There is Beauty in the City - Leiden

Curated by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Glen Stoker (U.K.)
3 September - 13 October 2010
Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, The Netherlands

  Detail of a photograph by British artist, Siobhan Tarr for the Beauty in the City art project
Detail of a photograph by British German resident artist,
Siobhan Tarr, Sydney, Australia

There is beauty in the city is a photographic project exploring urban space initiated by Anna Francis and now managed by Glen Stoker.

Participants place a magnet bearing the text There is beauty in the city somewhere in their city and then send the image to the blog.

The magnet can then be left for another city flaneur to encounter.

See the blog or their Facebook group for more details.

  Overview of the exhibition

Detail of the exhibition
Detail of the row of selected works.

Detail of the exhibition
Photograph by Julie Brixey-Williams (www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk)
"My studio is just around the corner of a municipal dump.
The guys who work there take the discarded objects and arrange them
in different tableaux and I often visit it like a gallery to see what's new.
This was today's "exhibit" - 'Still Life with David'."

Detail of the exhibition
Detail of the row of selected works.

Detail of the exhibition
Detail of the row of selected works.

View from the bridge of Aalmarkt 17 + the medival weighing house in Leiden.
View from the bridge of the medival weighing house and Aalmarkt 17
in the Leiden city centre.

Photograph by Pauline Sieffert in the Beauty in the City - Leiden exhibition, October 2010
Photograph by Pauline Siejffert (www.seijffert.nl) September 2010.
From the top of the V & D store overlooking the bridge that leads to
where the exhibition was held.

There is beauty in the city - Leiden
was an exhibition of photographs from around the world which were displayed in a narrow strip across a shop window as part of an OPEN | Makers aan de Markt

(www.openmakers.nl)

studio residency at Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Glen Stoker + Sonja van Kerkhoff selected the photographs for the first row from the There is beauty in the city - Leiden archive.

Selected photographs were by:


Victor Angelo
Jakarta, Indonesia



Chloe Arrowsmith
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.



Julie Brixey-Williams
London, U.K.



Brutus Carniollus
Ljubljana, Slovenia



Bernard Charnley
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.



Joshua Daniels
London, U.K.



Susana Lopez Fernandez
Berlin, Germany



Felicity Ford
Reading, U.K.



Paul Hanson
Grimsby, UK



Sophie Gibson
Liverpool, U.K.



Anna Hindocha
London, U.K.



Sue James
Whanganui,
Aotearoa | New Zealand



Tony Jones
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.



Ella Klenner
Bad Oldesloe, Germany



Teresa Leung
Hong Kong



Yvonne Lo
Hong Kong



Iain Macleod-Brudenell
New York, USA



Juan Antonio López Martín
Hong Kong



Siobhan Tarr
Sydney, Australia



Emma Thackham
Liverpool, U.K.



Emily Tull
Ramsgate, U.K.



Marianne Richardson
Harlow, Essex, U.K.



Lester Kong
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.



Jania Vanderwerff
Bellingham, USA



Wai Kit Lam
Hong Kong

The second row were photographs made by Leiden citizens and tourists which were added during the exhibition.

Each person was asked to supply a reason for the particular view or location of their photograph.

There was a lot of interest in the show by visitors but only five individuals managed to submit photographs taken in Leiden before the show closed.
These images were of a carving made by visitors from New Zealand, of a tourist's face, a view of a courtyard only visible to the outside from that person's office, of a canal view, and what you see on the right, here. A photograph taken at the top of a department store two buildings to the east of where the exhibition was.

The show was a juxtapositioning of global views and Leiden views.

Photograph by Sonja van Kerkhoff    
Photograph by Sonja van Kerkhoff, October 2010



This photo shows both the magnet bearing the text as well as the shop-studio I used in my city for the exhibition on the Aalmarkt, a street that has been a shopping location in Leiden since the middle ages. Here I am 'selling' not only the idea of beauty (the banner is huge and easily read from the other side of the canal) but that beauty is in the eye of the beholder as demonstrated by the diversity of the photographs displayed in the window.

More photos are here: sonjavank.blogspot.com

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