A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:The artist herself has shared part of her experience on her blog:Su Blackwell: Remnants
21 August - 28 November 2010
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Artist Su Blackwell is returning to Yorkshire next week to open an exhibition of new work, Remnants, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire. Sheffield-born Su Blackwell studied for her first degree at Bradford College of Art and Design before going on to complete an MA at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. Su Blackwell will create a series of site-specific installations, inspired by the museum collections, for exhibition in the historic rooms of the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The exhibition opens on Saturday 21 August 2010 and has been funded by The Radcliffe Trust and Arts Council England as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s contemporary arts programme.
Su Blackwell creates book-cut sculptures; intricate three-dimensional illustrations cut from the pages of books, and inspired by the stories inside. In this exhibition, Su will develop the scope and scale of her sculptures to create a series of site-specific installations responding to the Brontës and the Parsonage collections. The final works will be displayed amongst the Brontës’ own possessions in the period rooms of the museum.
Su Blackwell often works within the realm of folklore and fairytales, and Remnants will respond to Wuthering Heights as well as the themes of childhood, imagination and storytelling. The series of delicate interventions will suggest the Brontës’ imaginary worlds and hint at a spirit world still present.“Su Blackwell’s work is exquisite and we are delighted to be working with her. Much of the museum’s collection is paper-based, and there are many connections between Su’s work and the Brontës, not least their use of paper as a precious material. Paper was an expensive resource in Victorian times, and the tiny books made by the Brontë children were created from scraps of wallpaper or discarded paper, and used in imaginative ways. The exhibition will explore these many connections through a programme of supporting events”. (Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer)Su Blackwell was born in Sheffield and studied at Bradford College of Art and Design, before graduating with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2003. Su’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco and Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her work has appeared in numerous advertising campaigns including commissions for Volvo, Pilsner Urquell and Cartier Stores, Paris. She lives and works in London.
The exhibition runs until Sunday 28 November 2010 and is free on admission to the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The museum is open daily 10am until 5.30m from April to September, and 11am until 5pm October to March. For admission prices see www.bronte.info.
I am intrigued by the mystery that surrounds the Brontë family, and by the Moors that surround their once family home. Wuthering Heights was one of the first books I read, and is still a favourite of mine. Not least because I have personal associations with it. I remember my nan giving me her copy of the book, when I was about ten years old. I drove from London to Haworth last week to begin my research in the Museum Library. There were many inspiring objects on display, but I am still in the early stages of my research, and am not sure which direction I am going to take yet. (15 March 2010)
It has come around so quickly! I’m just putting the finishing touches to the ‘works’, for what has been, and will be a most inspirational, and challenging project for me.Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum
I will be there for the Opening Night, with guest speaker Kirstie Hamilton from Museums Sheffield, to welcome you to the Show. I hope to see you there. (10 August 2010)
A press release from the Brontë Society:Artist Su Blackwell will return to Yorkshire next week to talk about her current exhibition, Remnants, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, on Thursday 21 October at 7.30pm at the West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth.Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum
Sheffield-born Su Blackwell studied for her first degree at Bradford College of Art and Design before going on to complete her MA at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. The Brontë Parsonage Museum commissioned Su Blackwell to create an exhibition of new work for the museum, inspired by the Brontë collections.
London-based artist Su Blackwell creates intricate miniature artworks using antique books and paper. Her exhibition for the Brontë Parsonage Museum takes inspiration from the stories surrounding the Brontë family and features a series of site specific installations in the period rooms of the house. For the Children’s Nursery, Su has created an installation inspired by the Brontë children’s imaginary kingdoms. Miniature churches, castles and a Mill on a river – complete with turning waterwheel – form the back-drop for a battle between the Brontë children’s toy soldiers. Elsewhere, linen-cut moths fly from a Brontë nightshirt on the bed. A Victorian dress hangs in a window, laser-cut with heather patterns to represent Emily Brontë’s favourite flower. In the Dining Room, the pages of a book turn as if by an invisible hand.
Su will talk about her unique paper-cutting techniques and way of working, as well as her inspiration for the Remnants exhibition, with Grant Gibson, editor of Crafts magazine. Tickets cost £5 and can be booked from Arts Officer Jenna Holmes: jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.
The talk features as part of a series of activities and workshops taking place at the museum during the exhibition. On Saturday 23 October, visitors to the museum will be able to try paper and book-inspired creative activities led by artist and bookbinder Sarah Brown. This is a drop-in event that is free with admission to the museum. On Wednesday 27 October, a half-term holiday workshop for children aged 6-12 will take place with local artist Rachel Lee, making paper-art inspired by the Remnants exhibition. Places cost £5 per child and can be booked from susan.newby@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640185.
Remnants runs until Sunday 28 November 2010 and is free on admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum. It has been funded by The Radcliffe Trust and Arts Council England as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s contemporary arts programme.
The museum is open daily 11am until 5pm. For admission prices see www.bronte.info.
Artist Su Blackwell is preparing for a solo exhibition of her new work, Remnants, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.Also in The Telegraph & Argus there's a letter asking for urgent preservation work in a couple of places at Haworth. One of them closely connected to the Brontës:
Su has been commissioned to create a series of installations, inspired by the museum’s collections.
Su creates book-cut sculptures; intricate three-dimensional illustrations cut from the pages of books, and inspired by the stories inside. In this exhibition, she develops the scope and scale of her sculptures, responding to the Brontës and the Parsonage collections.
Remnants include her take on Wuthering Heights, as well as themes of childhood, imagination and storytelling. The installations suggest the Brontes’ imaginary worlds.
“Much of the museum’s collection is paper-based, and there are many connections between Su’s work and the Brontës, not least their use of paper as a precious material,” says arts officer Jenna Holmes.
