Grundy Art Gallery Winter Programme
15 January 2025
by Visit Blackpool
Grundy Art Gallery welcomes 2025 with a programme of exciting, inter-generational exhibitions and events with a local flavour. From the Annual Schools’ exhibition that gives a voice to the creativity of our local schoolchildren to the annual Open Exhibition which platforms artworks made in the previous 12 months by people from across Blackpool and the Fylde Coast.
Alongside this, the winter programme will see the Grundy continuing to show works from the collection in new and surprising ways and see the gallery continue its professional development support of artists based locally and elsewhere, through the Turning Point exhibition programme.
Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council and Chair of Grundy Art Gallery Steering Group said: “I am delighted to be announcing the launch of Grundy’s winter 2025 programme. A highly anticipated time in the Grundy’s calendar, winter sees the gallery burst to life with hundreds of artworks made by our local schoolchildren and residents alongside works from the Grundy collection and special projects by artists from the region and beyond. Brought together under one roof, these exciting displays underline the important role that creativity plays in our everyday lives.”
EXHIBITION PROGRAMME
18 January – 8 March 2025
ART MOVEMENT: Annual Schools’ Exhibition
This year's Annual Schools’ Exhibition is titled, ‘Art Movement’ and focuses on how visiting an art gallery and viewing artworks can make us feel. In November and December last year over 200 pupils from St John’s Primary and Holy Family Catholic Primary visited the Grundy to experience our exhibition programme. Here they viewed a selection of drawings, animations and large scale video projections that variously explored the idea of ‘stimming’ which is the act of repeating physical movements, words or sounds. As a behaviour, ‘stimming’ is common to most people at some degree or another, but it is especially prevalent in those who are neuro-diverse and who use stimming to self-regulate emotions. Responding to the brief to draw how the artworks they saw made them feel - the children have produced a gallery full of colourful, expressive, gestural artworks that energetically explode off the page.
COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT: All the Feels.
Collection Spotlight exhibitions are a regular feature of the Grundy calendar and provide an opportunity for visitors to see works from the Grundy Art Gallery collection presented in new ways. Our first Collection Spotlight display of 2025 is called All the Feels and is made up of artworks chosen by the Grundy team. Echoing the brief provided to participants of the Annual Schools' exhibition, Grundy team members were asked to select the Grundy collection based on how that artwork makes them feel.
OPEN 2025: Annual open submission exhibition.
Grundy's annual open submission exhibition once again promises to give visitors an insight into the diverse and dynamic creative practices underway across Blackpool and the Fylde Coast. With increasing numbers of submissions year on year the Open Exhibition continues to be a highlight of Grundy’s annual calendar.
GROUNDING: Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill
Grounding is a research and development project to explore the slow act of walking, thinking, observing, and making - leading to creative responses and new ways of thinking about place. Focusing on the Fylde coast, artists Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill aim to reveal new understanding of familiar journeys and landscapes through slow and embodied experiences, reconnecting to ourselves, each other, and the land.
Alongside research findings and new artworks, Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill have also selected artworks from the Grundy’s collection to accompany their display. For some of these collection pieces, this will be the first time that they have been displayed at the Grundy.
UPON A PAINTED OCEAN: Hondartza Fraga.
Selected to accompany Grounding, Hondartza Fraga’s animation, Upon a Painted Ocean focuses on the sea as its subject. The work was first shown as part of the artist’s 2015 exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery and was made as a response to the gallery’s collection of Dutch seascapes. Rather than being a backdrop for depictions of military and economic power, Upon a Painted Ocean, seeks to bring focus back to the sea itself and its natural power and elemental presence.
Image Credit: UPON A PAINTED OCEAN, 2015. Hondartza Fraga (animation still). © and Courtesy the artist.