News : Bluecoat on Friday 15 th May 2015
6.00 - 9.00pm The studio Artists at the Bluecoat will be  opening their Studios as part of Liverpool's Light Night
Celebrations at the Bluecoat. Featuring  Pete Clarke

News: POETRY BEYOND TEXT

VISION, TEXT + COGNITION
Royal Scottish Academy
Lower Galleries , The Mound, Princess Street, Edinburgh
November 12 – December 18

Exhibition Opening and Private View Friday 11.11.2011 7pm – 8.30pm

Previous Exhibitions of ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ in 2011 were exhibited at the Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts & Edinburgh Poetry Library.
Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition is a multi-disciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and based at the Universities of Dundee and Kent. The project uses methods from literary criticism, aesthetics, experimental psychology, fine art and creative practice to study how readers respond to hybrid works which combine the textual with the visual, including digital poetry, concrete and visual poetry, artists' books, text film and poetry combined with photography.
This exhibition includes fascinating and innovative commissioned works in all of these forms, as well as sculptural and interactive works, records of the processes of collaboration and creation, and other research findings. Contributing poets and artists include Will Maclean, John Burnside, Giselle Beiguelman, Thomas A. Clark, Marian Leven, Robin Robertson, John Cayley, Simon Biggs, Deryn Rees-Jones and Robert Sheppard & Pete Clarke,

New Exhibition Democratic Promenade at the Bluecoat, Liverpool.
Featuring the work of Pete Clarke

Preview Thursday 29th September 2011 6.30 till 9.00 pm

Wednesday 16 November 6-7.30pm
Pete Clarke & John Davies: Artists’ talk at the Bluecoat

Two artists in Democratic Promenade discuss contested public and private space, and democracy and accountability in the city in their work.

Pete Clarke’s large mixed media triptych, Poppies and Roses, is from a series of paintings from the 1980s about streets and institutions, made in response to central government attacks on local democracy. It explores contradictory ideas about political change through strikes, demonstrations and street protest, or through democratic, though often more problematic, participation in elections and governmental change. The painting is constructed - an important formal metaphor – with its surfaces combining images of Liverpool streets and housing, political posters, processes like woodcuts and collage, and propagandist methods.

John Davies’ photographs of green parts of Liverpool that have been privatised, including the International Garden Festival site, explore the way that public space is contested. Here, public open space has been ‘eaten into’ as part of the housing development deal on the site, and some of Davies’ images of the proposed ‘finger blocks’ for Otterspool Promenade were first shown as part of his expert witness evidence at the public enquiry, images not seen again until now.

This event is free, but places are limited, so please make a booking at Tickets & Information: 0151 702 5324

"Is it so beautiful on the Rhine?"
„Ist es am Rhein so schön?“
Exhibition 17.09.2011 – 16.10.2011
Private View: Friday 16.09.2011 from 7.00pm

Kunstverein 68elf e.V.,
Media Park 8A Achter Stock
50670 Köln
Tel: 0163/699 68 11
www.68elf.wordpress.com

The artists’ initiative and collaborative project between Pete Clarke, Liverpool and Georg Gartz, Cologne has been selected for the exhibition ‘Ist es am Rhein so schön? ‘ exploring ideas about the River Rhine. In 2007 Clarke and Gartz embarked on the Project ‘Turner’s Travels’ [J.M.W. Turner 1775 – 1851] given the significance of the artist to German and British Art. The ‘Collaboration’ project followed Turner’s travels along the Rivers Rhine and Mosel in 2007. The research compared and contrasted significant works by revisiting iconic places depicted in Turner’s paintings and sketchbooks producing new transcriptions and re-invented images. The historic work of Turner was used to personify and critique concepts of national influence and cultural production within Fine Art practice.

