The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery

This small gallery holds a lovely collection of paintings, drawings and ceramics donated largely by the Burton family. It is located in Leeds University’s Parkinson Court at the opposite end to the café and is free to visit. There are some old, traditional portrait paintings from the 1800’s as well as contemporary abstract pieces. Highlights for me included a solemn painting, ‘The Jew’ by Jacob Kramer, an artist from Leeds and who Leeds College of Art and Design used to be named after; ‘The Art Class’, 1929, by Stanley Spencer and a piece photographing Andy Goldsworthy working in the landscape. I loved the emphasis on Leeds artists on one wall, showing work from 1968 – 2005 with a bit of text explaining how art has evolved in the city. In another section there was a display of beautiful teapots and cups and old letters. The gallery has a program of temporary exhibitions and events and welcomes school groups.

The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery is not very well known in Leeds. I have never before heard my arty friends talk about it, or seen any promotion for it, and I am often taking short cuts through the University Campus. I heard about the gallery whilst doing data entry for an arts company, I was inputting data from a survey to decide why it wasn’t very well attended. Since then I vowed that I would go and have a look, as everyone in the survey spoke very highly of it in their comments.
You can find the gallery in The Parkinson Building of the University, just to the left of reception through some glass sliding doors. The exhibits I saw today were beautiful. The gallery used to consist of three rooms which have now been converted into one large space displaying the Universities permanent collection. It includes various bronze works, a display of Yorkshire pottery, a suite of glass cases displaying drawn works, and some really beautiful paintings. There is also another room which is used for temporary exhibitions. Today I saw ‘Obsession: Contemporary Art from the Lodeveans Collection’ which is running until the 28^th November (2009). My favorite in this collection were some porcelain models of crushed cans (like coke cans) hand painted with blue flowers, as if they were an old china set.
They have a variety of different pieces, from abstract to portrait paintings, sculptures, video, audio, and drawings, so if you are an art lover there will most likely be something for you. It is quite small, but it’s free and also not far from the gallery in the city centre if you feel the need for more.