Young talents’ work to go on digital display at According To McGee after Easter’s New Visuality art camp at Bar Convent

Director Greg McGee, right arm raised, leads the cheers at New Visuality’s Easter Art Camp for York school children

YORK charity New Visuality is to illuminate the wall of its gallery window space at According To McGee with the artwork of the city’s young talent.

After holding creative workshops for 25 participants over Easter and renewing its collaboration with University of York’s SplashBy, New Visuality will mount a showcase of digital projections of art, films, and slogans at the Tower Street art space from early May to early June.

“Not only do we want to get the projections up and running before the summer evenings take over,” says charity director Greg McGee. “But also the artwork has been so good, and the links made between grassroots football clubs, community cafés and the city’s heritage so healthy, that a digital exhibition in our window opposite the newly refurbished Clifford’s Tower makes perfect sense, especially if it’s to be done in a timely manner.”

New Visuality’s Art Camp sessions, funded by City of York Council’s Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, focused on healthy eating, physical exercise and how to reflect these issues in painting and digital art.

New Visuality Art Camp participants at Bar Convent at Easter

Teenage art ambassadors from York High School, All Saints School, Millthorpe School, and Archbishop Holgate’s School led the sessions. “Generally, the younger people came from the west of York,” says Greg, “So the visual reference points were West Bank Park, Hob Moor, Acomb Front Street and Acomb Green, but there was also a York-wide conversation to be had.

“One thing we found was that there are so many young people who haven’t experienced heritage in their city, so we organised a trip to Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre.

“As ever, the welcome was warm and the experience was a real buzz, especially the reading session we had with internationally published author Karen Langtree.”

Bar Convent staff were delighted to see the young artists sit down and draw, take photos with professional cameras and listen to the excerpts.

“I Hope We Can Play Footy”: Artwork by Erin from the New Visuality Art Camp, soon to feature among the digital projections at According To McGee

Volunteers manager Lauren Masterman says, “It was a joy to welcome these young artists to the Bar Convent. They brought great energy and enthusiasm as they explored the chapel and the collections in our exhibition, and it was lovely to see how much they enjoyed Karen Langtree’s interactive storytelling session. We’re very much looking forward to seeing the artwork they have produced.”

The activities were fuelled each day with fresh food from Choose 2 Cafe, a not-for-profit social enterprise based in Hull Road. “The food was great and led to lots of discussions on how fast-food outlets manipulate catchy slogans and attractive colour schemes to reel you in,” says Greg.

“To help hammer home how important a healthy lifestyle is, we knew we had to get in someone who the young people could relate to, so we gave grassroots football club York RI a call.”

Step forward Under-14s players Matteo and Niall. “Their careful guidance and knowledgeable overview of what to eat and how to make fresh fruit as attractive an option as fast food were humbling,” says Greg.

Food, football and now art ambassadors: Niall, left, and Matteo, from the York RI Football Club’s Under-14s team, dispensing healthy tips and fodder at the New Visuality Art Camp

“As far as we’re concerned, Matteo and Niall can proudly call themselves art ambassadors and can count on similar paid opportunities in the future. I’m looking forward to watching them continue to help develop the creativity of the young people we work with.”

Matteo was delighted to take part in the activities, “It was great to be around creative people and help inspire them with how to draw art linked with sport and to give advice on what to eat and how to exercise.” 

Look out for the digital projections in the window of According To McGee from May 5, every night from 5pm to 10pm, for a month. “The artwork itself is excellent, and now we have the technology we can get it out in an elegant, immersive way and allow it to develop with the artwork from future art camps,” says Greg.

“Watching this project evolve from a school holiday art camp into a far-reaching collaboration with York schools, Bar Convent, and York RI Football Club has been a highlight of my career.”

Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford unite to bring bursts of profuse colour to According To McGee in synchronised show

Painter Kimbal Bumstead stands outside According To McGee against a backdrop of the soon-to-reopen Clifford’s Tower

YORK gallery According To McGee launches its Return Of The Painter 2022 series with a duo exhibition by painters Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford.

Gallery co-directors Greg and Ails McGee have opted to put the emphasis on scale and colour. “But it’s not just the ‘wow’ factor,” says Ails. “There are deeper meanings behind the collections of Kimbal and Simon. This, and the fact that their latest paintings dovetail so well with each other, means that the time is right to hand over the reins to both of these fascinating artists.”

