Family life, working relationships, love stories and close-knit communities. This wide-ranging exhibition examines how artists take inspiration from our personal and communal bonds.
Some artists, like Tracey Emin and Arthur Ballard, have chosen their own personal relationships as the focus of their work. Others, such as the Victorian painters Alice Havers and Leghe Suthers, look at the role that society plays in controlling and censuring the actions of the individual in society and within the family.
In the middle of the twentieth century a group of artists working in Lancashire, now referred to as the Northern School, began to explore the effect of industrialization on our communities. While LS Lowry crafted images of alienation and despair, contemporaries like Roger Hampson and Harold Riley reflected on the strong personal bonds that adversity can create.
More recently Linda Stein’s Gender Scrambling series of prints questions the accepted power balance inherent in stereotypical relationships. Similarly, David Hancock re-tells familiar stories from the classical past to create a space where roles are not defined by gender.
The Ties That Bind
25 May 2024 – 15 March 2025
- A Christening Party, François Antoine de Bruycker (1816–1882). Atkinson Art Gallery Collection.
In this painting a woman who has recently given birth is being visited by her neighbours and relatives. Her husband is being gently but firmly excluded from the ‘women only’ gathering. It was common in the 19th century for women to have a lengthy ‘lying-in’ period after having a child, often from 30 to 40 days, usually followed by the christening and ‘churching’ of the mother to reintroduce her to wider society.