New co-commissioned exhibitions by Anna Bunting-Branch and Dryden Goodwin part of Co-Lab Season in QUAD, Derby, 29th February to 5th April 2020
QUAD in Derby has a new season of exhibition and events starting in February as part of its ‘Co-Lab Season’. Co-Lab is a five week-long showcase of newly co-commissioned work by two artists who usually employ traditional techniques such as painting, drawing or sculpture, but have taken their way of working into Virtual Reality digital realm or film works. The artists featured are Anna Bunting-Branch and Dryden Goodwin.
In QUAD Gallery One Anna Bunting-Branch presents Warm Worlds And Otherwise, a newly commissioned exhibition, that relates to the artist’s interest in the encounters between feminist practice and science fiction, using painting, digital animation and Virtual Reality to explore ideas of worldbuilding, embodied perception and technologies of representation. Central to the project is META (2019), an experimental 360-degree VR animation transforming the artists’ hand-painted characters, props and backdrops into an immersive virtual story world. Also included is the new installation AU Sandbox (2020) which expands her imagined worlds, and an accompanying ambient sound piece by artist Aliyah Hussain that underscores the viewer’s experience in the Gallery space as well as in the virtual environment. Co-curated by Helen Starr and Peter Bonnell.
In QUAD Gallery Two, Dryden Goodwin’s newly commissioned film Alongside is an inquiry into proximity and empathy, explored through the working life of a social care worker as he builds supportive relationships with three vulnerable clients with severe physical disabilities or autism. The film focuses on details and points of contact between the care worker and the young men, as he navigates and enables them to access the world beyond the daycare centre. Alongside reflects on the care worker’s profound responsibility and drive, as he finds ways to decode his clients' needs to understand their anxieties and motivations. This is mirrored in Goodwin's process of close observation, deciphering and translating this most intimate and delicate of jobs into a sensory study, rendered through his camera lens, pencil drawings and layered soundtrack. For the exhibition, accompanying the 24-minute film will be the original drawings created by Goodwin during the making of the film.
Both exhibitions will act as inspiration for a programme of accompanying Participation activities, such as Tiltbrush painting, a Virtual drawing tool that will be set up in QUAD Gallery for visitors to emulate Bunting-Branch and Goodwin’s work.
QUAD’s Co-Lab Season takes place in QUAD Gallery from 29th February to 5th April 2020. https://www.derbyquad.co.uk/whats-on/art/exhibitions
QUAD ‘Co-Lab’ is a short season every two years taking place in the venue’s main Gallery space which aims to highlight collaborative working. In early 2018 the opening project Middle Bound involved a number of local artists who came together in QUAD to produce a photographic exhibition that described the Midlands as a unique place in the UK. For Co-lab 2020 QUAD new VR artwork by Anna Bunting-Branch was co-commissioned in collaboration with four UK-wide organisations: QUAD, FACT Liverpool, Wysing Arts Centre and The Mechatronic Library. The new film work ‘Alongside’ by Dryden Goodwin was co-commissioned by QUAD and Animate Projects as part of the WORK Project. WORK is supported by Jerwood Arts and using public funding by Arts Council England.
There is a chance to celebrate the launch of Co-Lab Season, and the exhibitions by Anna Bunting-Branch and Dryden Goodwin. Co-Lab Launch takes place in QUAD Gallery on Friday 28th February, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. To book a place see: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/co-lab-exhibition-launch-tickets-89967839229
Anna Bunting-Branch will be in Conversation with Helen Starr and Peter Bonnell in QUAD Gallery, for an opportunity to hear more from the artist and curators as they discuss themes and ideas relating to the exhibition. The Artist and Curators talk takes place on Saturday 29th February, from 3:00pm and is FREE to attend.
For more information, please see https://www.derbyquad.co.uk/whats-on/art
or call QUAD Box Office on 01332 290606.