‘Turner’s travels’ has now continued with more drawings exploring North Yorkshire [2008] with a Residency in 2008 at the Bluecoat, part of ‘Eight Days a Week’ and Liverpool European City of Culture, Venice [2009] and the Isle of Wight [2011]. Clarke and Gartz will now be showing a series of drawings and a new reinvented installation of the Rhine at the ‘Loreley’ [Lorelei] for this exhibition Ist es am Rhein so schön?

"Is it so beautiful on the Rhine?"
This question is critically intentioned and explored at the Kunstverein68 elf e.V., Media Park 8A in Cologne, with the opening Private View on Friday, the 16th September 2011.
Artistic contributions from all sectors have been judged after a Germany-wide/international tender. Ideas were requested exploring the concept of the father Rhine, from the source of the river to the mouth. 43 artists have been selected from the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Cologne with several German artists from the Rhine to present their ideas about the River.
This multi-faceted exhibition presents painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation; with readings and performances taking place.
It is clear from the various artistic contributions that each artist has been influenced by the river and has reflected this in their personal involvement in art. The Rhine has often provoked emotional and intellectual engagement, regardless of whether the issue is been addressed physical, geographical, historical or mythological.

Die teilnehmenden Künstler sind: [Participating Artists are:]
Albert, Jo/ Arnold, Bernd/ Baerens, Michael/ Bausch, Andreas & Steuber Andrea/ Beckhof, Kaaren/ Bergmann, Katrin/ bHK Heuchel-Klag/ Blum, Katja/ Boehm, Peer/ Brix, Walter Bruno/ Brock, Mathias/ Dupuis, Mary-Noële/ Felix, Sanmitra/ Fischbacher, Gertrud/ Frechen, Volker/ Gartz, Georg & Clarke, Pete/ Gosse, Agii/ Gunkel, Johanna/ Hein, Christian/ Hildebrand, Sarah/ Horn, Hanne/ Kiel, Rainer/ Knecht, Ruth/ Lafleur, Stan/ Lantermann, Carola/ Lyssy, Mathias/ Murr, Greg/ Nagel, Carolin/ Oestreich, Isabel/ Opheys, Susanne/ Rath, Christiane/ Runschke, Michael/ Schmitz Becker/ Schneider, Hannah/ Spirig, Kurt/ Sturm, Christa/ Szabo, Etienne/ Viets, Andreas/ Vis, Elaine/ Wahnwitz, Wilda/ Werner, Nicolaus/ Wilke, Katharina


NEWS GLOBAL ECHO
‘International Artists in Print’, a Collaborative Printmaking Initiative.

‘Global Echo’ is an international Printmaking project and exchange initiative with Colleges and Universities organised and initiated by the UCLan Printmaking staff: Pete Clarke / Tracy Hill/ Magda Stawarska Beavan, Michelle Rowley, Wirral Met and Neil Morris, Liverpool JMU.

The project includes artists from:
Wirral Metropolitan College,
Liverpool JMU,
Brigham Young University, Utah, USA,
Sheffield Hallam University,
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia,
Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan,
Parsons School of Design, the University of New York, USA,
Kwantlen Polytechnic & University, B.C. Canada

Printmaking in the North West in recent years has developed a significant reputation for collaborative and cultural exchange projects, notable examples are ‘Artlab Contemporary Art’ at UCLan and ‘Injured Text’ at Liverpool JMU and ‘Triple Echo’ developed by UCLan which built on these creative initiatives by facilitating opportunities for students and staffs in Art & Design to experience inter collegiate dialogue and professional exhibition opportunities.
The landscape for Artists’ Printmaking with the advent of global communication has enabled much greater international collaboration and for a wider community of Printmakers across the world to be connected. Printmaking, both in its message and its production, has always been primarily a democratic and collaborative process. These factors have allowed printmaking to develop a more pivotal role in contemporary art.
‘Global Echo’ creates opportunities and new experiences by utilizing new and traditional technologies in Printmaking to demonstrate professionalism in the production and presentation of creative work. The project will facilitate professional gallery practice and institutional opportunities by embracing academic interaction and dialogue within the differing international art & design programmes. It will give students and staff opportunities to debate and investigate contemporary strategies global artists use to disseminate their practice to contemporary audiences and discuss their work in relationship to other printmakers.

