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Context
We are looking for an artist working in animation, graphic design or digital imagery to produce a short film or animation (6 minutes or less) for our art collection. This commission is part of a nation wide project (Stories of the World) which will see museum and galleries across the North-West celebrate their industrial past with exhibitions, events and commissions. We have a total of £10,000 to spend on the commission of this work; this will include all artists’ expenses.
The work will initially be shown in our newly refurbished local history gallery which opens in November 2010. The gallery is funded by Bolton Council and the Regional Development Agency, and it is hoped that the work will be of a quality that will draw visitors to Bolton Museum.
The redevelopment of the gallery is part of the North West's Raising The Game programme that is raising the quality, ambition and profile of six leading museums and galleries to attract more tourists to the region. The new local history gallery at the museum will be divided into three sections, looking at industrialisation and the impact of the invention of the Spinning Mule; the subsequent developments in Bolton since the textile industry declined and the lives of Boltonians past and present.
We would like the film to both stand alone as a quality piece of art work and also provide links and connections with our existing industrial and art collections by interpreting them in a new and dynamic way.
In order to meet funding criteria, the artist who wins the commission must be willing to lead a one-off master-class, lecture or workshop for children or young adults about their working processes and inspiration. As well as this, we would like the artist to be willing to have their working processes documented for possible inclusion in our own learning resources.
Brief
The Museum’s collections are particularly rich in items relating to Bolton’s industrial heritage, British Surrealist art, and 1930s documentary photography. The work must fit comfortably with existing works in the art collection such as Eduardo Paolozzi’s ‘Naked Head’ and Edward Wadsworth’s ‘The Perspective of Iidleness’.
The source material for the work is the rich archive of illustration in machinery parts catalogues, mechanical diagrams and drawings, industrial machinery in the collection, and an archive of richly illustrated export labels. The work may also draw upon the Museum and Archive Service’s photographic archive. We wish for a work that highlights the ingenuity, creativity and beauty in engineering, mechanical processes and advertising. We would also like the artist to imply the narrative that all that machinery was at work to produce products for export all over the world.
We hope the work will turn attention to the almost forgotten generations of creative people who worked in the North West’s industrial powerhouse. The North West has a long tradition of fusing creativity with industry and mass production. We hope that the artwork will reflect and celebrate this. As well as using imagery from our collections, we hope that the chosen artist will be able to incorporate sound – for example the sounds of industrial machinery working – in their piece.
We are very keen for the film or animation to take influence from Dada, Surrealist, Constructivist and commercial art of the 1920s and 1930s. Artists working in these styles were often employed or trained as commercial artists also, and their work reflected industrial and mechanical processes. The late 1930s was also the period when the Mass Observation group was active in Bolton and brought in artists and writers with surrealist interests and training. For further information about Mass Observation see: (http://spender.boltonmuseums.org.uk/index.html). Bolton Museum and Archive Service’s curators will be on hand to assist the chosen artist with the enquiries they will inevitably have about the project, source material and historical period.
Application information
We have put together a package of objects that we hope will provide initial inspiration for artists – this includes art work by Eduardo Paolozzi, Edward Burra, Roland Penrose, Julian Trevelyan and Paul Mason, photography from the Mass Observation project, images of industrial machinery and graphics from industrial manuals and catalogues. This object package can be found on our website from Tuesday 9th February:
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/stories-of-the-world-artists-commission
We would like to invite interested artists to submit a storyboard outlining their initial ideas alongside a portfolio of their current work on CD/DVD. The portfolio can include still imagery alongside short examples of film/animation.
Please send your submission by 28th February 2010 to:
Kirsty Archibald
Curator of Art
Bolton Museum & Archive Service
Le Mans Crescent
Bolton
BL1 1SE
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