We Think the World of You
People and Dogs Drawn Together
David Remfry MBE RA
11 May until 29 September 2024
David Remfry (MBE RA) has long been fascinated by the relationships that develop between dogs and their owners. This exhibition reveals the mutual understanding and sympathy of these partnerships. The artist started a series of drawings 15 years ago in New York when Remfry, a resident of the infamous Chelsea Hotel, began to explore the relationships between friends and their dogs through evocative pencil and watercolour portraits. Among the sitters are well-known faces including Alan Cumming and his rescue dog Honey, Susan Sarandon and her Pomeranians, and Ethan Hawke with his dog Nina.
Remfry was born in 1942 and studied art and printmaking at the Hull College of Art.
Since 1973, he has exhibited at galleries and museums across the UK, Europe and the USA, and he was made an MBE in 2001 for services to British art in America.
Remfry was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2006 and a decade later he was appointed professor of drawing at the Royal Academy Schools.
Events
Doggie Sundays: Enjoy a rare opportunity to visit the gallery with your canine companion! Dogs are welcome on Sundays, until 29 September.
Children’s Activities: Watch this space for details of school holiday activities for families. Find fun things to do in the Mercer – add a picture of your favourite dog to our paw-trait wall, read some dog-themed stories, and try our ‘299 Dogs’ jigsaw.
Eva Leigh Walker
11 May until 29 September 2024
Exquisite portraits by a little-known Harrogate artist capture faces from the 1920s and 30s.
A group of drawings by Eva Leigh (1895 – 1981) came to light when the Mercer’s volunteer team inventoried the Harrogate Art Collection. They were entranced by the delicate studies, a few of which had been displayed in the past, but many were still unmounted and had never been exhibited. With very little record of the artist, work began to piece together her biography. The story emerged of a talented, yet now largely forgotten, artist whose work reflects a particular moment in time.
Born in Bradford in 1895, Eva Walker showed early artistic talent, attending art school in her teens before moving to Harrogate. Adopting the name Eva Leigh - her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, she established herself as a portrait artist and undertook commissions from a wide variety of patrons, many of them visitors to Harrogate spa. Among others, her sitters included H.R.H. Princess Victoria, actor Jimmy Forbes, Caroline Ingilby from Ripley Castle, Sir John Barbirolli and the entire Hallé Orchestra.
Many of these fascinating portraits remain tantalisingly anonymous. There are still many aspects of Eva Leigh’s life and career to discover, it’s hoped that visitors to the exhibition may be able to add more pieces to the jigsaw. Her work certainly deserves wider attention, and her life story is an interesting touchstone to a particular time in Harrogate’s spa history.
This research and the accompanying exhibition have been made possible thanks to generous support from the Friends of the Mercer Art Gallery. Dr Fiona Young’s painstaking research has brought the life and work of this talented artist back into the public eye.
Power and Identity: Five Women Filmmakers
Curated by Cherie Federico, Director, Aesthetica Magazine
South Gallery
1 until 30 September 2024
September sees an exciting new venture for the Mercer. In partnership with York-based international contemporary arts organisation Aesthetica, the gallery will show a specially curated programme of works by five contemporary women filmmakers.
Time-Based Media refers to art that is dependent on technology and has a durational dimension, for example, video, film, audio or digital. The Mercer has only recently developed the facilities to show this type of exhibition.
Founder and Director of Aesthetica, Cherie Federico has curated a bold selection of work by five international artists, all of whom have received Aesthetica awards at previous stages of their prestigious careers.
The five films explore themes such as colonial legacies, nation building, diaspora, the ethics of representation, and the impact of war. They reflect the human experience, with moments of joy and euphoria, as well as pain and loss.
The five artists are:
- Rhea Storr
- Michelle Williams Gamaker
- Jasmina Cibic
- Manjinder Virk
- Juliana Kasumu
The five films will be played on 75 minute loop and the audience members can sit for its entirety, of for as many of the short films as desired.
Content guidance: Adult themes discussed, viewer discretion is advised.
Rhea Storr, an artist of British and Bahamian heritage, examines her identity as a multiracial person in her short film A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message. Storrs intersperses contemporary and historical footage of the West Indian Carnival in Leeds.
Celebration is a protest at Leeds West Indian Carnival. A look at forms of authority the short film asks who is really performing. Following Mama Dread's, a troupe whose carnival theme is Caribbean immigration to the UK, we are asked to consider the visibility of black bodies, particularly in rural spaces.
Rhea Storr is an artist filmmaker from Leeds of British Bahamian heritage, who explores the representation of Black and mixed-race cultures. Masquerade as a site of protest or subversion is an ongoing theme in her work.
