New Exhibition

New work by artist duo features the surreal and the humorous

If you go down to the Woods Today

Paintings and Sculpture by Andrew Livingston & George Morris

Visitors to past Sculpture Trails at Hardcastle Crags may be familiar with Andrew Livingston and George Morris' popular sculptures, Couch Potatoes and If Pigs Could Fly they wouldn't need ladders. Their latest exhibition , which opens at Gibson Mill Art Exhibition Centre at Hardcastle Crags on 5 July until 10 August, sees the return of ‘the pig' to the millpond along with their latest surreal and humorous paintings.

The exhibition features sixteen paintings, both new and re-worked paintings. One of the new paintings, also the title for the exhibition, If You Go Down to the Woods Today , a large four foot square painting, is set in Hardcastle Crags itself and features one of their sculptures within it. Produced for the annual Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail in 2003, Couch Potatoes , featured a luminous pink resin sofa on which were seated a giant Mr and Mrs Potato head. This became one of the most photographed pieces on the trail with visitors taking photographs of family, friends and animals alongside the sculpture. In this painting the couch potatoes are joined by a posse of bizarre characters including Wonder Woman, Tarzan, Wild Man Fisher, Spock and Karl Marx.

Gibson Mill itself appears in another painting, Scary Tea Break, as the backdrop for an equally odd group, this time characters from horror movies. There is Freddy Krueger along with Bela Lugosi and Chucky from Child's Play and, in the middle of all this mayhem, the incongruously grinning face of Arnold Schwarzenneger.

La dolce vita features another motley crew including Boris Yeltsin in nothing but a bra and party hat gorging and drinking at a dinner party serenaded by Elton John and the Three Degrees.

In one of a series of paintings, the artists' combine Ovid's Four Ages of Man with the life of Elvis Presley and depict the decline of ‘The King' from the god-like, coiffered-haired, toned youth in Golden Age to the bloated figure of Iron Age.

The exhibition is open 11am to 4pm weekends, Wednesdays and School Holidays

Admission is £3.20 for Adults and £1.60 for children and free on Saturday 5 July.

For further information contact: 01422 844518 (weekdays) or 01422 846236 (weekends) or email hardcastlecrags@nationaltrust.org.uk

Ends

For press information, photographs and interviews please contact: Alison Darnbrough
Email: alison.darnbrough@btopenworld.com/ Tel: 07879 438916 (Mobile)

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Images of the work

Electronic images are available of the work in the exhibition in Jpeg or Tiff formats.

Artists' statement

Humour is very important in our work and we both share a similar sense of humour which makes working jointly quite an easy thing to do. Our style and colour palettes are quite similar but we do bring different things to each piece of work.

Sometimes the work is inspired by music, as in the case of the Zappa paintings, or ideas can be sparked by something in the news or events in history that seem particularly relevant to today. The work is often quite surreal and bizarre but most of all, we hope, humorous.

We have been working together since 2001 and our way of working has developed over that time. At first we worked on themes for a painting series, discussing ideas and sketches but working independently on the actual paintings. Our first collaboration making a piece together was Couch Potatoes in 2003. It was not until mid 2004, however, when we started working on The Collectors series that we began working jointly on paintings.

We begin by discussing ideas for a new series and then work independently on drawings and then come together to discuss which of these might become paintings. We each then start a different work, sketching the composition in and may even swap these between us until we feel they are right and then begin painting. We usually work on 3 or 4 paintings at one time and these will pass between us until we feel they are finished.

The paintings develop organically. We rarely discuss who is going to paint which part of the painting initially. Sometimes the paintings change as they progress, things may be deleted or other elements added. Sometimes we paint alongside each other in one or the other's studio but also separately.

Whilst we have different painting styles, our colours are very complimentary and most people find it impossible to tell who has painted what. Above all, we have a very similar sense of humour and perhaps this is why it works.

To see more see www.bauwel-movement.co.uk

Gibson Mill

Gibson Mill is a 19th-century cotton mill that sits at the heart of Hardcastle Crags. The Mill has been brought back into use as a facility for visitors and for the local community. This ground-breaking project has renovated the Mill as a model of sustainable development , being run with minimum impact on its environment. The £1.6 million project was funded jointly by the Heritage Lottery Fund , Yorkshire Forward and other sources.

History of Gibson Mill

Gibson Mill sits at the heart of Hardcastle Crags, a beautiful wooded valley punctuated by the stacks of millstone grit called crags. Gibson Mill was built around 1800. It was one of the first generation mills of the Industrial Revolution. The Mill was driven by a water wheel inside and produced cotton cloth up until 1890. In 1833, 21 workers were employed in the building, each working an average 72 hours per week. In the early 1900s, Gibson Mill began to be used as an ‘entertainment emporium' for the local people. The facilities included dining saloons, a dancing hall, a roller skating rink, refreshments kiosks and boating on the mill pond.Since the Second World War, Gibson Mill has lay largely unused, until now when the Mill opens to the public for the first time in 50 years.

23 June 2008