Accession Code: wu0771 Title: Albion Date completed: 1977 Medium: Painting Material: Acrylic Height (mm): 2440 Width (mm): 4270 Depth (mm): n/a Inscription: n/a Location Name: Westwood Teaching Centre Location Description: Location Floor:

Art has changed significantly since the advent of photography in the 1840's. Cameras, rather than artists, are used today to document the people and places that occupy our everyday lives. The role of the artist therefore has shifted to embrace questions and analyse our feelings and sensations. As an abstract painter Albert Irvin tries to express the ideas and emotions in his life. He does this by exploring the qualities of paint through the different marks that he makes and the colours he chooses. 'My paintings are not in any sense depictions of anything: I like to think that rather than being pictures of the world, they are pictures about it'. Albion was the first in a whole series of paintings. Each picture is named after a street and all the paintings are large rectangular formats. They are large surfaces to cover and are consequently physically demanding to paint. This painting is similar to a landscape in that the picture plane is divided into upper and lower parts and has a sense of horizon. The almost vertical bands of colour are soft and sultry and merge subtly together. This is contrasted by the near horizontal vivid band of orange red at the bottom of the picture. It interrupts loudly and energetically.

Albion is currently on loan to the exhibition The Expressive MarkLink opens in a new window at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds until the 2nd April 2022. The exhibition celebrates the work of British artists in the second half of the 20th Century. It includes the artists Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton and Gillian Ayres. Gillian Ayres is also represented in this collection, a painting called Skudia Link opens in a new windowand two Untitled Link opens in a new windowprints.