Anish Kapoor Invades Robin Hood Country

Nottingham stopover for major contemporary sculpture exhibition

A touring exhibition of Turner Prize winning artist Anish Kapoor opens at Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery this week, from 19 November 2011 until 11 March 2012, after which it moves to the Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. A number of tours, workshops and a trail to the Sky Mirror which has been located outside the Nottingham Playhouse for ten years, will accompany the exhibition.

Flashback is a major series of touring exhibitions from the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre. Taking as its starting point the Collection’s founding principle of supporting emerging artists through the purchase of their work, the series showcases internationally renowned British artists whose works have been acquired by the Collection. The monographic exhibitions present early pieces from the Collection alongside more recent work to give a unique insight into the evolution of these key figures in British art. Following on from the success of the first Flashback exhibition of work by Bridget Riley, the second artist in the series of exhibitions is the renowned artist and Turner Prize winner, Anish Kapoor.

Anish Kapoor’s sensual and beguiling sculptures are created using a range of materials including pigment, stone, polished stainless steel and wax. Following on from the critical acclaim of his show at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2009, this Flashback exhibition gives an opportunity to explore Kapoor’s earlier works from the Arts Council Collection alongside major sculptures on loan from the artist and from other UK collections. This is the first survey of Kapoor’s work to be held in the UK, outside of London.

The show has been selected by the artist in close dialogue with the Arts Council Collection and includes works, such as White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers (1982), which demonstrate Kapoor’s early interest in applying raw pigment to a range of organic forms. The sculpture was acquired by the Arts Council Collection the same year and has been lent to many major institutions as a key example of his early practice. Alongside this, the optically illusionary Untitled (1997-98) is a highly-polished stainless steel void embedded into the wall that draws the viewer into a seemingly bottomless reflection and is emblematic of the seamless mirrored forms that have made Kapoor a household name.

The Arts Council Collection is one of Britain’s foremost national collections of post-war British Art. As a collection ‘without walls’, it has no permanent gallery; it can be seen on long term loan to museums, galleries, schools, hospitals, colleges and charitable associations and in touring exhibitions and displays at home and abroad.   It is also, importantly, the most widely circulated and easily accessible collection of its kind, with nearly 8000 works available for loan.  It is run by Southbank Centre on behalf of Arts Council England.

Established in 1946 to promote and enrich knowledge of contemporary art, the Collection continues to acquire works by artists, many at an early stage of their career, living and working in Britain and to foster the widest possible access to modern and contemporary across the UK.  It includes work by Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Henry Moore, Bridget Riley and Wolfgang Tillmans. Recent exhibitions of works from the Collection, created in collaboration with Hayward Touring, include Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry curates from the Arts Council Collection, and Now Showing I & II.  In 2009 the Arts Council Collection launched the Flashback series which showcases world-renowned British artists whose works were acquired early on by the Collection, including Bridget Riley (2010) and Anish Kapoor (2011).  In December 2006 access to the Collection was further enhanced when www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk was launched.

Exhibition Detail: Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Castle Place, Nottingham, NG1 6EL  Tel: 0115 915 3700

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