REMIXNATION

ART FOR THE PEOPLE, ART BY THE PEOPLE

It is only 10 years since Wikipedia was set up but it's hard to imagine a time without it. A collaborative community creation, free of advertising, free of charge, its growth sustained by individual donations. It continues to spread, inviting participation from everyone; or so its founder, Jimmy Wales, asserts.

So what do we do with all this information and knowledge? How do we make sense of our highly mediated environment and how do we choose what to absorb and what to ignore?

We do what we always do: we filter the information, we modify the image, we re-interpret it and re-purpose it, adapting it according to changes in taste, times and intentions. The artists and artwork in this season's programme show a variety of intentions and purposes: political, playful, activist, revolutionary, healing, questioning. They also re-interpret information and images to create a different view or way of looking at, understanding or reflecting on matters of interest or importance.

Artists have been playing and experimenting like this for a long, long time but such 're-creativity' is accelerating today with pioneers like DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, whose mash-up or 're-mash' of material he describes thus: 'Sampling is playfulness with memory; no one remembers anything exactly the same way. For 21st-century purposes anything goes. We are bombarded with masses of nothingness like a Bush speech.' For him, it is about creating a strong and interwoven pulse out of the chaos. 'Nuanced complex engagement is beautiful. I hate America's willingness to reduce everything to simple sound bites. A lot of your aesthetic is built on sound bites. But sampling is a collage. It creates more complexity.'

This season starts with a REMIXhibition in Richmond Atrium by Birmingham-based Punch, called Protest: Fight The Power, which draws on a unique collection of British Council protest and propaganda posters mixed with African posters and contemporary pieces by artists and designers working today. Students and staff will be involved in the planning and workshops for this exhibition at the University and we encourage people to join in by blogging it, taking part in the workshops and remixing the material.

In contrast, in the Atrium Restaurant, we have Parker William's Bad Moon Rising. This is a collection of stylised, graphic, black and white reworkings in paint, of images taken from classic film noir stills. Trapped in time and frame, they resonate today against a climate of cuts and impending austerity.

At the beginning of March and to coincide with the annual Peace Laureate lecture and Peace Jam event, we will be showing paintings by peace activist Cyril Mount. Cyril¿s experiences of active service in WWII are captured here and were the catalyst for a lifelong commitment to using his work to campaign for a better and more just world. His most recent series - re-purposing computer gaming iconography to emphasise the theatre of war - doesn¿t pull any punches.

Where there is Hope there is light... and we lighten the mood in April by escaping into the world of , whose collages of childlike drawing and painterly sensitivity take us to real and imagined places. The DJ Spooky of the works-on-paper world, Robert Hope creates uncanny and quirky pieces that mix together autobiographical and cultural elements into pieces that leave you feeling better.

We finish off in Gallery II in June, with a return to revolutionary thoughts and an installation of work by Graham Martin - in response to Bradford - that revisits pioneering artist, Joseph Bueys' notion of common wounds. The Revolution is Healing will see Graham return to Bradford to make work that addresses ideas of human hurt and togetherness, an extremely relevant and apposite area of concern for a city whose regeneration is undergoing a protracted time of transition in harsh economic times.

Running parallel to this, in Richmond Atrium, we will be showing work by schoolchildren based on their studies of Bradford City Park. They have been working with artist Tim Curtis from the Schools Linking Network to create their own reflections on the Council's "rebirth of the city" plans.