MK Gallery900 Midsummer BlvdMilton Keynes MK9 3QAT +44 (0)1908 676 900info@mkgallery.org

For more information about our schools, colleges & universities programme, please contact:

Hannah Gaunt, Learning Coordinator

T: 01908 558 305E: hgaunt@mkgallery.orgW: www.mkgallery.org/education

This document has been prepared by MK Gallery’s Learning Department for use by teachers and educators in schools, colleges and universities.

It provides an overview of MK Gallery’s exhibitions in 2012 / 13, serving as a resource to support forward planning, and alerting you to possible opportunities for a group visit with your pupils or students.

Exhibition Programme 2012-2013

About the ArtistsHemmed In: Embroidery and Needlework from MK and Beyond presents work from the 1930s to the present by over fifty practitioners, organised with MK Embroiderers Guild (Milton Keynes’ local branch of the nation’s leading craft organisation) and Jamie Chalmers (an active leader in the “new embroidery movement”, otherwise known as Mr X Stitch).

About the WorkRanging from the local to the international, the exhibits include needlework through unusual media, techniques and unexpected subject matter, including street art, rock music and internet spam.

Jamie Chalmers aims to bring the world of cross-stitch and embroidery to a new audience and to restore embroidery to the heart of the art world. The works on view at MK Gallery will offer an expanded, radical and alternative view of contemporary embroidery from stitchers across the world, and demonstrates the unusual directions it is taking internationally. It will include an embroidered car door from Severija Inčirauskaité-Kriaunevičiené from Lithuania, Erin M. Riley’s Shotgun tapestries and Tilleke Schwartz’s hand embroidered masterpieces.

Additionally, the MKEG have challenged their members to represent ‘Milton Keynes in an eight-inch square’, to create small, needle and thread portraits of their favourite places in the city. The results constitute a real celebration of the city in stitch. In addition to work by the members, the exhibition includes a number of rare and significant pieces on loan from national collections, including such luminaries from the embroidery world as Rebecca Crompton, Rachael Thompson, Julia Caprara and Beryl Dean.

KeywordsEmbroideryCross-stitchNeedlepointTextilesTapestryNeedle feltingStreet ArtMilton KeynesTexturePatternPopular cultureInternet spam

Artist websites:www.embroiderersguildeast.org.ukwww.mrxstitch.com

Hemmed In:Embroidery and Needlework from MK and Beyond

7 December 2012 - 6 January 2013

Further ResearchConceptual artPublic artContemporary drawingAgnes MartinDavid MackintoshDonald JuddRaymond PettibonMarlene DumasNedko SolakovWerner Reiterer

KeywordsDrawingPaintingSculptureInstallationBodyMovementObservationRealityInterventionSpaceStories

Artists Websiteswww.silviabaechli.chwww.hattan.ch

About the ArtistsBorn in 1956 in Baden, Switzerland, Silvia Bächli lives and works in Basel and Paris. She studied at the School of Design, Basel and at the Ecole Supérieur d’art visuel, Geneva. Since 1993 Bächli has been Professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe and has exhibited extensively since 1982. She represented Switzerland at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.Born in 1955 in Wettingen, Switzerland, Eric Hattan is currently based in Basel and Paris. He has exhibited widely since 1990, with recent solo exhibitions at Galerie Weingrüll, Karlsruhe (2012); La BF15 Espace dʼart contemporain, Lyon (2011) and Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremburg (2011).

About the WorkSilvia Bächli creates simple, spare drawings and paintings. Bächli uses stark lines and greyscale washes to document her observations of the physical world. She has developed her drawing practice over the course of three decades, working on sheets of white paper, of different sizes, qualities and tones, and using Indian ink, charcoal, gouache or pastels. Using the body and its movements as a starting point, her work spreads into everything that can be considered part of the realm of feeling. The result is not just painterly moments; the drawings often seem to capture a cinematic way of looking at bodies and gestures. This is the first time many of these drawings have been exhibited in a public gallery.

Eric Hattan’s sculptures and installations have been exhibited in both public and private spaces. The work is playful yet disconcerting as he manipulates everyday objects in an attempt to present the viewer with different visions of the same reality. For him, “art is neither a product nor a solution” but “a work of transformation”. Following this premise, he intervenes in real space within an existing situation in order to shift the expected or pre-arranged. Hattan’s artistic added value is therefore based on a slight disturbance in what is familiar.

Eric Hattan and Silvia Bächli

18 January 2012 – 31 March 2013

Further researchDieter RothSister Mary CoritaSt Francis of AssisiArt PoveraAlberto BurriEnrico CastellaniPeiro ManzoniModernism

Key wordsValueWoodcut ParticipationAppropriationFilmSculptureGlass-paintingPerformanceReligionArt worldShame

Artist’s website:www.andreabuettner.com

About the ArtistAndrea Büttner was born in 1972 in Stuttgart. She has studied art history and philosophy and in 2010 completed her Ph.D at Royal College of Art, London on the subject of shame and art. She is currently professor at Kunsthochschule Mainz, Mainz and she lives and works in London and Frankfurt am Main. In 2010 Büttner won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, has recently exhibited as part of Documenta 13 (2012) and had a solo exhibition the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2007). She has exhibited widely in Europe and in USA and has participated in the Bienal de São Paulo (2010), the Wight Biennial (2006), and the Werkleitz Biennale (2006).

About the WorkAndrea Büttner works in a variety of media, sometimes using old-fashioned techniques such as woodcuts and glass painting, in addition to film, sculpture and performance. Büttner sometimes uses other people’s work in the form of readings or quotations, such as her 2008 audio work Roth Reading, where the artist recites passages from Dieter Roth’s 1982 diary that was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1982. She has involved others in the making process too; Little Works, 2007 was filmed, on the artist’s request, by nuns at the Carmelite nunnery in Notting Hill, London, and documents the production of their ‘little works’, handi-crafts produced for a thanksgiving festival.

Büttner’s woodcuts add another dimension to her practice and encompass various styles, some making historical references, particularly with regards to the mass production of devotional religious art, such as Vogelpredigt (sermon to the birds), 2010. Her geometric abstracts are painted on glass in a Modernist style, yet simultaneously reference church windows. Büttner uses religious values as a lens through which to examine modern life, and in particular her works question ideas of art, poverty, wealth, value and shame.

Andrea Büttner

April - June 2013 (dates TBC)