Fish and Chip van tour © Copyright: Simon Thackray.

Simon Thackray - Photographs from The Shed

The Roslyn Lyons Art Gallery (Directions)

Music Research Centre, University of York

23 April - 27 June 2008

Gallery open: 10am - 5pm Monday to Friday (and University concert nights).

Simon Thackray paints, takes photographs, makes sculpture and instigates happenings. Born in Ryedale, North Yorkshire in 1960, he joined the family business of agricultural engineers on leaving school and held his first one-man show of ink drawings at Vanbrugh College, University of York in 1978. He went into his shed in 1987 to concentrate on making sculpture and painting and drawing.

In 1992, Simon photographed his shed door and founded The Shed. This improbable performance venue in a small village in North Yorkshire has since become renowned for presenting world-class music and poetry and for creating and staging the unique art events that Simon dreams up from time to time.

The Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race, Mrs Boyes' Bingo featuring Mark Sanders, the Fish and Chip van tour and Lol Coxhill in a skip are just a few. Simon conjured the words, music and participatory knitting spectacular, 'HAT', (written and performed by Ian McMillan and Billy Jenkins) and invented the knitted Elvis wig which is now a world-wide accessory worn by artists in New York and bin men in Wakefield.

The Shed has toured projects to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Spitz, Union Chapel and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, as well as venues in Halifax, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Gateshead, Sheffield, Belfast and Cork.

Along the way, Simon recorded events in a series of 'incidental' photographs exhibited here for the first time. The famous and the not-so-famous, on show, off-guard.

"His enthusiasm seems to light up the street. I muse on the idea of future cultural historians citing a shed door as the fulcrum of a rural arts renaissance" Ian McMillan

"He's a strange'un alright, but the art world could do with more of his kind of far-reaching woolly thinking." Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph

Simon co-founded the Pied Piper Project with Sarah Derbyshire MBE (Executive Director of Live Music Now!) in 1997. Pied Piper brings professional musicians and poets to Ryedale to work with young people in a series of free workshops and gigs.

This exhibition is funded by the Heslington Foundation and University of York.

The Shed is supported by Arts Council, England and Ryedale District Council.

The Shed and the Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race are Registered Trade Marks of Simon Thackray. Copyright © Simon Thackray 1992 - 2008.

Directions to Roslyn Lyons Art Gallery: follow directions and signs to Sir Jack Lyons concert hall.

Please access the gallery through the main entrance to Sir Jack Lyons concert hall. Back to top

www.theshed.co.uk