'96 Tears' Paul Conneally - Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

'96 Tears' (installation view) Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

'96 Tears' is a piece in response to the question 'Where do our morals come from?' for the Scaffold Gallery show 'The Great Unanswered Vol III'.

It consists of 96 screenshots from the artists iPhone of photographs tagged #moral on the social media site Instagram - the 96 'most recent' posts tagged #moral. These were then each directly colour laser printed on a Xerox photocopier at A4 size, put in an envelope and sent to Will Marshall with some emailed suggestions about how they might me exhibited with the final decision left to him and colleagues at Scaffold. The result is a triptych of boards each with 32 tears pasted to them, the boards leant against the gallery walls rather than hung directly and flat to the walls.

The sound you should carry in your head or better still sing or hum as you view and interact with the work is the song '96 Tears' by ? and the Mysterians (1966). If you don't know the song here it is:

In an age where many including the artist spend hours viewing and interacting with screen based media we might consider to what extent the internet now informs our morals.

'96 Tears' takes images found in the digitally coded world and returns them to the chemically coded world. The images are time coded and might also be seen as a portrait of the artist as he sat on his sofa watching TV, searching Instagram on his iPhone at the same time for the most recent posts tagged #moral.

The passing on physically of the images through the postal system rather than by email or digital dropbox to Will Marshall, the curator at Scaffold Gallery, a gallery which itself has no permanent physical presence is an essential component of the work including the 'link and shift' inherent with the freedom given to Will to exhibit the works in a way that he felt best fitted the space, a space that was initially not decided when the work was first envisaged.


'96 Tears' (two panels of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016


'96 Tears' (one panel of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016


'96 Tears' (detail) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016

All photographs are by Scaffold Gallery 2016
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Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan

Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan
This is a wonderful and not to be missed exhibition of photographs by Francis Harrison.

The exhibition is put on by Charnwood Arts / Pixel & Grain at Charnwood Museum, Loughborough, UK and runs from the 7th of October to the 1st of November 2015.

Free Entry

Paul Conneally
Sept. 2015

Small Worlds - New Art Gallery Walsall

Small Worlds

21 May - 6 September 2015

Floor 3

Today, we live in a fluid culture where, within our towns and cities, different languages are spoken, different cultures and religions prevail and we can consume materials and goods from throughout the world. TV, the Internet, advertising and new technologies bring the whole of the world to our doorstep. High streets are becoming more generic with local distinctions and characteristics becoming increasingly obscure.

The artists in this exhibition focus their attention on the urban environment. Their work allows us to reflect on a variety of considerations. How do we understand the concept of the local within an increasingly globalised context? What impact does the transformation of our local environment have on our identity and our communities? For some artists, Walsall provides a focus for a consideration of the impact of social and economic change in those areas on the periphery of our major towns and cities.

Participating artists include AirSpace Gallery (Andrew Branscombe, Anna Francis, Glen Stoker), Graham Chorlton,

Rita Donagh, Richard Forster, Cameron Galt, Andreas Gefeller, Naiza Khan, Stuart Layton, Lucy McLauchlan,

Laura Oldfield Ford, Mark Power and Rashid Rana.

Many of the works selected are from Walsall's Permanent Collection including an international collection of works on the theme of the modern metropolis jointly acquired by The New Art Gallery Walsall and Birmingham Museums Trust, in partnership with Ikon Gallery, and with the support of the Art Fund through Art Fund International.

Saturday 25 July, 2pm

Join Head of Exhibitions and curator of Small Worlds, Deborah Robinson for an informal tour of the exhibition. 

Just drop in!

Image credit:  Rashid Rana, Language Series 3, 2011, lightjet print + DIASEC, 270 x 360cm. Presented by the Art Fund under Art Fund International for joint ownership by The New Art Gallery Walsall and Birmingham Museums Trust, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery.  

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