Pipeline presents Conor Rogers's Renegade Visual Arts

Pipeline presents Conor Rogers Renegade 19 July – 3 August 2024 Slugtown, Newcastle

Rogers’ solo exhibition Renegade from 19 July – 3 August, reclaims derogatory concepts and transforms them into a symbol of defiance and strength. Within his approach to the gallery exchange, Rogers creates a site-specific work that explores the local history and landscape of its Shieldfield estate and community.

To defy conventional narratives, Rogers transforms the purpose of items from everyday life, such as betting slips, rizla paper, and drug baggies. He explores the world through selected works that prioritises council estates, domestic spaces, and communities that are often misunderstood. His site-responsive work to Shieldfield, the council estate where Slugtown Gallery is located, explores the gallery’s history and its previous purposes. One of the uses of the space was a Pharmacy, a local place of healing for the community. The artwork is painted directly onto a pharmacy leaflet to create a dialogue between the material and the depicted image, emphasising the significance of place, history and the symbolism of healing in working-class environments.

In combining image and object Rogers endeavours to expose the intense reality of life in Britain. The artworks within the exhibition are by-products of deep personal connections formed from lived experience, memory, and conversation. They explore social commentary, cultural identities, class dynamics, stereotypes, and our sense of self. Rogers’ innovative approach in Renegade not only allows for the exploration of a new city, Newcastle but also fosters new connections and establishes new meanings. By addressing stereotypes associated with regional communities that exist within London, Newcastle and Sheffield, the exhibition probes the differences, similarities, and insecurities of contemporary British society.

Rogers comments, “This country possesses a wealth of resources, including its histories, people, and the richness of varied lived experiences, all of which serve as a source of inspiration for artists. Without exchanges such as the one Pipeline has initiated, these resources risk being overlooked. The intention and recognition of this exchange, in its purest form, is fundamentally about fostering a sense of love and paying attention to the collective identity. Alongside the increased pressure from the lack of funding and support towards the arts - There's never been a more important time for us to start crossing boundaries.”
This exhibition coincides with the Arts Council 'Developing Your Creative Practice' grant, awarded to Rogers to support a period of learning and skill development. The artist will be producing work while exploring council estates across the UK, including Sheffield, London, Manchester, and now Newcastle. Presenting these paintings to the Newcastle community offers an opportunity to engage with a new audience that may resonate with the themes within the work.

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About Conor Rogers

Conor Rogers (b.1992, Sheffield) lives and works in Sheffield, UK.

Since graduating from Sheffield Hallam University, Rogers has been shortlisted for the John Moores painting prize 2014 and selected to exhibit in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015 at Primary Gallery, Nottingham & ICA, London. He has since exhibited work both nationally and internationally in group shows, arts festivals and biennales. He was twice shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize in 2017 and 2019. In 2018 represented Great Britain at the Mediterranea 18 biennale in Tirana, Albania. In 2019 Conor was named as the 1st Prize winner of the UK Young Artist of the Year Award held at the Saatchi Gallery, London. More recently, he became the recipient of the 2024 March Selection of the DYCP Grant provided by Arts Council England.

Group selected shows include ‘Me Myself and I’ Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2020), ‘Fully Awake 6.6’ Holden Gallery Manchester (2021) ‘En’Ger’Land’ OOF Gallery, London (2021. In 2019 he was selected for the Freelands Foundation programme at Site Gallery, Sheffield. The programme allowed Conor to exhibit in his debut solo exhibition ‘Manor Boy’ Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield (2021). In 2022 he was commissioned as the leading artist for the National Portrait Galleries ‘Creative Connections’ project to create an exhibition of socially engaged portraiture. More recently, he has had a body of his paintings selected for acquisitions by the Arts Council Collection 2023 round of selections.

About Pipeline

Pipeline introduces each artist with a single artwork ahead of their exhibition. The gallery operates as a divided space, the main exhibition area and an end room which features one work by the artist whose exhibition is forthcoming. This introductory work is selected by the artist to reveal particulars of their current practice or potentials for the future, providing essential context ahead of their exhibition.

Pipeline is a contemporary art gallery founded in October 2022 by Tatiana Cheneviere. In response to the fast paced engagement with artists today, Pipeline invites a slower experience in which to understand the evolving parameters within a single creative practice. Our aim is to reinvigorate the conversation between artist and collector and celebrate the subtleties of storytelling through art.

Exhibition details:
Gallery Pipeline
Artist: Conor Rogers
Exhibition Title: Renegade
Dates: 19 July – 3 August 2024
PV: Thursday 18 July, 6 – 8 pm
Address: Slugtown, 44 Wretham Place,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1XU
slugtown.co.uk

For all press enquiries, please contact:
Marina Cochrane | +447595326584 Marina.cochrane.arts@gmail.com" Target="_BLANK">br>Marina.cochrane.arts@gmail.com

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