Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre are inviting contemporary artists to enter this exciting opportunity to produce new work as part of the exhibition ‘The Walker Family: Identity & Philanthropy’ running from May - November 2020, funded by the Understanding British portraits Network in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery.

Bury Art Museum received funding which provides the opportunity to research and create an exhibition about a local and significant Victorian family, ‘The Walker Family.’ The family were integral to the establishment of Bury Art Museum and heavily involved in and committed to the local Bury community.

The starting point for this exhibition is a collection of portraits of the family within Bury Art Museum’s Victorian Collection and two new portraits donated by the family’s descendants in 2019 by the artist Louis- Pierre Spindler. The project has since then acquired more donations and loans, commissioned photographs and recordings and carried out research all aided by a group of volunteers.

In order to continue the Walker Family’s legacy of being a patron of the arts and to allow a modern audience to reflect on the research, Bury Art Museum has two opportunities for contemporary artists to respond to the following themes which have come out of the project: social responsibility, philanthropy, identity, status, portraiture, perception, psychology, patronage, family and legacy. We are open to various interpretations of these themes in any medium. The spaces available for this commission are either a wall measuring 2870mm (w) x 2550mm (h), a display case measuring 1540mm (l) x 640mm (w) x 1100mm (h) or can be performance based.

Each artist will be paid £200 for this commission. We want to work closely with the chosen artists to ensure quality and provide professional development in order to mutually benefit from the commission. The deadline for the work to be completed and sent to Bury Art Museum will be the 10th April and the work will be showcased at Bury Art Museum from 9th May 2020 - November 2020. 

Please see Bury Art Museum’s website https://buryartmuseum.co.uk/

Please see Understanding British Portraits Network Fellowship page https://www.britishportraits.org.uk/resources/fellowships/

To apply, please fill in the application form provided with your proposed artwork idea and upload an accompanying CV and up to four images of relevant previous work.