'Adam' being transported from London to Blackpool, 1939.
image courtesy the Local and Family History Centre, Blackpool Central Library
Jacob Epstein’s carving ‘Adam’ was first shown in Blackpool during the 1939 summer holiday season. During this time Jacob Epstein was a household name, synonymous with the negative opinions aimed at modern art. His works of Biblical subjects incorporating nakedness and sexuality were sensationalised by the press. The showing of 'Adam' was to be the start of a fascinating relationship between Epstein’s work and Blackpool that would stretch to 1961.
The showing of more of Epstein's major carvings followed: 'Jacob and the Angel' in 1942, and by 1958 'Genesis', ‘Consummatum Est’, 'Adam' and 'Jacob and the Angel' were displayed together in Louis Tussauds on the Promenade. Their showings have become regarded as being derogatory to artworks which now reside in major UK public collections and considered amongst the most important of the twentieth century.
Jacob Epstein and Blackpool looks back at these showings through a selection of the press coverage that was generated at the time to revaluate the events and reveal that they were not the freak shows at the fairground they have been branded by art critics and commentators in recent times, but a story of the clash between Modernist high art and popular culture.
Blackpool exhibited Epstein’s work when the art establishment would not, always proclaiming it to be great art. It brought its marketing and showmanship expertise to modern art and drew massive audiences by doing so. Epstein was top of the bill.
The exhibition is funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
26/06/2010 — 11/09/2010
Extra Ordinary
Brian Griffiths, 'Beneath the Stride of Giants', 2004. wood
Collection The Saatchi Gallery, London. Commissioned by Camden Arts Centre, London
Blackpool has an important history of sideshow and fairground entertainment, which showcased the exotic, the amazing and the bizarre. With a resurgence in the popularity of such entertainment in recent years Extra Ordinary purposefully sets out to embrace this culture, looking at magic, horror, clairvoyance and spectacle, but removes its focus from the exotic to include artworks that find the extraordinary within the mundane. The exhibition is funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and kindly supported by Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
The exhibition brings together artworks formed from everyday objects, or familiar routines and experiences repositioned to become absurd or magical. It includes Brian Griffths' 'Beneath the Stride of Giants', a vast maritime vessel, part real part mythical, constructed of salvaged furniture and discarded material. Annabel Dover likewise reinvents forgotten objects in a series of drawings entitled 'Pyschometry', which illustrate ornaments taken to a psychic to reveal their past encounters.
Simon Patterson's film ‘Escape Routine’ focuses on the familiar in-flight safety demonstration enacted through the magic routines of Harry Houdini. The regular demonstrations involving oxygen masks, lifejackets, escape routes etc. juxtaposed with the escapologists’ famous routines.
Nina Könnemann’s dream-like films ‘Typhoon’ and ‘Talon’ are shot against collaged Hollywood film posters, animated through the imaginary re-enactments of the twists and falls of the rollercoaster rides from which they take their titles.
Shimabuku's ‘Born as a Box’ and ‘King Box’ humanize and enlarge to epic proportions the simple cardboard box with humour, a quality also present in Sofia Hultén's work 'Familiars', a series of films in which members of the artist’s family construct situations in their home intended to induce fear and unnerve each other.
