Acclaimed art exhibition takes inspiration from Virginia Woolf

Acclaimed art exhibition takes inspiration from Virginia Woolf

The University of Huddersfield's Dr Anneke Pettican has created a major art exhibition at Manchester's prestigious HOME, involving a host of research collaborations that included the National Trust and colleagues from other major academic institutions.

Rock, quiver and bend is a collaborative exhibition by Brass Art, comprised of Dr Pettican, from the School of Arts and Humanities, Dr Kristin Mojsiewicz from Edinburgh College of Art at University of Edinburgh, and Chara Lewis from Manchester School of Art at MMU.

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The exhibition features this voice; this life; this procession, a large immersive video work, inspired by a visit to writer Virginia Woolf's former home and writing shed situated in the grounds of Monk's House, East Sussex. The National Trust granted rare access to the three artists to scan the space and themselves within its interior using innovative scanning technologies.

The exhibition runs until Sunday 1 September 2024.

With the title taken from a passage in Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the work is accompanied by an electroacoustic soundscape made by composer Annie Mahtani, Professor at University of Birmingham, who collaborated with Brass Art on this piece.

The exhibition has received glowing reviews, with Sight and Sound Magazine describing it as 'spellbinding', and Corridor 8 saying it was 'beautiful, ethereal, and politically potent'.

Dr Pettican suggests, "The way that the laser scanner touches things enables intriguing shifts in perspective…I think people have found the experience of watching the film intriguing.

"There's a sense that people are slightly disorientated, they don't quite know where they are and the music emphasises that. A lot of people have told us how it made them feel. It seems to have touched people, creating an affective experience and that's been extraordinary."

One critic wrote, "Brass Art deploys technology to make reality tremble."

Woolf's writing informs many aspects of the work on display and audiences visiting the exhibition can see glowing mountainous sculptures, uncanny moving lightboxes, neon, video, drawings and photography.

Some of the work in the exhibition was commissioned by HOME through Arts Council England, whilst other work involved further creative collaborations including Manchester Museum, which lent botanical objects that were scanned, and Edinburgh's Royal School of Veterinary Studies, as well as Wakefield's Neon Workshop, the Business Innovation Centre at the University of Huddersfield, Edinburgh Futures Institute and Print City at Manchester Metropolitan University.

"One of the things that's been really amazing is the way that the public have responded to the work," says Dr Pettican.

"We have had messages from people who we don't know, as well as people in the art world. The public have been very effusive about so many aspects of the work, and we are delighted that they have enjoyed this exhibition which is infused by light and all sorts of light-based technologies."

Brass Art would like to thank the many special individuals that have supported them in making the work on display. The neon work 'Click' is dedicated to the memory of Michael Power - chief librarian at Chetham's Library.

Photo credits: Michael Pollard, Jules Lister, Brass Art