MEMBERS of Mirfield’s West Yorkshire Print Workshop have had a great start to the year with work on display in three exhibitions across the region.
The workshop’s development officer Mark Milnes has co-ordinated shows at Huddersfield Art Gallery, at South Square Gallery in Thornton and at Tonic artspace at St James’ Hospital in Leeds. The shows will underline the wide variety of work produced by the workshop’s 80 members.
“It’s great that we are able to get our members work out there, where it can be seen and appreciated by new audiences. Being able to offer such opportunities to artists is one of our main purposes,” said Mark.
Huddersfield Art Gallery will be hosting a showcase of contemporary printmaking by WYPW, starting next weekend. )
“This is the first time that I’ve been involved in an exhibition by workshop members which has solely focused on printmaking. I’m really looking forward to seeing the results, which will highlight our special function as a facility for hand-produced artists’ prints,” said Mark.
The South Square exhibition is a themed show called Collaborate and has involved 16 members pairing up to create entirely new work for the exhibition.
Two of the artists who have collaborated on a piece of artwork – Kate Desforges and Amy Hirst – have a strong presence at the centre. Kate works there as technician, whilst Amy is a studio holder and board member.
Kate said: “It’s been great to experience and learn from someone else’s way of working. We have enjoyed it so much that we will be continuing the collaboration into the New Year.”
Amy and Kate have worked together to create prints and an animated piece which celebrates spontaneous creativity. They’ve called it The Door Of Fear and will be showing some of this work at Huddersfield Art Gallery throughout February and March.
The exhibition at St James’s Bexley Wing (Oncology Unit) has been organised in conjunction with two other artist support agencies – Batley’s Loca and Bradford’s Fabric – and features 60 works by members of all three groups.
The show is titled Small And Beautiful and all of the images included measure under 50 by 50cm. The exhibition runs until the end of March, when it will transfer to Batley Art Gallery.
For more details, look on WYPW’s website, www.wypw.org
