In the BAG

 

I am not - at this distance - sure who came up with the idea of BAG.  But I was certainly one of the prime movers of the idea of Birmingham Artists Group around 1975/6 after I'd completed my Fellowship in Cheltenham and returned to the city. I was either hanging around the Ikon Gallery or had just started my JCP year working there.

We tried to set up a group studio but were stymied by a lack of imagination from both the City Council and West Midlands Arts.  Not to be thwarted we approached Sandwell Council who were far more co-operative and gave us a variety of locations to set up studios in ones and twos of us.  Once we got going we applied for funds from both Arts Council and others.  Group exhibitions followed - advertised through the Arts Council Exhibitions Bulletin that went out to venues across the UK.  This allowed us to access venues up and down the nations.  We devised a number of shows themed loosely, Paper BAG was one with drawing as the anchor for the diversity of practice within the group.  I don't recall how many outings the several shows achieved but it was quite a few.  That said it was exhausting - I do recall myself and Stuart Reid driving a Luton van back from Aberdeen with a show and passing Derby early one morning (around 1:30 am.) and pondering the fact that neither of us had work in that particular offering!  Stuart left for London shortly after. I moved on to the East Midlands not long after that.  BAG continued to flourish but the show at the Holt Gallery, in Birningham's Arts Lab was probably the last outing for both of us "in the BAG".

Snaps from the Open Studio

The last post here gave an introduction to The Open Studio at the University of Derby. It mentioned the importance of Photography as an artform within the School, something that has its origins in the 1950's and reached the pinnacle of its recognition in the 1970's under the guidance of Bill Gaskins and then Nigel Trow. Between them they brought into the teaching staff luminaries such as John Blakemore, Paul Hill, Richard Sadler, and Olivier Richon as well as a host of other major figures in the emerging Fine Art photography community. The course was almost unique in that for a number of years it was shared with the then Trent Polytechnic. The 'glory days' were somewhat behind us when we set up the Studio though I'd like to think we endeavoured to show that the medium was still celebrated even though it was now part of a broad based range of degree courses in Art & Design. But for a brief time we managed to assemble a quite stellar crew - John Blakemore, Sarah Jones, John Goto & Mark Durden amongst several other fine photographers. Alongside the 'big hitters' with long track records we had many other fine practitioners working in a variety of capacities and the work of Matt Jones, who ran our Mac Lab, is shown above.

Visitors featured in several of the exhibitions and one of them, Richard Mosse is now himself very much one of the big names in global Fine Art Photography. His Broken Spectre has received much praise in the past few years. At Derby he mounted an early solo show Nothing To Declare.

Part of the community were the PhD students, many of whom have had subsequent (or in some cases prior) success in their chosen field. One such was Antonia Bardis from Athens via the US and Goldsmiths College whose Manmade Environments ran from 19 Nov. 2008 to 30 Jan 2009 in The Corridor Space on the Markeaton Street campus - the main thoroughfare to the Library.

Although photography as a fine art practice had always been the primary focus at Derby we did try to expand the portfolio and David Bryson (work above) was one of the staff involved in this. We ran an interesting programme for some time that was devoted to still and moving image in the more scientific area, though sadly we couldn't attract enough students to maintain it. Nonetheless David was an important contributor to the wider ethos that resulted in a Commercial Photograpy degree running alongside the more art-inflected offering.

Post graduate students are an important component of any thriving academic research community, it is often the Masters students who are first to break 'new ground'. The image above is one such from Stephen Monger. Stephen was on his Masters course when he participated in a fortnight long residency in Cornwall selected from an open call for participants and organised by my colleague John France. His practice involved the painsstaking creation of a scene that he then photographed.

The Open Studio

I spent some fifteen or so years working at the University of Derby. I joined it a few years after it pulled off the remarkable feat of going from a College to a University sparking the gap as it were of Polytechnic status. Just over twelve months after I arrived (ostensibly as a short term contract of three months)I became the 'Acting' Dean of the (then) School of Art & Design. Six months later I was given the job for real. The first two years were tough but luckily I was aided and abetted by a really good bunch and we revalidated every course, survived three inspections and 'steadied' a badly listing ship. For a few years we were able to re-establish something that approximated a 'proper' Art School...no mean feat in a University. Of course there came a reorganisation in which we became a Faculty, with the Engineering School tacked on to us along with the Humanities courses (it might have been more ridiculous - the first plan was to amalgamate Art & Design with Health, that their Dean wittily suggested was because "they made the drugs and we took 'em").

One of the things that was a lot of fun though was The Open Studio - that we set up as a result of the research funding we were given after the 2001 RAE (Research Assessment Exercise. It enabled the School to support a number of exhibitions, inviting in artists from outside and enriching the student experience. The establishment of the Studio was accompanied by work by Peter Finnemore.

Over the years many artists mounted shows of their work. Inevitably given the School's long time excellence in Photography quite a few were included, some Masters and PhD students, others with no previous connections to the place. But the painters amongst us managed to include some shows too...

Above a canvas by Thomas Hylander, a recent Royal College graduate, below a painting on board by Sarah R Key, a previous graduate from Derby with a body of work that constituted part of her PhD submission at Loughborough University.

Of more recent times...

Nowadays I'm not as busy as I was.  In fact more often than not I'm hardly pushed at all!  When we can, other obligations., funding etc., we try to get away.  Over the past few years we've been fortunate to obtain residency opportunities in both Cornwall and Shetland that have enabled us to spend time in these wonderful locations for artists whose work still depends on stimuli from such experiences.  Here I'm using the phone camera to capture something of the Cornish coast in a very benign winter evening.  The Cornish trip was especially good.  It took place right on the tip of Cape Cornwall, for most of history believed to be the most westerly point of the county, only to be superseded by Lands End when 'proper' measurement came along.  But Lands End has been privatised, with all the consequent degradation we might expect.  The Cape, saved for the nation through the good works of Heinz (our beans and soups contributing), is only a few miles north but a world away from the commercialised nightmare of the 'End'.

It's a great place to sit and think but also to make work, like the painting above, that I've titled Priests Cove.  As so often with my paintings anyone looking for a representational view will be disappointed  but I like to think that I capture something of the spirit of the place.