UNIVERSITY
of DERBY
Press
Release
International artist donates Picture to Derby
Contemporary artist Julian
Broadhurst has donated his recent piece ’Tiepolo & the Rape of Europa’ to
the university of Derby.
Originally from Derby,
National and International Artist, Julian Broadhurst has a long association
with the University. It has though been
nearly 10 years since he last exhibited in Derby.
Created originally for the
exhibition ‘The Rape of Europa’, at London’s ‘Luke & A’ Gallery in
Mayfair. Megakles Rogakos of Tate Modern Curated the show and each piece was
themed around that Greek myth.
Such a themed exhibition
would be quite a problem for an Artist known mostly for Minimal Geometric and
Abstract Work. He solved this problem by quoting a tiny strip from the 17th
Century Italian Master Tiepolo’s ‘Rape of Europa’, and repeating it as Bar like
stripes behind his signature ‘Tracery’ of circles and lines, projecting a tension, with misleading
Multiple Perspectives.
After the Show he was looking for a permanent home for the piece. Quite
Monumental in size, he wanted a ‘Prestigious public Space’. He says “I was
considering several places when a friend in the University’s Print Dept said
well what bout here. It’s a public Space and has gorgeous new Architecture, I
thought well why not Here ?” This will be his first Public piece in his
Hometown. He says “I have worked with
the university’s Print and Graphics departments for some time now, planning
work, making Documentary prints even designing billboards and advertisement
panels for international Art magazines. I have allot of friends here and I
support the university, it’s right for me to give the University a work.
Reaction here has been fantastic from the top down, I feel a part of it. The
new library here is gorgeous architecturally. I’ve loved it since I first saw
it. The stone wall of the Library’s atrium, where my Work is now, is a very
fine sighting, you can see it from all over the ground floor”. He has also a large permanent piece in
Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral that will feature in this years Liverpool
Biennial Art Fair.
The piece itself is an ‘A double Zero’ (about six
foot by four) sized one off ink print on a laminate panel, in Grey white and
black it is framed in stainless steel. The picture is a geometric ‘tangle’ of
interlacing lines and multiple perspectives underlain by those 16 parallel bars
quoting Tiepolo. It is the eleventh of a
series of twelve images produced for the Luke & A Gallery called ‘The
Tiepolo Studies’. He says of the work “I have a passion for parallel lines and
the Op. Art styling, usually in a stark black on white, of lines and Forms as
pure shape - where people can’t take it all in at once. I presents multiple
possible readings of before of behind. It can be conflicting and unsettling,
sufficient I felt, to convey the
turmoil and struggle of Zeus’s rape of the Princess Europa in the Greek myth,
without my having to actually represent it and give up my cherished
abstraction.
Broadhurst’s Tiepolo & The Rape of Europa is now installed in the University’s library’s
atrium at the Kedleston Road campus. It will be formally Presented to the
university’s Vice chancellor Professor Roger Waterhouse and our head of Art
David Manly on July 8th at 10:30 am.
Serjeet Badhan
For further information
please contact the Press and PR Officer, Serj Badhan, on Tel: 01332 591891/ 591942/
591041 or via email pressoffice@derby.ac.uk
Kedleston Road
Derby
DE22 1GB