“The exhibition will explore these many connections through a programme of supporting events.” (Emma Clayton)
I now wish to highlight two areas in the Haworth conservation area that desperately require investment. Item one to preserve it and item two to bring access up to an appropriate standard.The Brontë Spirit initiative (a partnership between Haworth Parish Church and The Cellar Project) was working in that direction but we don't know what its current status is.
1, The Old School Room, in Church Street. This building was originally constructed by Patrick Brontë in 1832 as a National Church Sunday School and is of great historical imortance to Haworth. The building, while being wind and watertight, requires major restoration and conservation works totalling £1 million. This would create a building for public access that provides a stage and auditorium for shows and lectures, and area for exhibitions, meeting rooms for local groups and societies, an archive room, a Victorian school room together with associated facilities. (John Collinson)
Dame Judi Dench was named as the most popular person to come out of York. She was closely followed by the Brontë sisters (this geographical pedantry business is too tiring), Captain Cook and Michael Palin.Is it pedantry to associate Yorkshire with the Brontës? Both are inextricably connected and it is difficult to understand one without the other. Is it pedantry to link together Mark Twain and the Mississippi? Cervantes and La Mancha? Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon? Wagner and Bayreuth?...
The Leeds trio have decamped to Heckmondwike to work on the B-side of a forthcoming single. "It's a really nice part of Yorkshire," Nestor says. "It's written about in all sorts of Brontë novels." (Duncan Seaman)On the Anniston Star a story about tennis, Wuthering Heights and teenagers:
My boy seems to have accepted the fact that tennis players work hard at their game. This is a kid who loves sleep better than pizza, yet this summer he got up at 7:30 in the morning, voluntarily, to play.But it is even more impressive to mix polar coordinates with Wuthering Heights. On Mother Jones:
Now, if we could just get him to bound out of bed to read Wuthering Heights. (Harvey H. Jackson)
Not bad for a mathematical technique [polar coordinates] most schoolchildren learn before they even have to read Wuthering Heights. (Joe Kloc)Paperback Writer interviews author Tina Murray:
What are a few of your favorite genres and why?Antilogic recommends Jane Slayre; Reviews of Joan Soward's Chocolate Roses: Writer in the Pines and Kaylee Baldwin; Unhyphenated American is reading Jane Eyre (and watching Jane Eyre 2006); Charlotte Brontë's novel is also listed on Les plus beaux romans d'amour. Illuminara posts a home movie with dolls, Jane Eyre: Scenes from My Life. Finally Peony Moon posts some poems by Katrina Noemi belonging to Charlotte Brontë's Corset.
Early on, I enjoyed classic mysteries by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Dorothy Sayers. I enjoyed romantic suspense novels such as Rebecca. I enjoyed standard romance, too, novels such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and, as a girl, I enjoyed gothic novels. I’m pretty well grounded in such genre classics.
It is perhaps his most inspired piece of casting since Bruce Willis played Bruce in What Just Happened (by the way, we all know what just happened to Michael Colgan -- his love for theatre led him, via Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, to an OBE, but I digress). The artistic director extraordinaire of the Gate has cast Andrea Corr as Jane Eyre in his new production at -- well, where else? -- the Gate. (...)Well, we don't know about Christmas, but what we do know is that the production opens next November 4. The blogosphere is now echoing the news: Enchanted Serenity of Period Films, Andrea Corr Network...
The talks have been fruitful and after several meetings with Andrea and director Alan Stanford, Colgan was able to tell me "Andrea is going to play opposite Stephen Brennan as Lord [sic] Rochester in a special production of Jane Eyre at the Gate this Christmas." (Barry Egan)
Did stalkers exist before mobile phones and the internet? I can’t imagine Jane Eyre having a stalker sending salacious missives deliv-ered by hand: “Oh, I can’t bear it, it’s from Mr Stalker! That’s twice in six months!”The Chicago Sun-Times presents the Lifeline Theatre's production of Wuthering Heights like this:
I've long been a sucker for Emily Brontë's tale of love and agony on the Yorkshire moors. And who better to adapt this novel for the stage than Lifeline veterans Christina Calvit and director Elise Kauzlaric, who teamed earlier for "Mariette in Ecstasy"? (Hedy Weiss)A letter to The Anniston Star happens to mention Heathcliff in a somewhat twisted context:
I think that somewhere, somehow in your youth, you starred in a stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights, naturally playing the role of Heathcliff. The strange thing is I always had Heathcliff as a dyed-in-the-wool, far-left Democrat until he became a gentleman of substantial means, at which time he jumped the track and became a Tory. (T.J. Summers)If Terry Eagleton reads this he will have to revision his Myths of Power ASAP.
One of the most interesting and thought-provoking events I attended was an appearance by A.S. Byatt who read from and discussed her latest novel, The Children’s Book, a Man Booker shortlisted title last year. (...)Bildungsroman reviews Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere; Nazione Indiana posts about Charlotte Brontë (in Italian); ScribbleManiac revisits the trip by the Brontë family to Bolton Abbey in 1833; What Does Your heart Desire? posts about Sue Blackwell's Remnants exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage. MissionVerdopolitan has discovered Google Search Story and posts three: Patrick Brontë, Charlotte Brontë and Branwell Brontë. Finally the author Michelle Helliwell confesses her love for Wuthering Heights.
She provided new perspectives on a host of subjects by sharing thoughts like how she felt that Hans Christian Andersen was a sadist (she never got over reading The Little Mermaid!), that she identifies with the persecution of children in novels such as Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre and that she feels the Orange Prize is sexist (it’s for writings by women). (Janet Tay)
So how did Ms. Brontë make me want to read and re-read a book full of characters I hate? Don’t know. But I keep going back to find out.Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Theatre
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