Lost is Found – A group show from nine artists at the Cornerhouse Manchester

Creative Stars, 2011 Photo-credit-Paul-Greenwood

Cornerhouse presents Lost is Found, a group show of nine artists’ work in Gallery 1. Curated and developed by the Creative Stars, 19 talented young people from the Greater Manchester region, the exhibition examines the themes of rebirth, identity and fragility which are discovered through a range of media including sculpture, photography, and drawing.

Lost is Found provokes the audience to engage with the art, leaving the works open to interpretation rather than providing answers to unmask the mysteries and illusions on display.

Featured works include Emily Speed’s egg, nest, home, country, universe, a glimpse into the dual life of buildings as physical shelters and containers for memory. Spilt Milk from Andrea Booker reinvents abandoned signage from demolished buildings, recreating subliminal comments. Richard Proffitt’sLouisiana Blues Anywhere is an absurd totem of the modern world that has been inspired by biker and teenage subculture, the hinterlands of suburban Britain and the ghost towns of Western America. Jon Barraclough’s All or Nothing drawings explore the way in which images emerge from the traces that all living things leave behind, whilst Lucy Ridges’ photographic practice is a visual expression of all that can be imaginatively derived from our everyday thoughts and subconscious mind.

The works demonstrate a displacement of identity, relics of childhood, secret desires, fragments of memories and traces of history, reinforcing the idea that the redundant and the discarded, the lost, can be rediscovered, reborn, and made beautiful again – found.

Creative Stars

Creative Stars is an exciting new project run by Cornerhouse in partnership with Band on the Wall, Contact Theatre, the Library Theatre, the Royal Exchange, Unity Radio and Zion Arts Centre. The project is funded by Manchester City Council, the Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust and The Granada Foundation, and involves 19 talented young people living in the Greater Manchester region. The project started in April 2011 and will run until March 2012, giving the successful applicants a fantastic opportunity to develop and showcase their talents. Having been chosen from over 100 applications, these young people have a fantastic selection of skills in the areas of visual art, design, filmmaking, photography, music, performing arts, radio production, writing and events. Lost is Found has been entirely curated and developed by the Creative Stars.

Jon Barraclough (Liverpool Royal Standard)

Barraclough studied Fine Art Media at Bradford and Graphic Design at Newcastle before working as a photographer and designer in New York and London in the 1980s. Working in the music, film and fashion industries, he was a founder/member of the Unknown Studio in London, UK, exhibiting drawings in group and solo shows. He began teaching at Newcastle and Liverpool Schools of Art in the early 90s before becoming Head of School at Liverpool between 1991 and 1996. He went on to become Creative Director at Nonconform, a visual communications consultancy in Liverpool and has exhibited drawings, paintings, film and photography in touring group shows and solo shows in the UK. In 2008, he became a Research Associate at Liverpool School of Art and established Jon Barraclough and Company, a collaborative arts and consulting practice based in Liverpool.

Mark Beecroft (Rogue)

Mark Beecroft was born in Nottingham in 1982 and lives and works in Manchester. Group exhibitions include; Rogue Open Studio, Rogue Studios, Manchester, 2011, Nottingham Open 11, Nottingham Castle Art Gallery, Nottingham, 2011, Calculated Results: Mathematical Art, The Arts Center, Corvallis USA, 2011, Amateras Annual Mini Paper Art Exhibition 2011, part of Sofia Paper Art Fest,Bulgaria, 2011, Made in Manchester: MA Show, Holden Gallery, 2011, The Power of Copying, Xuzhou Museum of Art, China, 2010, Art of the Stitch, touring exhibition, RWA Bristol, The HUB Sleaford, Williamson Art Gallery and Museum Birkenhead, 2006, Paperworks: Paper Art Now, Bury Art Gallery and Museum, 2006, Untitled exhibition, Osteopathic Centre for Children, Ancoats, Manchester, 2005.

Mark Beecroft: Untitled (2010) Dimensions Vary Mixed Media Image courtesy of the Artist

Andrea Booker (Rogue)

Andrea Booker was born in Barnsley in 1971, and lives and works in Manchester. Exhibitions include Save Us Macclesfield Christ Church 2010, All Change The Royal Standard Liverpool 2009, Trade CityManchester 2009, CUBEOpen winner 2009, CUBELab, Cube Gallery Manchester 2009. Forthcoming installation at The Modernist Society Manchester 2011.

Eileen O’Rourke (Rogue)

Eileen O’Rourke was born in 1973 in Manchester and has a studio base at Rouge Studios. Exhibitions include Kuvataideakatemia Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 2011, Blank Media Collective- Freedom From Selection, 2010, Open studios, 2009, Blankley Studios, 2009, Where the Garment Gapes, Hive. Manchester, 2009 and Take Courage- Pearce and Ramsey Tour, 2008. Forthcoming solo show in June 2011 at Blankley Studios Manchester.

