9x6 Contemporary Art - Saddleworth Museum & Art Gallery Feb 3rd - Mar 18th 2007
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This is a celebration of the work of Oldham Sixth Form College students. It is the ninth exhibition we have been able to hold at the Saddleworth Museum; there are a large number of young artists whose first opportunity to exhibit their work was here, by the canal. Once again, we have tried to select work that we hope is interesting. It is, we feel, a fair sample of what has gone on in the College recently. It is important to remember that this is the work of sixteen-, seventeen- and eighteen-year old students following a demanding exam course with harsh deadlines. They are a cross section of our community, coming to us from backgrounds all over the Greater Manchester area, not just Oldham. A large number of our students come, naturally, from Saddleworth and so it is fitting that we display our work here.
It seems strange to think that a hundred years ago artists were frantically searching for a new way of saying something because they felt the new century warranted as much. We were already living in “the Aspirin Age”, quantum theory was almost passé, there were aircraft and zeppelins in the air. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was exhibiting his marvellous visions of the Classical world, Cezanne his “Bathers” and Derain his “Pool of London”. You could stroll into the newly-built Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow, having shaved this morning with a safety razor, a copy of “Mr. Kipps” under your arm and whistling an air from Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” (if that was your want). Isn’t looking back dangerous! The list of great works of art, music and literature, the momentous events, the significant moments...
Perhaps more significant is the fact that, had they been born within the catchment area of the College - and had the College existed then, the 1907 exhibition could have been displaying the works of the likes of Paul Nash, Jean Cocteau, Irving Berlin, T.S.Eliot, T.E.Lawrence or even my grandfather. In describing the work on view I may well have been pointing out the humour of the works of a certain Charles Chaplin or praising the charming watercolours of that merry anarchist, Adolf Hitler!
I wonder what my grandfather would have made of desktop computers, of digital cameras and mobile phones. It is amazing to think that none of these things existed thirty years ago, let alone a century ago. We look around us and marvel at the world we’re in, the novelty, the excitement, the prospects on offer - just as they did back then... but it’s already changing and the movers and shakers of tomorrow could be here, in this room, today (if not physically then through their work). It is one of the great wonders of life that I could be standing next to one of history’s great figures right now and be totally unaware of the fact.
Already students from the College have gone on to make their mark. Recently the international law firm of Baker Botts opened up a new branch in London and peopled it with an art collection. There, on their walls, can be seen pieces by Damien Hirst and Gary Hume alongside others by Robert Motherwell and Victor Pasmore. One “up-and-coming young artist” with a long list of recent successes and whose “works are becoming increasingly sought after and can be seen in important collections” is a former student of ours, a certain Divyesh Bhanderi. Divyesh was at the College from 1996-98 and his work was displayed in our first show, here in Saddleworth.
Exhibitions like this can be looked down upon by the aficionados, those-in-the-know, the real culture vultures. What earthly use is an exhibition of works by young people barely on the road of life? How can their fumblings and stumblings be really worth viewing? We’ve seen it all before, there’s nothing new... And so on, and so on. I’ve said it before and I’m happy to say it again; it is easy to forget that it is the adventure of setting out on the journey, with its hints of great, wide-open vistas ahead, that is stimulating. Everything is possible, nothing is written, the emotions are not old for them ...these trousers are new. And sometimes what they have experienced can be shockingly new ... even for us.
And yet (and this is one of the great truths about Art), true Art doesn’t have to be new. It is, sadly, one of the failures of Modern British Art that what is produced has to be shocking and sensational. Headlines in the ephemeral world of newspapers, television and the internet are more important than the lasting fame that true Art achieves. Recently I was talking to my students about the work of Giotto, the great Italian fresco painter of the early 1300s. When we look at his work it is easy to let the religious themes and the old-fashioned costumes get in the way and, in so doing, miss the sheer genius of his storytelling. Giotto is called “the father of modern painting” because of his ability to depict human emotions in his work (he is the first artist since Antiquity to do so). Translate those images of his into modern clothes, get rid of the angels and what you see are the great dramas and tragedies of our times unfolding before us. Giotto touches a nerve, he reminds us of a sensation, a memory.
What earthly use is an exhibition like this? It reminds us that Art is created quite simply by men. It reminds us that the truths of human experience are there to be ...reclaimed.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Principal, Nick Brown, OBE, for his continued and enthusiastic support for the Department and for this annual exhibition, as well as my colleagues who, over the last few years, have created the climate within which the students have developed the confidence to give expression to their ideas - Julie Birch, Gemma Ferns, Anupa Mistry, Dave Owen, Diane Payne, Joanna Ricketts, Helen Rostron, Carol Schofield, Malcolm Stanbra and Eddie Wolinski.
Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk
Head of Art & Design
Oldham Sixth Form College
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