Bury Sculpture Centre launches with UK festival of language art

The new Bury Sculpture Centre will open on Friday 2 May with the borough’s fourth Text Festival.

A highlight of the festival is an exhibition by internationally renowned artist Lawrence Weiner, as well as exclusive appearances and commissions by practitioners from across the world.

The sculpture centre, next to Bury Art Gallery, has been developed as 306 square metres of white, airy space with restored parquet floors, plenty of natural light and retaining its Victorian architectural features. As part of the drive for culture to support the local economy, the new centre will host a number of international festivals and a conference in 2014 – bringing the best in international art to local audiences and cultural tourists alike.

The centre will be formally opened at 6pm by the Mayor of Bury, Councillor Sharon Briggs, with guest speakers Mr Greville Worthington (chair of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park) and Brian Ashley, the Arts Council’s national director for libraries. The text festival will officially begin at 7pm.

The text festival is a globally recognised event investigating contemporary language art incorporating poetry, text art, sound and media text, and live art. More than 60 international artists will participate, including an installation by Lawrence Weiner, revisiting his long association with the north of England. The text festival will host the London-based Drawing Shed running a project called Neighbour: Stranger which is a community writing and publishing project. The opening May weekend will featured many performers including American poet Ron Silliman and French-Norwegian Caroline Bergvall, plus live and sound artists from North America to Austria and Israel.

Bury people may know Ron Silliman's poetry very well without realising it: the neon sign at Bury Metrolink, "Poetry has been Bury, Bury Good To Me”, is written by him. His new book "Northern Soul" is written in response to his experiences in visiting Bury and features a cover photo of old Bury in the 1950s. He is one of America's leading poets and performs at The Met in Bury on Saturday 3 May.

In the autumn, as part of Asia Triennial Manchester, Bury Sculpture Centre will present ‘Remix’, an exhibition of European and Chinese contemporary sculpture curated by David Thorp, an independent curator based in London. David has been Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Henry Moore Foundation and International Adjunct Curator PS1 MoMA, New York as well as Curator of Frieze Art Fair Sculpture Park 2005 -2011. He also holds the position of Associate Curator at Platform China, Beijing.

The show will include works by David Blandy, A. K. Dolven and Richard Wilson. This exhibition will be accompanied in Bury Art Museum by exhibitions of Russian new media in partnership with National Centre for Contemporary Art in Moscow, and Chinese photography from Beijing.

Tony Trehy, Bury’s arts manager and director of the text festival, said: “Launching with an artist of the calibre of Lawrence Weiner signals the international ambition of the programme we have planned for the launch year of the new Bury Sculpture Centre.”

Visit https://owa.bury.gov.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.textfestival.com/

ENDS

Press release issued: 23 April 2014.

Media opportunity: Reporters/photographers will be welcome to attend the civic opening of Bury Sculpture Centre – Friday 2 May, from 6pm.