One year after the Chapeltown Salon exhibition (March 2010, union 105), the three Judges Choice award winners, Josie Flynn, Stephen Felmingham and Tony Tomlin, are all back with new bodies of work.
The artists’ were chosen as Salon Winners by a selection panel including Sonya Dyer (London based artist, curator, writer and cultural critic), Roddy Hunter (York-based artist, writer and Head of Fine Arts at York St John University), Karen Sherwood (Founder and Director of Cupola Contemporary Art, freelance consultant and curator) and Nigel Walsh (Curator of Contemporary Art at Leeds Art Gallery). The criteria for selection were qualities such as subject matter, mastery of medium and materials, technical competence, relevance within contemporary art market and unique approach.
To recognise their high achievements, East Street Arts offered the three winners support and representation in our 2011 public programme. Over the past year, Josie, Stephen and Tony have been supported by East Street Arts team to develop the most appropriate opportunities for presenting each of the artists’ practice are part of their continued professional development and relevant to their practice and career.
Under Review: A studio exhibition with Josie Flynn

Studio 12, Patrick Studios, St Mary’s Lane, Leeds, LS9 7EH
Visiting Dates & Times: 11th- 28th April 2011; 10- 11am and 1- 2pm (Mon & Tues)
Note: All visits must be booked in advance with Karl D’Silva, Gallery Assistant at karl@esamail.org.uk or 0113 2626633.
Josie Flynn has been reviewing her practice for the last couple of years in order to understand what aspects of art she enjoys and which aspects do not work for her. To aid the future development of this ongoing review, Josie would now like to open up her studio to the public, in order to help explore the works and get a better understanding of audience perception and how well she communicates her ideas.
“This process will help me continue my research into the outsider and private space … My underlying interests lie in the process of forming categories, how we define objects and subjects and how these items transgress their definition and create their own narrative. This happens regularly and privately in my own space, whether I exhibit these objects or not.”
For the duration of the ‘exhibition’ Joise’s studio will become a space between a gallery, a home, a shed, a studio and an office where the audience are invited to have informal conversations with her about the works and about contemporary art practice, process and product in general.
Questions might arise around the function of open studios and the fictions they create; the distance between artist and public; artistic processes in studios and what its perception by the public. Questions around exhibiting in non-traditional/everyday spaces and ‘performing’ in the studio are also central to this project.
Tocsin Bang: An exhibition by Stephen Felmingham

Union 105, 105 Chapeltown Road, Leeds, LS7 3HY
Private View: 7th April 2011; 6- 8pm
Opening times: 11th- 28th April
12-6pm (except Fridays, weekends and Bank Holidays)
‘Tocsin Bang’ is the codeword used by the Royal Observer Corps after a nuclear strike on the United Kingdom during the Cold War
Union 105 will present objects, drawings and a video work made during the last twelve to fourteen months in response to the Cold War observation posts that have formed part of Stephen Felmingham’s field research and studio drawing practice. This exhibition aims to allow Stephen the opportunity to develop artwork relating to his practice-led Phd ‘Drawing, Place and the Contemporary Sublime’, University of Leeds.
“Recent work has centred on the bunkers and installations that were a part of my childhood in the militarized landscapes of East Anglia. Part of the ‘everyday’ of this childhood landscape were the hilltop observation posts of the Observer Corps. These installations were the underground concrete rooms for the Corps, occupied in split shifts for twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year between the late 1950’s and 1992 and covering the UK in a consistent network. The bunkers provide me with objects and material for drawing and are ‘charged’ places in my practice. They act as conceptual and physical ‘laboratories’ from where the drawing experiments into the subtle field of perceptions that form the work can emerge. They represent the centre of a sphere of observation, a place in which the world is reduced to the narrowest of perceptual apertures with which to regard the blinding flash on the edge of the horizon: a moment of the apocalyptic sublime. Each post had a total view of a landscape overlapping with that of the next post in its sector – within sight like the ancient systems of beacons (often sited on the same hilltops) to warn of invasion or disaster.”
The posts now have the air of abandonment with a sense of kicked chairs and hurried departure. Often they have become utterly ruined or become a refuge for persons unknown, containing cooking stoves, enigmatic objects and empty cans. It is important to me that the posts contain a series of objects that are common to each one- objects such as warning siren crates, standard issue beds, intercom units, brushes/pans etc. The bathos of these objects is telling- they connect the occupants countrywide. Often what remains are the materials of cleaning, of washing of the body, reflecting the futility of these actions in the circumstances of mutually assured destruction. They represent a dissolution – or as Julia Kristevea puts it – “the abject, edged with the sublime” (Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1982, p.20.)
Stephen Felmingham studied MA Drawing at Wimbledon School of Art where he won the Postgraduate Drawing Prize. He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2009, was a finalist in the Celeste Art Prize 2010 in New York and has recently exhibited at the Kulturhuset, Stockholm.
For more information about Stephen’s work visit: www.axisweb.org/artist/stephenfelmingham
For further information relating to both exhibition, please contact Karl D’Silva karl@esamail.org.uk
Do Not Touch Tony Tomlin: A Publication documenting the life and art of Tony Tomlin

East Street Art invited Tony Tomlin to spend time creating new works based on his personal experiences with Chapeltown. During the Autumn of 2010, over a three-month period, Tony used Union 105’s project space as his studio, creating a huge amount of new drawing and paintings reflecting on his life growing up in Chapeltown. Working with East Street Art’s Development Manager, Tim Smith, it soon became clear Tony‘s work lent itself to the printed page. This publication aims to provide Tony with a new avenue of enquiry for his practice, and the means to further his creative future.
Often referencing his personal experiences, Tony’s artwork mixes real life situations with his vivid, and humorous, imagination. Working with ‘basic’ art materials, Tony produces his work at a phenomenal rate, and has been doing so for the past 30 years. Much of his earlier artwork has been either, sold, lost or thrown away. This publication forms a rare, and long overdue, documentation of Tony’s creative output.
The continued support and input from the staff at Leeds City Collage Thomas Damby Campus made it possible to bring together a very unique collection of images from a very unique Chapeltown artist.
You can pick up your very own copy of Tony’s publication for only £4, at the following places in Leeds:
- Patrick Studios, St Mary’s Lane, LS9 7EH
- Union 105, 105 Chapeltown Road, LS7 3HY
- Leeds City Collage, Thomas Danby Campus, Roundhay Road, LS7 3BG
- OK Comics, 19 Thornton’s Arcade, Briggate, LS1 6LQ
For further information please contact East Street Arts at info@esaweb.org.uk
More information relating to Salon Winners can be found at; http://www.eaststreetarts.org.uk, and http://www.union105.wordpress.com