Richard Bartle. Sheffield Contemporary artist working in mixed media at Bloc Studios. mardin biennial turkey

occursus

occursus are proud to announce the opening of their second exhibition at DLA Piper Sheffield. The exhibition, featuring works by Ian Anderson and Richard Bartle, will open on Thursday October 27th. There will be a private view and reception at DLA Piper at 6pm on Thursday October 27th.

For more information, please contact Amanda Crawley Jackson (a.j.jackson@sheffield.ac.uk)

To reserve a place at the private view, please contact Kirsty MacDonald (kirsty.macdonald@dlapiper.com)

http://occursusexhibitions.wordpress.com

Introduction
Violette Alfonsi

occursus’s new exhibition proposes an encounter with the “cruel radiance of what is”, through the recent works of Sheffield-based artists Richard Bartle and Ian Anderson at DLA Piper, Sheffield.

Bartle’s massive Oil Paintings, ablaze with colour, question humanity’s intense economic activity and the frenzied exploitation of natural resources. By matter of factly plunging us beneath the surface into the earth’s subterranean layers in a series of complex and ultimately dangerous manoeuvres, Bartle urges the spectator to react to the seeming naivety and gigantism of man’s vampiric will to power. The scrupulous imitation of basic geographical drawings and the use of a limited range of strikingly contrasting colours lend the paintings a sense of powerful statement and immutability. But the gradation in the series itself, with its occasional eruptions and disruptions of vivid fluctuation, emphasise on the contrary the untameable quality of matter and human passion. As a result, the works magnificently suggest that positive energies still can emerge from suicidal ambitions.

By way of transition, Bartle’s delicate miniature of a wooden shed contrasts with the bold visuality of his paintings and at the same time opens the way to an implied interaction with Ian Anderson’s typewritten fragments of life and speech. Bartle’s shed discloses a plain stool upon which we see an open book; the minimalism and comforting solitude of this scene, devoid of human characters, suggests, however, the trace of a presence and the transmission of knowledge, the passing of language, both oral and written. The shed, with its open door, its half-open book and bare windows reads as a humble overture to man’s inner capacity to wonder and tell a different story than the one that lays written for him and over which he may feel he has no control whatsoever.

In this respect, Anderson’s snippets of stories, which are displayed in blunt typewritten fashion as if they were rough drafts and false starts with no obvious continuity between them, work as a subtle counter-balance to the assertive materiality that Bartle, in his works, displays. The fragmentary human episodes that Anderson imagines and transcribes have a disjointed, loose quality in their structure and minimalistic design; yet this assumed minimalism is tricky in that it allows for even more projection, puzzlement and suggestion for the spectators who will inevitably attempt to draw meaning from those glimpses of reported episodic life-experiences and will fill the blank spaces and ellipses left floating between ideas and letters with their own interpretative schemes. From an artistic perspective, Ian Anderson’s story fragments echo in a new way what has always been the designer’s primary intention: to use whatever tools necessary (humour, sarcasm, nonsense and illegibility) to report the multiplicity of what exists. While Bartle penetrates the crust of the earth to get a sense of humanhubris and materialistic hunger, Anderson captures the volatility and the overwhelming banality of human existence through words, showing how language inevitably remains at the surface of things, unable to cope, since it cannot escape our consciousness of what the poet and journalist James Agee described as “the cruel radiance of what is”. Responding to Bartle’s disquieting reportage, Anderson’s stories also report loss, death and breaks in the course of things, thus creating perpetual motion and at the same time always evoking a certain finality… But an endless finality!

Let us thus bring to Bartle’s and Anderson’s works of art our own physicality and suggestivity and allow meaning to eternally shake and escape us.

About the artists

Ian Anderson

Born before England won the World Cup in Croydon, London's erstwhile orbital city of the future. Ian studied Philosophy at The University of Sheffield (1979 – 1982). As a designer he is self-taught. He declared The Designers Republic on Bastille Day 1986 in Sheffield (which he dubbed SoYo™ North of Nowhere™).
TDR's work is credited with defining the visual language of dance music, electronica and the Playstation gaming generation, post-flagship title WipEout. Ian has worked with architects such as Sadar + Vuga, built environment developers Urban Splash and RREEF, fashion designers such as Issey Miyake and currently Rick Owen, and has developed global branding campaigns, identities and Special Projects for the likes of Coca Cola, Sony (including Aibo), Nokia, Telia, MTV and Nike.
In 1994 Rudy Vanderlans dedicated an entire issue of Emigre Magazine to TDR. In 1996 TDR had their first NYC show at Artists Space. In 2001, their book 3D>2D was the biggest selling UK architecture book. In 2006 Ian was co-curator of Echo City, The British Pavilion at the 10th Venice Biennale for Architecture.
In 25 years Ian has lectured to over 70,000 people around the world, had over 25 'solo' TDR exhibitions, launched The People’s Bureau For Consumer Information and The Pho-ku Corporation, had a good time but still not managed to finish the TDR book.
Anderson currently continues to run The Designers Republic, and is also Creative Director (comms) for EXD (The Lisbon Biennale) and The Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, a patron of Site Gallery, a member of AGI, a writer of columns, an educator (running Design Thinking courses at Universities in Manchester and Sheffield), an exhibited artist and, when the moon is full, he DJs as Pho-Ku Polluted Rockers.

Richard Bartle

Richard Bartle is a Sheffield-based artist. He graduated from Bretton Hall College with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 1997 and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University in 2004. Since then has been living and working as an artist in his home city of Sheffield. He has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe, including a major solo exhibition in London in 1999, as well as recent projects in public galleries and international venues, especially in his second home of Istanbul. Bartle has many works in both private and public collections, including Goldman Sachs Bank and One Aldwych Hotel in London.

Apart from his fine art practice Bartle is also the founder and Director/Manager of Bloc Studios. Often described as one of Sheffield’s key creative entrepreneurs, Bartle has been providing studio spaces and exhibition facilities for artist in the city since 1997. Bloc is currently home for over 60 artists studios and the highly successful gallery and curatorial body, Bloc Projects.

Bartle says about his work: “I have always sought to observe the fundamental driving forces behind society and its ideas of political, economic, and philosophical progress. Douglas Adams’s witty model set out in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy summarizes three basic stages of social evolution: Survival (how do we eat), Enquiry (why do we eat), and Sophistication (where do we have lunch). In my work I attempt to identify and examine these ideas of progress, exposing the tension that exists between utopian ideals of civilization, the ethics of modern society and the basic human drives of survival, procreation and spiritual need”. Bartle works in a broad variety of media including painting and collage, sculpture, installation, and video.

Supporting the arts in Sheffield

Although DLA Piper is one of the region's largest law firms, you won't be surprised to know that our interests don't stop at commercial law. We play a significant role in supporting and investing in our local communities, because this is where our business leaders of the future come from. Our partners and employees are not just lawyers and professionals - they're also members of our local community and so our office is home to a rich tapestry of interests. One of these is art. We believe that by working together, business and the arts can create a richer society and we are proud to host this inspiring exhibition. The initiative offers us the unique opportunity to support two leading Sheffield-based artists, promoting their work whilst generating awareness of the city's artistic talent. It is vital that the private sector supports local programmes like this - the exhibition demonstrates perfectly the way in which the commercial world and the arts can collaborate, for the benefit of both worlds.

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