Bumstead and Crawford are synchronising their creativity for the first time for this show’s run from Saturday until Monday, April 4 at the Tower Street gallery.

Bumstead, new to York but with years of experience of painting under his belt, brings a new energy to the gallery buoyed by exhibiting in Sheffield, Tokyo, Amsterdam and at the Mall Galleries in London, as well as teaching abstract art classes with York Learning.

“It’s really thrilling to be an artist,” he says. “My job is to bring things into existence that weren’t there before, and I use colour and mark-making to get there. But there are other aspects too. These paintings aren’t just experiments in colour, nor are they just expressions of feelings, they are also explorations of journeys into other worlds.”

Painter Kimbal Bumstead, right, with All Saints School students Emma Storkey, George Clarke and Emmanuelle Butler, on work experience at According To McGee

The Kimbal Bumstead collection, Segments Of Journeys, hangs on the wall of the front gallery opposite Clifford’s Tower, where they “pulse and shimmer, suggesting memories and half-formed ideas”.

“The subject matter isn’t fixed, it’s yet to be defined,” says Bumstead. “If the idea of journeying is the building block of the painting, the overarching theme is that there’s no destination.

“I love the process of trying to let go and getting lost in the painting. That’s a positive to me and reflects on how I live my life. Stuff happens, you navigate it, and hopefully you enjoy the process.

“I like trying to see a street differently each time I walk down it, and the same goes for my paintings. Each time I look at them, I find something new, something I hadn’t noticed before.”

Bumstead points to the intersecting colours and mark making on the surfaces of his paintings, with some strokes sliding into areas that had been painted much earlier. “It’s like landscapes,” he says. “I like how a landscape in real life has different layers. Physical layers, ideas that people project, memories, different stories, traces of the old next to the new. It’s something I’m really keen on capturing.”

Cool Shade, Running Water, by Simon Crawford

Explaining further, he says: “It’s not dissimilar to experiencing York as a city. On the one hand, you see what’s on the surface, the old buildings next to new ones, but then there’s another world, the one you have to imagine, the one where different stories have taken place and settled like sediment. That’s really the case with this collection; there is not just one way of seeing it.”

Gallery co-director Greg says: “It’s heavy stuff, but at its heart it’s an antidote to the current obsession with targets and data. This is less harnessing data and more harnessing dreams, which is a priority in most artists’ manifestos.”

On the opposite wall hangs Cool Shade And Hot Light, the new collection by Knaresborough artist Simon Crawford. “In terms of scope and vividity, the collections complement each other, with Simon’s approach perhaps more relatively literal in his depictions of his experiences,” says Greg.

Crawford’s work comes in response to his travels in India. “To call it a ‘life-changing experience’ is to underestimate it,” he says. “It brought me new textures and colours, and I have been trying to skewer them in my palette and on the surface of my canvases since. I think this collection is a true representation of what I saw and how I saw it.”

After exhibitions in Dean Clough galleries in Halifax, Moscow galleries and Messums North, he brings his impressionistic portraits of India to According To McGee, much to Greg’s delight.

Surrounded by colour: Painter Simon Crawford with his artworks at According To McGee

“What’s especially great is that when Simon now turns his attention to northern subject matters, he filters his depictions through the conduit of tropical heat, so that you get Rievaulx Abbey endowed with the glittering humidity of an Indian jungle,” he says.

“It’s witty and sensual, and it’s exactly what we’re looking for in our search for more excellent painters to represent. Simon’s use of colour is instantly recognisable, and it’s humbling to see he’s showing no signs of backing down.”

Ails adds: “The Punjabi palette seems to work really well with our collectors, especially here in the north. Whether it’s from Simon or Kimbal, or from McGee favourites like Amrik Varkalis, a fearless celebration of hot colour connects with clients. Whether that’s down to the general doom and gloom of our times, or the drizzly weather, we haven’t worked out yet!

“But we’ve worked hard on curating this exhibition, helped in no small way by Emma Storkey, Emmanuelle Butler and George Clarke, who, as Year 10 students from All Saints School, have spent ten days on work experience with us.”

Return Of The Painter 2022: Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford launches at According To McGee, Tower Street, York, on Saturday at 12 noon and closes on April 4. Gallery opening hours: Monday to Friday, 11am to 3pm; Saturdays, 11am to 4pm; or by appointment on 07973 653702.

Colours From A Hot Land, by Simon Crawford