A survey of Leeds School of Arts Fine Art Student Gallery activities, an experimental and open site caring for the art it stages.
Art school galleries are in-between spaces, where what students are making as artists begins to transform as it reaches an audience. Their energies can reflect, or challenge, other more established art institutions: places of experimentation, negotiation, interaction and sometimes awkward accommodation. Their shows and displays can be fresh, original, free from certain expectations of what art should and shouldn't look like, testing ideas and approaches.
Situated at the heart of Leeds Beckett University, White Column is Leeds School of Arts Fine Art Student Gallery. Always open and always free, the gallery offers through exhibitions and events an experimental site caring for the art it stages.
The White Column publication reflects all the gallery's activities since its inception in October 2023, contextualised by original essays and contributions including: Gavin Butt discusses with Marion Harrison the past and present of art school galleries, further contextualising White Column. Acclaimed graphic designer Russell Mills (Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails) revisits his past as a path for future students. Avant-garde American experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs discusses with Mathieu Copeland his major 2023 retrospective that took place in New York University's Broadway Windows gallery, as an invitation for us to consider the endless possibilities of our own window gallery. "In the beginning" envisages White Column's initial history as an invitation for all to shape what is yet to come. And the Guerrilla Girls ultimately bring to White Column "the conscience of the art world".
A window gallery opened to the world, White Column's exhibitions are invitations for socialising through works of art made public.
Multimedia artist Russell Mills has exhibited internationally and has created numerous site-specific immersive installations in the UK and abroad. He is also known for his award-winning album covers for Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, Michael Nyman and many others and book covers for works of Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera and Graham Swift.
A pioneer of the American film avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s, Ken Jacobs is a central figure in post-war experimental cinema. From his first films of the late 1950s to his recent experiments with digital video, his investigations and innovations have influenced countless artists.
The Guerrilla Girls are anonymous artist activists who since 1985 use disruptive headlines to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics, and culture. They believe in an intersectional feminism that fights for human rights for all people and have done hundreds of projects all over the world, recently at Leeds School of Arts and Tate Modern, London.
Gavin Butt is a writer and creative researcher who explores the connectedness of visual art, popular music, queer culture and performance. He is Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle. His book No Machos or Pop Stars is a detailed cultural history of the subversive influence of UK art school on popular music culture.
Edited by Mathieu Copeland.
Contributions by Gavin Butt, Mathieu Copeland, Katie Crowe, the Guerrilla Girls, Marion Harrison, Ken Jacobs, Julia Kelly, Leanne Kovarovic, Russell Mills, Megan Wainman.
Graphic design: Darren Hepworth, Fendi Asemota, Hollie Walker.
