Farm City

Farm City

An exhibition by participants of a 4-day workshop exploring the Compton Verney Folk Art Collection with José Sunshine-Okoro and Tess Radcliffe of Outside In

Opening Event: Friday 18th March, 5.30-7.30pm

Exhibition Opening: Sat 19th – Sat 26th March, 12-4pm (not Mon or Sun)

Farm City

… unearthing the nature of the city

This exhibition is curated by 5 contemporary artists / creatives

Taiwo Ajose – Mark Cook – Dion Ellis-Taylor – Tarla Patel – Madeleine Snowdon

who were participants of an Art of Curation workshop led by José Sunshine-Okoro and Tess Radcliffe of Outside In, a national arts charity supporting artists facing barriers, and supported by Oli McCall, a member of the curatorial team at Compton Verney.  The participants were supported to explore the Folk Art collection at Compton Verney in Warwickshire and to work together to develop a curatorial narrative which they have been able to realise in a pop-up exhibition at Arcadia Gallery.

One of the key themes of the Compton Verney Folk Art Collection, an evolving collection of objects and paintings representing ordinary community life, often made by trades and crafts people with no formal artistic training, is rural and agricultural life. This inspired the group to explore the city’s relationship with its rural past, present and future.

Coventry’s relationship with agriculture has changed considerably with industrialisation over the past 150 years, leaving traces in street and place names; relics of farm structures hidden amongst the city streets and quiet places, community allotments, disused and overgrown spaces. Coventry Health Club (1940s) and, in the heart of the city, a community farm (1983 – 2008)  re-engaged urban with rural life. Today the city continues to be repurposed as a place for planting and for the nurturing of people and communities. 

More about the artists / co-curators of the exhibition:

Mark Cook is a Coventry-based historian engaging communities in telling their stories, tracing Coventry’s rural past and identifying what remains today.

Madeleine Snowdon is a Warwickshire artist, interested in the psychogeography of forgotten urban spaces. In this project she finds local histories and shared memories of places within the city.

Tarla Patel is a lens based artist, local to Coventry. Her areas of interest are memory, space and identity. For this project she is looking at plots of land that are unused and overgrown with local fauna.

Dion Ellis-Taylor is a Coventry-based artist driven by human/Nature relationships, responding directly to objects and paintings in Compton Verney’s Folk Art collection and the Outside In collection.

Taiwo Ajose is a self-taught Birmingham-based artist-curator, specialising in oils – driven by storytelling, community and identity. For the project, she coined the idea of a ‘Pharma-City’, where nature is a healing tool to its inhabitants.

More about the workshop leaders:

Artist and curator José Sunshine-Okoro leads through her practice as an artist and digital curator exploring opportunities to engage audiences with museums. Past projects have included Future Possibilities Lab, working with artists Barbara Walker, Divya Kasturi and Shaheen Ahmed and Birmingham University to explore geological connections with culture, difference and language.

Tess Radcliffe is a freelance artist (digital, photography, moving image), consultant, curator and educator. Previously Tess worked in the museum, art gallery, library and archive sector for over 15 years in various organisations across the West Midlands, where she was responsible for managing exhibition and curatorial programming, audience development, community engagement, interpretation, learning and volunteering. New projects include exhibiting films alongside DJs at events, and working with the travelling and fairground community to create new work and to highlight the artistic and cultural heritage of the fairground.

New composite image entitled weathervane by Dion Ellis-Taylor, 2022 

• CVCSC-0174.F-Hand-Weathervane-with-stand-©-Compton-Verney-photo-by-Jamie-Woodley
• CVCSC-0173.F-Pointer-Dog-Weathervane-artist-unknown-©-Compton-Verney-photo-by Hugh-Kelly
• A Farmer and his Prize Heifer, English School, oil on canvas, about 1844