Impressions Gallery, Bradford: Paul Reas

It's a great deal that this cute, little gallery is freely open to the public at the shadow of the enormous National Media Museum few metres away (read my review at the previous post). The leaflet produced by the gallery says they are one of the UK's leading independent venues for photography. Although in size, it's probably not leading, visiting the current exhibition makes me to believe the above statement.

Impressions Gallery

 I regret that I don't know a lot about photography as an art (what a shame!) and I regret even more that I didn't hear about Paul Reas previously. He is one of the most significant photographer of the new wave of British colour documentary, emerged in the 1980's. His works reveal the working class in Britain in an utmost different way as before, free of judgements and stigmatization. Some photos observing social characteristics - although taken in the 80's and 90's - still remain valid, which makes this retrospective exhibition very actual.  

I enjoyed the show so much that I promise to educate myself to photography more to be aware of waves and significant artists by the next time I get to a photo exhibition.

Exhibition space

The building itself is located at the main square in Bradford, very close to the train station. It provides space to a small museum (or art) shop and a library.

A very inspiring exhibition, I strongly recommend to photo/art lovers to pay a visit.

Paul Reas: Day Dreaming About The Good Times? exhibition is on display until 8 March, 2014. It's worthwhile to plan a visit to 1 February (Saturday), when 2-3pm Paul Reas will talk about his works - booking is recommended.

National Media Museum, Bradford

I chose to visit Bradford for a different exhibition in the Impressions Gallery but when my friend recommended the National Media Museum that she enjoyed during her visit to the city, I said, why not.

I was well surprised about the scale of this modern museum in this small city in Yorkshire which is - to be fair - not a typical tourist destination. As I later read on a museum leaflet, apparently Bradford is the UNESCO City of Film.

National Media Museum

The museum is massive. The permanent and temporary exhibitions of 8 floors encompass the mix that the concept of "media" covers. I must say, this is the best state-funded museum outside of London that I've visited so far (and I'm very critical here!). And of course the entry is free.

The informative leaflet is a big help in selecting those bits that are the most interesting. We originally chose to see only few parts: the Kodak Gallery, exhibiting about the history of photography; the Games Lounge where visitors can play with awesome old school video games such as Pacman, Prince of Persia and the Animation Gallery explaining about works of famous British and non-British animation studios, types of animation and influence waves.

In the Kodak Gallery

But eventually we also ran through a temporary photo exhibition of local artist, Chris Harrison (which left me a little bit heartbroken), the Magic Factory interactive part, which was a big disappointment in comparison with other museums' similarly aimed section, the Experience TV floor furnished as a television studio, and Life Online which was about the history and inventions of the computer and the Internet and here I could have spent an entire afternoon playing with HTML and Morse.

Life Online exhibition

The whole museum blew me away. It's aimed at the whole family, but for childless adult visitors it also offers a great day of enjoyment. The building is conveniently easily approachable from Bradford train station and is on the main square which I found the most attractive part of the city.

View from the 7th floor

I strongly recommend this museum - if not anything else, this is definitely worth a daytrip to Bradford.

Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle, Budapest: Enthropy of a City

I always enjoy a lot visiting my lovely hometown, Budapest. Apart from the obvious reasons of seeing my family and friends, I'm also deeply enthusiastic about visiting some of the greatest museums the city has to offer. This time I chose an exhibition at Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle) that sounded rather interesting - it showcases video installation works about urban space of the private Julia Stoschek Collection travelling from Duesseldorf, Germany.

Műcsarnok

Műcsarnok is a beautiful building itself, situated at the popular Hősök tere (Hero's Square) neighbouring Budapest's number one art gallery (my opinion), the Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts).

The entry fee is still bearable measuring by my UK wallet (equivalent to £6) and for this price I get to see three separate exhibitions: apart from the main there's an artwork of the Indian Shilpa Gupta and a collection related to new art techniques from Duliskovich Bazil in the basement by which I wasn't too impressed.

Hősök tere / Hero's Square

The Entropy of a City displays a number of videos from a selection of international artists around the subject of human interaction into urban space. I was also fascinated by the artworks' arrangement in the huge exhibition space: using tools of minimalism it reflected itself to the subject of the collection.

Many of the exhibiting artists are qualified architects offering a unique view of the subject. My highlights are the works of Gordon Matta-Clark who lived in New York, Tobias Zielony German artist and Cao Fei based in China.

Matta-Clark's videos documented the process of building modification he carried out on houses soon to be demolished. In one of them he cut out conical shapes of a Parisian building's wall (Conical Intersect - Program Seven, 1975). In another he cut out squares from a house creating the shape of the bingo form (Bingo, 1971). I was amazed by the idea of removing the original function of the building (housing, protection from the weather, etc.) and creating a new artistic view in front of audience of occasional passers by.

Artwork arrangement in the space // In the background Matta-Clark's video

I particularly liked Tobias Zielony's The Letter (Der Brief, 2013) video although I didn't see its close fit into the urban space concept - it's rather related to social matters. It documents a report with two prostitutes who talk about an occasion when a client fell in love with their colleague and being rejected he became abusive.

Cao Fei's video, photo and sculpture installation (Whose Utopia, 2006) explore the life of lightbulb factory workers by using Second Life, the popular online game where players create their character to live an imagined life.

Museum interior

 
There's quite a big variety of artistic views and concepts at the exhibition with stronger and weaker works. Some of the videos weren't running at the time of visit (that's a shame!). The information on artists and artworks displayed on the walls are sufficient, unlike in the accompanying leaflet which is rather poor both in content and the English translation.     

All in all, I would recommend visiting this unique collection to art lovers who find interesting land art and urban space concept. Also, it's a great occasion to find out more about contemporary artists linked to a pleasant walk on Andrássy út or in Városliget (City Park).

The exhibition is on display until 23. Feb. 2014.