Curator promoting the work of female artists
THE Art Fund’s website has revealed, ‘Mark Doyle, art gallery curator and collections manager at Touchstones Rochdale, has been awarded £65,000 to strengthen the existing holdings of work by female artists’.
Mark has been in post since January 2016 and has already built on the foundations laid by Daren Grice and Tom Besford with an ambitious programme.
He is quite a capture, having previously worked as assistant arts and museum officer for East Devon Council, curator of temporary exhibitions at the Lowry, established a scheme in the north of England for the Contemporary Arts Society and worked on Going Public, a big project in Sheffield.
I recently caught up with Mark in the Art Cafe at Touchstones, where he outlined his vision for the future.
He said: “I hit the floor running, revising the exhibitions and acquisitions policy down to three main strands that build on historic strengths.”
The strands are Women Artists, Northern Talent and Contemporary Craft.
Mark explained: “Rochdale Art Gallery has a reputation for promoting female artists.
“Clare Kenny, who we currently have an exhibition with, talks about the difficulties of being a female artist and getting work exhibited, how she is often the token female in male dominated exhibitions and her work does not command the same prices as her male counterparts.
“As a male I take a lot for granted, doors open for me, but that same door might not be as wide open for a female.”
The Northern Talent strand is about promoting artists in the north of England, with a particular focus on young emerging talent.
Mark said: “We want to give them the opportunity to work with a collection, to have their first solo exhibition in a public collection, to hopefully buy work from them so that it enters the collection and enables them to experiment, try new things and bring their work to new audiences.’
The third strand, Contemporary Craft, builds on our industrial heritage.
Mark said: “We are going to continue the great work already done around the cross-over techniques that are associated with craft and are now being used by fine artists like Tracy Emin, who is using embroidery and appliqué, and Grayson Perry with his pottery and embroidery.
Rochdale has a strong legacy of working with materials and processes, techniques traditionally associated with craft that are now crossing over into fine art.”