News: Dundee Contemporary Arts 05.03.2011 – 01.04.2011

Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text + Cognition
Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh 14.05.2011 – 15.07.20

Private View 13.05.2011 5pm - 7.pm

1

Touring from Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts
Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition is a multi-disciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and based at the Universities of Dundee and Kent. The project uses methods from literary criticism, aesthetics, experimental psychology, fine art and creative practice to study how readers respond to hybrid works which combine the textual with the visual, including digital poetry, concrete and visual poetry, artists' books, text film and poetry combined with photography.
This exhibition will include fascinating and innovative commissioned works in all of these forms, as well as sculptural and interactive works, records of the processes of collaboration and creation, and other research findings. Contributing poets and artists include Will Maclean, John Burnside, Robert Sheppard & Pete Clarke, Thomas A. Clark, Marian Leven, Robin Robertson, John Cayley, Simon Biggs, Deryn Rees-Jones and Giselle Beiguelman.
Research Questions

In a culture marked by rapidly diversifying forms of visual and textual presentation, the interaction of textual and graphic forms is crucial to the development of critical, creative and scientific thought. There is much relevant research taking place within humanities, art practice and psychology, but only a small body of work links all these disciplines.
As an interdisciplinary project ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ addresses this issue, focusing on four key research questions:

1. When art works combine textual and visual elements, how do the modes of attention specific to reading text and viewing images interact and modify each other?

2. What factors determine whether the combination of textual and visual elements in such works enriches or limits their meaning and aesthetic value?

3. How are evaluative and interpretive responses to such works affected by the development of enhanced reflective awareness about the processes involved?

4. How can critical and psychological models of perception and aesthetic experience inform and be informed by the creation of new works of art?

The project will contribute to knowledge and the development of new ideas within literary criticism, creative practice and experimental psychology. The outcomes will be of interest to scholars, scientists and practitioners in all these fields, as well as to the wider public audience for poetry, visual art and digital media.

The ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ project forms part of the wider AHRC programme, ‘Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects’ (2007-12), which involves over 40 individual projects and aims to ‘create a collaborative, multi-disciplinary research community’.

Why ‘Beyond Text’? The ‘Beyond Text’ programme is highly diverse, and different projects interpret this term in different ways. For us, as the ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ research group, ‘beyond’ does not imply transcendence, nor the non-textual.

Rather, it implies an exploration of the dynamic relations (at the level of creation and reception) between poetry as text and other elements of poetic works.  These other elements include visual images which may be combined with poems (such as photographs, prints, drawings), but also the visual and material properties of poetry itself: the shape of the words on the page (especially in Concrete and Visual Poetry); the feel and structure of the book or other material form (notably in Artists’ Books); the code and intermedial processes of poetry in digital media; the temporal and material aspects of time-based poetic works, including Text Film and Digital Poetry.

In another sense, ‘beyond’ also implies the cognitive processes and constraints which enable and frame our responses to poetry, as well as the imaginative and creative processes involved in its making and its reflective interpretation.

Pete Clarke moved to Liverpool in 1978 after studying at Chelsea School of Art, West of England College of Art [Bristol Polytechnic], Burnley Municipal College and living for a time on the Isle of Wight and then London. He is MA Course Leader and Principal Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. He makes paintings, prints and installations, exploring collaborative strategies within contemporary practice.

