An Economy of Signs: Contemporary Indian Photographs

Exhibition organised and toured by The Photographers’ Gallery, London
Fri 1 Nov – Sat 30 Nov 1991

“This book and exhibition project was initiated as a collaboration with the Photographers’ Gallery, London. I wanted to demonstrate that if we commissioned Indian photographers to the same amount as we do Western ones, they would give us work to an international standard”. Sunil Gupta

This exhibition brings together the work of eight Indian photographers, all born after Independence, who have not only created a distinguished body of work of record, but have broken new ground in establishing photography in India. They include Sheba Chachhi, Ashim Ghosh, Karan Kapoor, Amita Prashar, Ram Rahman, Sanjeev Saith, Ketaki Sheth and Sooni Taraporevala.

The title, referring as it does to RK Narayan’s stories of the mythical town of Malgudi, suggests the myriad complexities and contradictions of the modern pluralistic state of India. The exhibition presents a mosaic or microcosm of Indian society today: Sadhus and Parsis, rural and urban, tradition and innovation.

India provides rich material for the photographer. The almost incredible social change in this century, the contrasts in cultures and races, the surreal visual juxtapositions, the rituals, all overlaying each other – all prime subjects. But the conflicts between and within India’s urban and rural societies – its English-speaking and non-English-speaking citizens, its caste system, its drive to create a national, secular identity and aspirations of its regions and culture – make it possible only to provide ‘signs’ towards understanding.”

Sponsored by CMC Limited and Kingfisher Strong Lager and presented with the aid of Visiting Arts.

A Different View: Works Selected from the Rugby Collection

Mon 30 Sep – Sat 30 Nov 1991

In the first of an occasional series, Dr Christine Battersby of the Department of Philosophy in the University and author of Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetic, has selected the works on display from this remarkable collection of twentieth century British paintings.

Mari Mahr; Isolated Incidents

Exhibition organised and toured by the Photographers Gallery, London
Mon 30 Sep – Sat 26 Oct 1991

The Chilean born British photographer started her career as a photo-journalist but has moved steadily away from documentary to develop a distinctive, personal and innovative approach to photography. This exhibition comes to the Mead Gallery after an extensive tour of Europe and the United States. Based on travels to China, Israel, the South of France and the South Seas, it will also include a series of her most recent work.

“Whereas most people bring back snapshots from their holidays aboard, I bring back ‘location shots’ which become background for the photographs I make on return … not just visual records of place, people and objects … my works are a fusion of the real and the imagined”, Mari Mahr.

Works were bought from this exhibition for the University of Warwick Art Collection

The Rugby Collection

Organised by the Mead Gallery
Mon 10 Jun – Sat 6 Jul 1991

The diversity of this collection never ceases to impress and to surprise. Acquaintance with old favourites is renewed with pleasure while for other works that may not have impressed before, familiarity develops understanding, tolerance and even affection. The exhibition also provides an interesting compare and contrast exercise as for the first time it is shown alongside the University’s own art collection.

The Pick of the Permanent Collection to Celebrate the 25th Anniversary

Organised by the Mead Gallery
Sat 4 May – Sat 6 Jul 1991

The University of Warwick started collecting from the very early days of its foundation. It is a tradition it has maintained and one of which it has every reason to be proud. The intention appears always to have been to collect contemporary work and the collection reflects very accurately, changes in taste and style over the past twenty five years.

The abstracts of Patrick Heron, Terry Frost and Tess Jaray, the Op and Pop Art of Bridget Riley, Peter Blake and RB Kitaj have been succeeded by works by Andy Goldsworthy, Keir Smith and Peter Randall-Page, artists whose inspiration stems from nature.

Like the Face of the Moon: The Art of Discovery

A Southbank Centre Touring Exhibition
Mon 29 Apr – Sat 1 Jun 1991

This exhibition is about discovery, objectivity, estrangement and heightened perception from 1770 to the present. The images presents objects and scenes that are new and strange to the artists or give an extraordinary sense of something familiar. Art is pressed into the service of science in early anatomical and botanical drawings and yet develops its own autonomy and references. Artists include Ansel Adams, Lucian Freud, John Everett Millais, John Ruskin, Edwin Smith, Stanley Spencer, George Stubbs, Edward Wadsworth.

Art in the Open: Six Romanian Artists

Organised and toured by Narrow Water Gallery, Warren Point
Sat 16 Feb – Sat 16 Mar 1991

Horia Bernea, Geta Bratescu, Sorin Dumitrescu, Vasile Gorduz, Ion Gheorghiu, Napoleon Tiron

This exhibition is the first opportunity these six artists have had to display their work openly since it has been proscribed under the Ceausescu Regime. Many of the paintings and sculptures have religious references and are expressive of love of country, of truth and of art.

This exhibition has been developed in collaboration with Richard De Marco Gallery, Edinburgh

 Keith Arnatt: Rubbish and Recollections

An Oriel Mostyn / Photographers Gallery Touring Exhibition
Mon 9 Jan – Sat 2 Feb 1991

A retrospective exhibition of the work of Keith Arnatt – a painter-sculptor turned photographer who has lived for twenty years in the Forest of Dean, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which includes Tintern Abbey and the Wye Valley. He questions the notion of beauty in the landscape, transforming banal scenes into beauty, grandeur and drama.

Delicious Solitude: Drawings by John Hubbard, Photographs by Paul Joyce

A Southbank Centre Touring Exhibition
Mon 7 Jan – Sat 9 Feb 1991

“Society is all but rude to this delicious solitude”, wrote the poet Andrew Marvel during the Civil War, a time of social upheaval and change. The idea that a garden provides solace and refreshment for the spirit was behind the work of Hubbard and Joyce, inspired by the Abbotsbury gardens in Dorset and the Tresco gardens in the Scilly Isles. The exhibition is a conversation between two distinctive visions using different means, charcoal and the camera. It also suggest the essential solitary nature of looking closely at natural things.

Richard Deacon

Curated and organised by Mead Gallery
Mon 7 Jan – Sat 9 Feb 1991

This special exhibition of the sculptor Richard Deacon’s work on paper has been brought together to mark the completion of a major commission by the University of Warwick for a new sculpture by Deacon, which will be permanently sited on campus. There will be a lighting-up ceremony on the 1st February.

The inventiveness of Richard Deacon’s drawings, like those of Henry Moore before him, provide such a quantity of the ideas for sculpture that very few could ever be carried out in three dimensions. Unlike Moore whose sculpture is concerned with volume, Deacon’s work uses line to create his shapes – a kind of drawing in air.