Rhea Storr often works in 16mm film; she considers that analogue film might be useful to Black artists, both in the aesthetics it creates and the production models it facilitates.
She is resident at Somerset House, London and occasionally programs at the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 and the inaugural Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize. She was educated at Oxford University and the Royal College of Art.
Length 12 minutes.
Known for her inventive filmmaking and screenwriting, Michelle Williams Gamaker draws on the classic movies from early Hollywood and British cinema that she watched growing up. Thieves is a fantasy adventure retelling of The Thief of Bagdad, a silent, black and white film from 1924, which was remade in colour in 1940.
Thieves evoke early cinema and Technicolor classics, blending practical and analogue methods of special effects with contemporary technology to combine past and present filmmaking.
Michelle Williams Gamaker is a Sri-Lankan British award-winning moving image artist. Since 2014, she has been developing Fictional Activism: the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures, who return in her works as brown protagonists to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.
By proposing critical alternatives to imperialist storytelling in British and Hollywood studio films, she interrogates cinema by sabotaging the casting process and utilising cinema’s tools against itself.
Length 27 minutes.
Jasmina Cibic’s film Tear Down and Rebuild (2015) was shot inside the preserved modernist architecture of the former Palace of the Federation in Belgrade, Serbia (formerly part of Yugoslavia). It presents a debate around arguments to rebuild, renovate, or destroy buildings, monuments, and cultural icons that no longer serve contemporary political contexts.
Cibic’s film features an all-female cast; a Nation Builder, a Pragmatist, a Conservationist and an Artist/Architect. The film’s dialogue is composed from quotes drawn from various political speeches. The sources for the script include amongst others: Regan’s speech on the Berlin Wall, Prince Charles’s 1984 address at RIBA and ISIS bloggers’ proclamation on the demolishment of temples as well as examples from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Benito Mussolin.
Jasmina Cibic is a Slovenian performance, installation and film artist who lives and works in London. Her work often explores the construction of national cultures, their underlying ideologies, political goals and uses, as well as the soft power of the arts, particularly architecture. She was born in Ljubljana.
Length 15 minutes 28 seconds.
Manjinder Virk’s award-winning Out of Darkness explores the experience of death through the eyes of one Aid Worker. The narrative is made up of nine different voices, each of whom represents a lost soul who haunts the conscience of the worker. Collectively, the figures tell a story of what it means to be in the presence of someone's last moments, from the peaceful passing of family members to the traumatic injuries of war – and the legacy it leaves on the living.
Actors include, Riz Ahmed a British Pakistani actor, rapper, and activist who’s made history as the first Asian star to win an acting prize at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Jimmy Akingbola, recently seen in the coveted role of 'Geoffrey', trusted advisor to Phil and the Banks family in Bel-Air and Tom Hiddleston known for his breakthrough role as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Out of Darkness won Best of Festival and Best Drama awards at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Other shorts from Virk include the documentary 23 Days (2020), made during lockdown, and Things We Never Said (2022) – she is developing the latter into her first feature-length film.
Having recently directed four episodes of Emmerdale (ITV) and in 2024, Virk is currently working on a short film about dementia in the Asian community, called DEKHO (Look), with Riverbird films.
Length 12 minutes 45 seconds.
“What Does the Water Taste Like?” is a short film directed by Juliana Kasumu, which explores the production of identity through the lens of the filmmaker’s personal experiences as a British-Nigerian. It combines intimate conversations with archival footage and contemporary visuals to create a dialogue between the past and present.
Juliana Oluwatosin Kasumu is a Nigerian-British artist and filmmaker based in London, Lagos, and New Orleans.
"My practice is characterised by fragmented, non-linear narratives regarding dentity formation, with my personal sentiments regarding transculturalism being at the forefront of the projects I have undertaken. My most recent project "What Does The Water Taste Like?" for example, is presented as a walk-through photo, video and sculptural installation. It is an exploration of spaces such as the Black hair salon and the Black church; sites where people gather and provide one-another a sense of security and familiarity. Using memory work as a catalyst, my recent work reflects my musings on neocolonialism, language, belonging and the ways in which Africa, Europe and The Americas continue to reinvent one-another."
Length 7 minutes 59 seconds.
New Light
Prize exhibition 2023 - 2024
In the Main Gallery from 12 October 2024 until 5 January 2025
Established in 2010 to celebrate and promote the visual arts in the North of England, this biennial prize exhibition is now one of the UK’s largest and most celebrated open exhibitions. It is touring Merseyside, London, Cumbria, Northumberland and ends its run in Yorkshire at the Mercer Art Gallery.