Limousine Bull

Limousine Bull is an artist-directed, non-profit-making organisation based in Aberdeen. 

Limousine Bull aims to provide a social/ professional focus for contemporary artists in North East Scotland in all their diversity.

Limousine Bull aims to promote, organise and manage the presentation of events and exhibitions; to improve and advance the production and appreciation of contemporary arts for the public of Aberdeen and the North East and the members of the Collective.

Current featured artists

Stephen Hall - Retrospective (synopsis)
Exhibition: 31 October – 14 November 2005

'The paintings and drawings exhibited here present a glimpse into my journey as an artist.  These are not solely my works as fine art, but also some pieces from my foray into the world of illustration.  Whereever my artistic endeavours have lead me, my love of light, colour and the surreal have always been included in the mix. Most important for me is to keep on the journey and not come up with just a formula, but to continue exploring .....'

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Stephen Hall moved to New York in 1978 and began exhibiting his work in the East Village in the early 1980s. Since then his work has been featured in exhibits throughout the US, as well as in Japan, Korea and Mexico. Images of abstract shapes, still life forms or surreal figurative motifs are rendered as symbolic metaphors, contextualised as such by the use of intense vibrating colours, ambiguous light sources and spatial dynamics.

Eva Merz - SPACE/RETAIL/MAGIC
Exhibited: 10 – 25 June 2005

Three large-scale photographic collages (200 X 400 cm), each containing around 1000 single images, depict three sites in three towns in the Northeast of Scotland.  SPACE/RETAIL/MAGIC reflects concerns about supermarket development and decline in rural areas, specifically concentrating on the sustainability of large-scale supermarket buildings and the visual impact they have on our towns and cities.

# 1. MARKET MUIR, Huntly. Aberdeenshire Council had already advertised this public site for sale and Tesco had put in an offer to buy it, when the locals protested unanimously against it.  The plans were subsequently dropped.

# 2. TESCO, Inverurie. This old Tesco has been abandoned for a couple of years since a new, much bigger store was built across the road. It shows how the old, smaller Tesco version looks.

# 3. SUPERSTORE, Elgin. This new 24-hour superstore has replaced a smaller outlet just across the road in Elgin town centre. Also the building has changed. The parking lot is extremely big; no space has been wasted for trees and flowerbeds.

Eva Merz is a Danish artist who came to Scotland in 2003 as an artist in residence in Huntly, Aberdeenshire. Since May 2003 she has lived and worked in Aberdeen.  Her earlier project EMPTY SHOP/MODERN MONUMENT, focusing on retail development and decline of smaller independent shops in rural towns, is directly linked to SPACE/RETAIL/MAGIC.

Susan Brown - Subtleties Within
Exhibited: 11–23 April 2005

Susan Brown works with the idea that something cannot exist without its relative other.  She explores the relationship between object and space through installation. By consciously choosing materials that directly oppose a particular theme, she creates environments which generate a paradoxical tension between the product and its original context.

Susan Brown graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2002 and lived in Aberdeen for two years where she continued to develop her practice. She has recently designed and produced two artists’ books, exhibited in London and been selected to make a short film for Triptych04. The documentary film ‘Rootes’, which follows her struggle to convince a Mississippi blues musician to take a ride in a Hillman Imp car, won best film in the Triptych Film Competition.  It has since been nominated for the Audience Award at the prestigious Commonwealth Film Festival in Manchester.

'Subtleties Within' is Brown’s first solo exhibition. The Limousine Bull project space in Aberdeen will house the installation, experimenting with spatial composition, colour and subtle use of the written word. It is the third exhibition in the collective's new warehouse accommodation.  The opening night featured a live sound performance from the artist Ziggy Campbell in reaction to the installation.

Juliana Capes - Love Letters to the Sky
Exhibited: 1March - 12 March 2005

'At eight oclock, floating downlike, you send a softness that I don't notice until I tilt my head back to look at you in a streetlight. I see layers of intimate clouds and you sparkle rain on my face to make me close my eyes.  You are in mottled tones tonight, hushed without moonlight, spun in deep and dappled cobalts....'

Limousine Bull presented a solo show from Scottish artist Juliana Capes, who made a temporary installation, 'Love Letters To the Sky', for the new gallery space.  Juliana Capes is an Edinburgh-based artist best known for her sculptural installations. Capes lives and works in Edinburgh and works with a broad range of materials and contexts, enjoying the alchemy of stuff and peculiarities of places.

Recent exhibitions include: 'Magazine' at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in Edinburgh 2004; 'Pavement Astronomer' Extension, Glasgow Art Fair 2004 and 'What’s love got to do with it?', Market Gallery, Glasgow, 2004.

Martine Myrup -Whiteout
Exhibited: 18 March – 31 March 2005

Martine Myrup’s work repeatedly strives to reflect her interest in the fleeting moment and in the idea that in order to build, something must be destroyed.  She wishes her work to be seen as a trace of an action, a hint of a story.

