ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois opens at the Burton at Bideford Art Gallery and Museum this November

A new exhibition opening at the Burton includes sculptures, prints and drawings by the acclaimed French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. Eight decades of intense creativity firmly established Louise Bourgeois as a giant of 20th century art. Through this exhibition, the Burton at Bideford makes her ground-breaking work freely available to the people of North Devon for the first time.

ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois opens at the Burton at Bideford Art Gallery and Museum on Friday 17 November, 6-8pm, and runs until 11 February 2024. Admission is free.

Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois settled in New York in 1938, where she remained for the rest of her life, continuing to make art until her death at the age of 98. Her endlessly inventive work, inspired by her memories and experiences, spanned monumental installations, figurative sculptures, fabric collages, and drawings. She is perhaps best known for the large-scale spider sculptures that she produced in the last decades of her life, including one she created for the opening of Tate Modern in 2000.

Bourgeois’s art was closely bound up with her life, and she used artmaking as a way to make sense of her experiences. Her sculpture, drawing, and writing are characterised by emotional honesty, and she reworked her ideas in different forms and materials including marble, bronze, latex, and fabric, compelled by the need to make and re-make.

This exhibition focuses on works produced during the last 20 years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity, during which Bourgeois re-examined many of her lifelong concerns to create a body of powerful new work exploring identity, gender, childhood, family and motherhood. Personal, provocative and raw, Bourgeois’s work reaches us with a powerful immediacy more than a decade after her death.

ARTIST ROOMS presents the work of international artists in solo exhibitions drawn from a national touring collection jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland. This exhibition is drawn from the ARTIST ROOMS collection and includes works on loan from The Easton Foundation and Tate. This is the Burton at Bideford’s third collaboration with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland through the ARTIST ROOMS programme, and follows presentations of internationally renowned artists Richard Long (2014) and Diane Arbus (2018).

Warren Collum, Interim Co-Director of the Burton, said:

“Working in partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland through the ARTIST ROOMS programme for the third time to present one of the twentieth century's most influential female sculptors, Louise Bourgeois, is a unique opportunity.

This show not only celebrates art but also emphasises the need to bring culture to rural areas, as well as putting a light on the strength and ingenuity of women in the creative world.”

The ARTIST ROOMS programme provides support for young people to get involved in creative projects, discover more about art and artists, and learn new skills. A Burton Youth Collective will be supported through ARTIST ROOMS by Art Fund and Henry Moore Foundation, providing local teenagers with the opportunity to explore a career in the arts, experience life behind the scenes of an arts organisation, and work alongside practising artists. Sessions are open to young people aged 13-19 years. Places are limited and anyone interested is advised to contact the gallery to check availability and register their interest.

Louise Bourgeois Spirals 2005
ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2023. Photo © Tate

Louise Bourgeois 10am is When You Come to Me 2006
ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2023. Photo © Tate

THE BURTON AT BIDEFORD

Kingsley Road, Bideford EX39 2QQ 

Email: info@theburton.org

Tel: 01237 471455
Website: www.burtonartgallery.co.uk

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New community award will help struggling wildlife

A leading Devon conservation charity has launched a new award to highlight the wonderful work local community groups are doing to encourage struggling nature.

The Wilder Communities Award is the idea of Devon Wildlife Trust. The inaugural award has been made recently to an East Devon community.

Awards are open to everyone in Devon – from groups of allotment holders and workplace employees to residents’ associations, schools and care home communities.

Staff at the conservation charity are keen to stress that the scheme is not a competition. Instead, applications will be reviewed by Devon Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Communities Team. The application process is open now and can be completed on-line via the Trust’s website. Applicants can find lots of guidance, examples and ideas about how to help local wildlife.

Applications to the Wilder Community application process is free.

 

The Trust’s Wilder Communities Team are especially keen to hear from Devon communities who are working for nature in several ways, including:

• Creating space for nature: providing more food, water and homes for wildlife.

• Protecting the local environment: working to protect rivers and streams, to improve soil health, and reduce waste and pollution.

• Connecting local people with nature: bringing local communities together so that they can discover, learn and connect with wildlife.

Each Wilder Communities Award will be made for 12 months, but communities can look to re-new year-on-year. The schemes organisers hope that this will encourage communities to develop their wildlife plans over time, making them more ambitious and increasing their positive impact.

Katie Wilkinson is Devon Wildlife Trust Wilder Communities Team Lead. Katie said:

‘’We have been inspired by the hundreds communities across Devon who are leading amazing projects to help wildlife where they live, learn, work, or socialise. So, we have launched a brand-new award to celebrate their efforts.

There is so much to be hopeful for when we see so many people dedicating their time to help nature’s recovery. From holding environmental festivals to running community science projects or managing a local greenspace for wildlife, and campaigning to get swift nesting boxes installed in a town centre. When communities work together on a common cause they can achieve great things.

Thinking globally and acting locally will help us build a sustainable future where nature and people can thrive’’.

 

The first group to be designated as a Wilder Community is the East Devon village of Chardstock. Gill Keam is leader of the Chardstock Wilder Community. Gill reacted to becoming a Wilder Community pioneer and said:

“I feel so incredibly fortunate to have lived in this beautiful location within the Blackdown Hills for over 23 years. Being surrounded by all the treasures that this rural location has to offer is wonderful.

Our local community already does so much in support of the nature on our doorstep and in relation to connecting to it. So, when the opportunity to recognise and celebrate these connections was presented by the Devon Wildlife Trust’s new Wilder Communities Award, it felt like the ideal opportunity to bring our community even closer to nature.

Using our application form as a springboard, we have been able to acknowledge so much of the fabulous work already being done locally, and to set ourselves some challenges to do even more over the coming months and years.”

 

The Wilder Communities application process is open now. People and communities who want to discover more about what it takes to be a Wilder Community should visit the Devon Wildlife Trust website https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/wilder-communities

Community members of Chardstock village celebrate receiving their Wilder Communities Award.

 Far left is Gill Keam (Chardstock community). Middle (crouching) Katie Wilkinson, Devon Wildlife Trust Wilder Communities Lead

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About Devon Wildlife Trust. Nature is in trouble and Devon Wildlife Trust’s mission stems from the need for urgent change and our belief that, if enough people care and act, we can bring nature back and do it on a grand scale. For 60 years, we have been at the forefront of protecting wildlife and the wild places that make Devon so special and believe, passionately, that a better world is one where nature and people thrive together. We are the only Devon focused charity that exists to protect all wildlife in Devon, on land and at sea. Homepage | Devon Wildlife Trust

Contemporary Artist, Louise Bourgeois coming to the Burton at Bideford in November

French-American artist Louise Bourgeois is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential figures of modern and contemporary art, with a career spanning eight decades from the 1930s to 2010. 

ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois brings together works which she made during the last twenty years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity.

Bourgeois’s art was often autobiographical, exploring themes such as childhood, family, motherhood, identity and gender. She reworked her ideas in different forms and materials, creating large-scale sculpture and installation, painting, printmaking, drawing and textiles. Both biographical and universal, Bourgeois’s work reaches us with a powerful immediacy more than a decade after her death.

This is the Burton at Bideford’s third collaboration with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland through the ARTIST ROOMS programme, and follows presentations of internationally renowned artists Richard Long (2014) and Diane Arbus (2018)

Exhibition launch: Friday 17 November, 6-8pm

Join Burton at Bideford and special guests from Tate to celebrate the exhibition opening

 The Burton Art Gallery & Museum, Kingsley Road, Bideford, Devon, EX39 2QQ

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