on low-resolution internet sourced jpegs depict surface installations from Albert Speers' project Der Riese (the Giant) on the mountains of Gory Sowie (Eulengebirge) in the Sudeten range overlooking his mothers birthplace in Lower Silesia.

Developed since 2003 "Considering Silesia" has been exhibited from San Francisco to Zagreb, featured in several publications, received awards and critical acclaim.
Recent exhibitions and projects include Edinburgh Art Festival, London Art Fair, Nettie Horn Gallery, London, Nottingham Contemporary, Angel Row Gallery and Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb.

The Great Central Open Prize is awarded annually to two regional artists selected from The City Gallery’s annual Open exhibition. This year both artists, Harman Dickinson and Steve Ingram, have been given solo shows too showcase their work.

'Unit1' is The Great Central's hire programme. If you would like to hire our gallery space for exhibitions, photography, filming or anything else please, get in touch: unit1@thegreatcentral.org We welcome all enquiries.

Previous exhibitions:

Boom

Matthew Everatt

21 March - 27 March 2011

Open 12-6pm

Preview Monday 21 March 6-9pm

Click here for more information.

Previous Great Central Exhibitions:

Hounds of Love

Rachel Cattle

20 November - 19 December 2010

Open Friday - Sunday 1-5pm

Preview Friday 19 November 6-9pm

The Great Central is pleased to present our first solo exhibition by Rachel Cattle.

Rachel Cattle's drawings in regulation 4B pencil capture scenes inspired by folklore, popular music, classic horror and romance. Shown here for the first time will be her latest series of drawings ‘The Trees’ based on the carvings of peoples names found in the bark of trees in her local park. These markers of territory and love speak of the pre-emptive and the invocation of creative forces.

Pinned on the wall of her studio, amongst the photos of tree trunks, are photocopies of song lyrics; Pulp’s ‘The Trees’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’, that starts: “It's in the trees! It's coming!" inspired by 1957 British horror movie Night Of The Demon. There is also a folk story called ‘The Girl and The Dead Man’ found in ‘The Gift’ by Lewis Hyde. In this tale, three sisters set out into the world armed only with their wits and bread baked by their mother. A small loaf and her blessing or a large loaf and her curse.

The show is informed by an interest in transformative processes and the ways in which the temporal is recorded and made permanent. The work documents and recreates trigger points perhaps in an attempt to recapture the moment of possibility.

Rachel Cattle is based in London and has exhibited throughout the UK as well as exhibitions in Berlin, Chicago and New York. Her latest publication, with regular collaborator Steve Richards, ‘Linger On Your Pale Blue Eyes’ has just been published by AND Publishing and she is currently an Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins College Of Art and Design.

THE LOGOS IS COMMON

Alex Pearl, Richard Peel, Rob Smith

7th November - 12th December 2009 (Fri-Sun 12noon-5pm)

Preview: 6:30-9:30 Friday 6th November

Rob Smith: Rollercoaster

Rob Smith creates artworks to document details often invisible or un-noticed, by classifying according to properties such as colour, proportion and scale. For ‘The Logos is Common’ he has created a new video capturing the space using a camera mounted on a rollercoaster. It is as fun as it sounds, although it is made through the arduous process of a stop frame animation. The rollercoaster remains in the space as a sculpture and a key as to how the film was made.

Richard Peel

Richard Peel is known locally for his ‘Proto Ballets’ and the plethora of comics he produces. It’s through his ‘proto ballets’ that the bazaar characters from the comics come to life mimed to a pre-recorded narrative, deliberately and comically naff, these stories are a satirical take on all our real lives even if we are not ‘Secret Cyborgz’ or ‘The beast Ramvenomax’. A brand new ‘Proto Ballet’ commissioned specifically for the opening of The Great Central will be performed at the Preview on 6th November and filmed for screening during the rest of the exhibition.

Alex Pearl

Alex Pearl visited The Great Central in July of this year to document the space before the gallery was developed. His ‘Automatic Films’ are filmed and acted by self-powered automata and camera carrying devices cobbled together from bits and pieces. Expect cameras on helium balloons, toy cars powered by elastic bands and motors attached to scrubbing brushes. These rarely perform as expected, breaking, falling, and surprising in turn. The three screen film of The Great Central is an ode to the past and to the transforming nature of the space.