WHALE Arts is delighted to announce the Travelling Gallery will visit the WHALE Arts Centre in Wester Hailes on Wednesday 23 May 2018 from 11am – 5pm with exhibition Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat?
Celebrating its 40th year, the Travelling Gallery is a mobile art space inside a custom-built, bus, which brings high quality contemporary art exhibitions and events to schools and communities throughout Scotland.
The exhibition will explore our formative years – the contrasts of adolescence past and present, as comparatively tame and nostalgic teenage magazines are exhibited next to the never-ending clickbait of internet culture. Our teenage dreams will be suspended as the exhibition looks at our prolonged adolescence and why ‘teenage’ no longer just refers to the period between the ages of 12 and 20.
The exhibition will include work by contemporary artists Arpita Shah, Alice Theobald and Holly White alongside archive material from Museum of Childhood, Edinburgh.
A doorway to today’s teenage dreams is seen through photographer Arpita Shah’s intimate portraits of Glaswegian teenagers; where a pure and authentic depiction of identity and habitat is captured.
It’s natural and nostalgic to look back over our teenage years, good or bad. The good can be the close friendships and honest self-discovery; the bad can be the awkward romances and dubious self-discovery.
These experiences are heightened in Holly White’s work, as reflection and soul searching are on show for anyone who wants to read about it in the “heartbreak library”, where self-help books are snugly hung in comforting blankets. In her Rittersport News series, Holly uses the vlog format to review the different flavours and varieties of the German chocolate bar, highlighting the online platform in which nothing is too trivial to share and promote.
Alongside the artworks some archival magazines, selected by Holly from the Museum of Childhood’s collection in Edinburgh, are displayed. The magazines are exhibited as a direct visual contrast to today’s vlogging culture and shows the total shift in how teenagers give and take their information and choose their influences.
The final work in the exhibition is the 3D film The Next Step by Alice Theobald. The musical, in three acts, shows two men walking with a dog and a baby through a park and having an existential, lyrical conversation. While initially casual and light-hearted, the conversation represents a generation where the transition into adulthood is stretched and what were typically adult aspirations are no longer available.
Meghan Bidwell, Arts Engagement Manager (Adults), WHALE Arts says:
“It’s a pleasure to welcome Travelling Gallery back to Wester Hailes with exhibition Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat? This is a fantastic opportunity to engage with an accessible, high quality contemporary art exhibition; the highs and lows of teenage years are something everyone can relate to. There’s something very comforting about the Travelling Gallery and a ‘bus filled with art’ is every bit as good as it sounds.”