Martine Myrup’s research is focused on literature about past explorations, mainly polar, in which she looks for geographical metaphors, the moments in between the scientific and the personal: descriptions of man’s often futile attempt to fill the void they encounter, be it ocean, polar icecap or desert.  She tries to project this inherent attempt into other spaces. Through this she strives to incorporate what is already there - small signs of decay, flaws, traces of other events - to add another layer, to hint at another narrative. By using everyday, non-precious materials, to appropriate what is at hand and shifting scale, she tries to bring the void closer, to domesticate it.

Her works are playing as discreet interventions, futile attempts to turn the mundane into the epic.  Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Martine Myrup graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2002. Recent projects include work made for ‘Tutu’ (2004) a Glasgow-based, artist-made book and ‘Disparate Measures’ (2003) group show at Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow.

Anne Bulmer - Touching the Light 
Exhibited: 11 October – 22 October 2005

'Touching the Light' is an installation of photographs where the viewer can interact by moving between the translucent prints suspended from the ceiling.

'I want the viewer to feel they can “touch the light” by creating a stimulating, inquisitive and tactile environment where the physicality of colour is considered most important. The use of colour itself becomes interactive through the performance and how it describes itself compositionally on the film.

The viewers interaction becomes part of the installation by how their shadows fall, shortening the distance between the artist and the subject by the viewers interaction, creating an experience rather than a final product'. This new body of work is from a collaboration with Richard Wheater, a Leeds-based neon/glass artist.

The neon performance was independently constructed. Anne was the viewer/documenter.

Multiple-exposure and time-lapse photography are used to give the images an ethereal quality, describing the landscape, the people involved and their use of colour as opposed to the more the personal subject matter using the figure which can be seen in Anne’s previous works.

Anne Bulmer graduated in 2000 from Staffordshire University and has been living and working in Aberdeen since. Anne has shown in solo and group exhibitions in Scotland, England and her 'States of Mind' exhibition is currently showing in Norway.

Collaborations

NexusProjects - Encouraging artists to form and access a larger nationwide network of contacts.

Conceived to forge stronger links between artist practitioners and artists’ collectives working in Scotland, NexusProjects was a group of artists from Limousine Bull Artist’s Collective (Aberdeen) who had each been paired off with a member from Aurora Projects (Edinburgh). These pairs of artists worked together, communicating by email and telephone, to produce collaborative artwork that was displayed at a geographical ‘half way point’ in Dundee.  This project was conceived and instigated by Lindsay Brown, Limousine Bull.

Opportunities with Limousine Bull

Cake - call for submissions

Cake is an artist space which exists in A5 booklet form. Produced once a month with a limited edition of 100 copies for each issue, Cake features the work of both undergraduate and professional artists, showcasing Fine Art, Comic Art, critical and creative writing. The space is open to all, art students, writers, professional artists and so forth.  Submissions must be no bigger than three pages and reproducible in an A5 Black and White format. As Cake is an ongoing venture, submissions are welcomed at any stage but final deadlines for any issue is the 25 of the previous month. Submissions may be made electronically (images in JPEG format, written submission as Rich Text) to cakecomic@hotmail.co.uk or hard copies/disks sent to Fraser Denholm, C/o Limousine Bull Gallery and Project Space, Unit 3c, Deemouth Business Centre, South Esplanade East, Aberdeen, AB11 9PB.

Lifedrawing

Limousine Bull hold weekly Life drawing sessions in the project space.  There are no tutors (unless asked for)and the session is very informal.  It cost £2 for members and £3 for non-members (this covers the cost of the model).  Lifedrawing takes place on a Wednesday night for two hours, and starts at 7pm.  Artists are free to use whatever medium they desire and request their own poses.

Recent exhibition - Passport to Torry

Exhibition: 17 – 25 September 2005

Exhibiting Limousine Bull member artists are: Lindsay Brown, Lois Carson, Jonathan Claxton, Joanne Campbell, Donna Ferenth, Gemma Grant, Tamsin Greenlaw, Anita Hayward, Sera Irvine and Lisa Kirton. 

Limousine Bull took part in 'North-East Open Studios 05' which is an Aberdeenshire-wide event where galleries and studios are opening to the public as part of a collective programme.

On this occasion the participating members strove to identify themselves with their new community.  To achieve this, the members created new work around the theme of ‘Passport to Torry’. This theme was intended to be entirely flexible and open to interpretation.  Exhibitors had been encouraged to not only centre work around the project space, but also around the Burgh of Torry, using this theme to explore topics such as identity, nationality, class, birth, belonging, segregation, acceptance, immigration (to name but a few).

As part of the Passport to Torry event, artists met on the beach below Torry Battery on Sunday 18 at 11am to create work with the resources available to them found on the beach. Artists who took part were Lindsay Brown, Lois Carson, Mariana Carson, Anite Haywood and Tamsin Greenlaw.