Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

OverWorlds & UnderWorlds taking place in the city 18th, 19th & 20th May 2012.

Alex Croft takes a v-bloggers look at the launch

Moira Innes, Director of Leeds Met Gallery and Studio Theatre writes …

On Light Night – October 7th – we launch the Dormitorium, an exhibition by the Quay Brothers of what they call film decors and having sorted out all the pragmatic details we spent time last week with the Brothers discussing the installation. The connotations of Leeds Town Hall Crypt seemed perfect to add to the dark mystery suggested by this series of miniature film sets.

Stephen and Timothy left charged by the potential and so in a couple of weeks’ time we will set about transforming the venue from being a fully functional hall into a darkened world.

Physically dark with internal lighting to lure you to come closer, the glass cases are filled with enigmatic scenes that invite you to complete the narrative. Dolls taken apart and re-assembled, lush fabrics, neon signs, strange contraptions.  A different era.  Quills and lenses to look through.

The unheimlich comes to mind where you are viewing something uncomfortably familiar or is that uncomfortably strange, where you are not afraid or shocked but simply unsettled.  How do we make sense of all this?   When I saw the exhibition some months ago, I found my mind flowing in and out of stories and making wonderfully irrational connections between the various decors.  There was no right or wrong path, only my imagination.

For many this will be the first encounter of the dark and mysterious world of the Quays but they do have quite a cult following and I have had several approach me who are keen to work on the exhibition.  This enthusiasm is so refreshing and offers the ideal scenario where knowledgeable staff will be able to engage visitor in the work.

This exhibition, can be seen as the first tangible step in the journey we want to take you on as we work towards the realisation of The Quay Brothers in May 2012.

The exhibition runs 8 October – 3 November

Tuesday – Friday, 11am – 5pm   Saturday 11am – 4pm  with an informal tour at 1pm each day

7 October, 6pm – 10pm Exhibition open as part of Light Night

The Brothers Quay have been invited, as part of the Arts Council’s Artists Taking the Lead Olympiad programme, to create an art work of significant scale using the city of Leeds as the canvas.

The Project Coordinator is an exciting and demanding role at the heart of this ambitious and complex creative project. The Coordinator will support the Canvas Project Board and the Leeds Creative Producer in the run up to Leeds Canvas 2012. They will work alongside a range of partners, including the city’s key cultural organisations, community groups, Leeds City Council, local business and volunteers to enable the Quay Brother’s transformation of hidden spaces in the city to be realised in May next year.

Part time Freelance contract: October 2011 – June 2012.

For full details and job brief, please click here.

Deadline for applications (a letter and CV please) Friday 23^rd September. To dara.romaniw@wyp.org.uk

To the Brothers we also said, ‘We want to do things we have not done before. Whatever we create we want it to exhilarate, inspire, scare, disturb, create contradictions, strike awe. We want something that could not happen anywhere else but Leeds, yet will surprise and amaze Leeds. We want to reveal parts of the city we don’t know and reinterpret the parts we do, we want Canvas to become part of the way people talk about Leeds.’

A tall order?

What has excited me about Leeds Canvas is how, as producers and curators, we have all had to let go of our natural instinct to define what we are looking for and shape what we are offered. We’ve stuck throughout to the one basic principle: the artists take the lead, we respond. Our job is to make possible what the Brothers imagine.

We are some way into that journey, wrestling with their dreams and the reality of eight companies learning to work together, of preparing the sites for the amazing things the Brothers want to create in them, all the complicated stuff: how much dreams cost, what can we do and what will we be allowed to do, how we place fragile things in a fast flowing river, how we cast images in light places, how we suspend children’s voices in ether.

Dreams and reality. Come October we will announce how we will deliver both. Meantime sign up and keep in touch

Our hope is that Canvas will not be for 2012 only, but every four year we will be able to say to artists – here is our city, here is your canvas.

Steve Dearden

Associate Producer, Leeds Canvas