Robert Sheppard
Robert Sheppard and Peter Clarke collaborated on three prints with poems: Forme, Lyric and Manifest. Each of these prints contains poetic text on various scales, some resembling ‘headlines’ or titles, others reading as fragmented and repeated ‘body’ text. There is a visual assembly of these component elements that is suggestive of Russian Constructivist prints, combining abstract colour shapes, blocks of text, and oblique angles and these historical visual influences interact with a ‘poetic of increased indeterminacy and discontinuity, the uses of techniques of disruption and of creative linkage’, to apply Sheppard’s own description of the ‘Linguistically Innovative Poetry’ movement in which he has played a notable part. The word manifest teases the viewer with overtones of manifestos, of historical references and political activism in its dynamic layout. There are visual overtones as well of the dynamic aesthetics of Rodchenko and Popova, whose work from the brief period from 1917-1925 produced energetic and stylistically groundbreaking visual art with text.

Publication ISBN 978-0-9568371-0-3

www.poetrybeyondtext.org



News… Wrexham Print International exhibition 2011
‘The Possibilities of Print’ 25th March to 19th May 2011

Wrexham Print International 2011 is held across two venues – the Arts Centre, Oriel Wrecsam and the Memorial Gallery, Yale College from 25th March to 19th May 2011. This international bi-annual touring exhibition from an open submission of contemporary printmaking is a rare opportunity to view prints selected from 13 countries around the world. Richard Noyce* has selected one series or body of work from each applicant that displays innovation in all techniques of printmaking.

The competitive selection features the work of Fine Art staff Pete Clarke and Tracy Hill and BA student Rachel Elizabeth Thornton and MA student Lisa Wigham from the University of Central Lancashire, Preston.

A full-colour catalogue featuring the selected artists accompanies the exhibition.
The exhibition will be toured by Oriel Wrecsam until December 2012. *Richard Noyce the exhibition selector’s recent publication ‘Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge’ explores many of the themes and dilemmas facing art at the beginning of the 21st century through the medium of contemporary Printmaking, featuring the work of 45 artists from 16 countries. On the night of the preview, Richard Noyce talked about his selection for this exhibition.

On the 19TH April 2011 there will be a Printmaking Symposium held at the Regional Print Centre, Wrexham led by guest speaker and selector Richard Noyce with selected artists and academics including Paul Coldwell, Jason Hicklin, Daphne Warburg Astor and Johanna Love.

News: Pete Clarke Winner of the Grand Prix of THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL EX LIBRIS EXHIBITION ‘’DANUBE’’ 2010 Pancevo, Serbia 7th November 2010 - 10th January 2011

lll.River Message,15 x 20, Relief , Letter Press, 2010

news : 'Quartered, Drawn and Hung’The Cornerstone Gallery
Exhibition open: Friday 19th November 2010 to Friday 18th February 2011
An Exhibition of Drawing: by Definition, Concept and Practice.

'Quartered, Drawn and Hung’
Drawing, despite its long and complex history, constantly adapts to each age and remains an indispensable activity common to all contemporary creative activity and application. For artists and designers, the use of drawing, in all its possible manifestations, is fundamental to the thinking, recording and development of individual possibilities and visual language. For some, it can become the language of choice. In all its forms it is indispensable to a continually developing creative dialogue.
Drawing in its rawest sense is not only the physical act of rendering studies within the tradition of graphite/charcoal on paper: drawing is a process. It is the process of observing and drawing in of visual information from a primary source. It is the process of the thinking about the information accrued and its intellectual analysis and synthesis. It is the physical articulation of drawing out that same intellectualised information, via suitable media, and placing it upon an appropriate substrate. That physical articulation needs as much practice and development as does the act of seeing.

Exhibitors
Bryan Biggs, John Bratby, Pete Clarke, Anne Desmet, Sara Devourex-Ward, Peter Dover, Janice Egerton, Emma Gregory, Samantha Greenall, Rolf Harris,
Lin Holland, Richard Hooper, Jason Jones, David Mathison, Tabitha Moses, Gary Northfield, Charlotte Owens, Roozbeh Rajaie, Arthur Roberts, Wayne Robinson,
Jacqui Scholes, Tony Smith, Constantine Soteriou, Fiona Ward, Alan Whittaker and Richard Young.

Past News (click for link)