Jessa Fairbrother (Sheffield S1)

Jessa Fairbrother was born in London in 1975 and is based in Sheffield. She is the recipient of a number of bursaries and honourable mentions in the UK and Canada and gained an MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster. Recent group shows include the Members Show at S1 Artspace, Sheffield, 2011, Light Sensitive at Ambika P3, London, 2010, and Intimate Spaces, a Galerie 8 project, London, 2010. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally, and is part of the permanent collection of the NHS. She is also a lecturer in Photography.

Jessa Fairbrother: The Rehearsal (dedicated to Augustine) (2011) 35 mm slide projection Image courtesy of the Artist

Richard Proffitt (Liverpool Royal Standard)

Richard Proffitt, born 1985, Liverpool, is an artist living and working in Liverpool, UK. His work is inspired by and references the anthropology of ancient civilizations, teenage idols, ghost towns, curio ephemera, post-apocalyptic sci-fi films, spaghetti westerns, underground and slacker sub-culture, classroom humour and childhood memory. These inspirations become intertwined and their meaning mangled, producing work that is absurd, funny, dark and mysterious. The work will often become realised as make-shift ceremonial relics or ritualistic hang-outs.

Richard Proffitt: Louisiana Blues, Anywhere (2010) Moped, branches, sheep skull, light bulb, wood, twigs, t-shirts, blu tack, fake fur Image courtesy of the Artist

Lucy Ridges (Rogue)

Lucy Ridges was born in the south of England, Burgess Hill, in 1984 and currently resides in Manchester where she practices photography from her studio space in Rogue Studios. In 2007 she was awarded 1st place in the Northern Design Art contest photography section and in 2008 she was awarded 2nd place in the Silken Berlaymont Photo Plate awards. Recent exhibitions include Rogue Open, Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester, 2011, Contrast, A Celebration of Analogue Photography, Ok Studios, Standish, 2011, Eye to Eye, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. 2010 , BlankSpace, Blank Media Collective Inaugural exhibition, Manchester, 2011, 36 Exposures – celebrating the use of film, Easa Gallery, Manchester. 2010 and solo show Fishing Trip, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2010.

Emily Speed (Liverpool Royal Standard)

Emily Speed was born in Chester in 1979 and works in Liverpool. Her first solo exhibition was MAKE SHIFT at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2011. Forthcoming group exhibitions include Topophobia, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London (touring to Bluecoat, Liverpool and Spacex, Exeter), 2012 and Camp Out at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St Louis, USA, 2012. Emily will also present a new exterior wall commission for the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool in March 2012. Recent group exhibitions include The Paper Cooperative, Spacex, Exeter, 2011, Small Scale Survival, Aid & Abet, Cambridge, 2011, Dialogos, ASSAB One, Milan, 2011, Heterotopias, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, and Textures of Time, Frederick Parker Gallery, London, 2011.

Emily Speed: egg, nest, home, country, universe (2010) Image courtesy of the Artist

Cherry Tenneson (Rogue)

Cherry Tenneson, born 1980, Liverpool, studied BA Interactive Arts, and completed MA Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 2004. Solo exhibitions include: Hung Parliament (Tenneson & Dale) Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston; Red Tape (T & D) Stockport Art Gallery, Stockport; and Order Order (T & D), Cornerhouse, Manchester; Stains North Tea Power, Manchester; O T Apartment Residency, Lamp r Court, Manchester; and Desk Information for Toilet Users, Arena, Liverpool Biennial Independents ’06. Recent group exhibitions include: Salon Art Prize 2011, Matt Roberts Arts, London; Urban/Ecology (T & D), Liverpool Biennial Independents ’08; Becks Fusions 2008, Urbis, Manchester; and Meeting Point, Axel Lapp Projects, Berlin, in 2007. Cherry was recently shortlisted for the Salon Art Prize 2011 (Sculpture and Installation category). She was also shortlisted for the Manchester Art Prize in 2005, in collaboration with artist Nicola Dale.

About Cornerhouse

Cornerhouse is Greater Manchester’s centre for international contemporary visual art and film. A place where all can engage with contemporary ideas through a unique, risk taking, cross art-form and culturally diverse high quality programme of art and film.

Exhibition supported by The Austin & Hope Pilkington Trust and The Granada Foundation.

Curators: Creative Stars

Cornerhouse

Gallery 1

Exhibition dates: Sat 14 Jan 2012 – Sun 19 Feb 2012

Mon- Closed, Tue-Sat 12:00-20:00, Sun 12:00-18:00

FREE