Sports Meets Arts in ‘Inspiring’ New Exhibition Launch
Jul 19th, 2010 | By Editor | Category: Burton StuffBurton’s Brewhouse Arts Centre is getting ready to launch its latest exhibition as the worlds of sport and art collide for ‘Away Pitch’.
Created as part of the national Olympic Open Weekend, Away Pitch is an innovative photography and poetry exhibition created by local artist Vitor Azevedo.
Twenty visual artists, including painters, sculptors and ceramicists, have donated artworks for the project. They include London artist Paul Debois, Elizabeth Harris, Kirsty Smith and Andrew Mason. All the artists have a relationship with the Brewhouse and with Staffordshire.
Their work has then been taken into the homes of local sports people who have then recorded their responses to them in books, photographs and on recorders.
The sports people include Alison Williamson, an archer for Team-GB, Jenny Booth, Gold medal winner at Atlanta 1996 for Paralympic Swimming, sprinter Alex Nelson from Stoke on Trent, Keiran McAvoy, Newcastle under Lyme’s Sports personality of the Year, BMX Four Cross Mountain bike rider and boxer Frazer Clarke from Burton Upon Trent.
The exhibition will be launched with a special event on Friday, July 23rd at 7.30pm and will be on show at the Brewhouse until Saturday, August 7th when it moves to venues across Staffordshire.
The open evening includes a newly commissioned dance performance choreographed by Rachel Huyton, and poet and playwright Kev Fegan, who has created poems for the exhibition, will be reading a new poem.
Refreshments will also be available from the bar. The project has been awarded the Inspire Mark by Cultural Olympiad and received funding from Arts Council England through the National Lottery as well as support from district councils across Staffordshire.
People can book tickets by calling the Brewhouse on 01283 508100. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.
Also on Friday, July 23rd, the Arts Team have organised a special challenge for the borough’s knitters.
From 3.00pm at the Brewhouse join in the Knit Away Challenge, a special event for the Cultural Olympiad weekend (bring knitting needles and wool in the Olympic Colours if you have them!)
The completed squares will be used in the Knitting for Africa project and sent to Operation Snowball – a group of African school children who will knit the squares together to make blankets for the townships.
