Gallery hails most popular art collection

Neon artwork by Tracey Emin which has been purchased for the Grundy Art Gallery

Around 12,000 people viewed the ‘NEON: The Charged Line’ collection during its 18-week run at the gallery, in Queen Street.

The exhibition featured pieces created by world renowned artists including Tracey Emin, Joseph Kosuth and Francois Morellet and was on show from September 1 last year until January 7

It formed a key part of last year’s LightPool festival.

The exhibition, billed as a celebration of 38 neon artworks from around the world, attracted visitors from across the UK.

Morellet, an early practitioner from Paris who died in 2016, experimented with neon as far back as the early 1960s but his work has not been widely exhibited in the UK.

The Grundy also commissioned several outdoor works from artists including Tim Etchells and Paulina Olowska which brought the exhibition out onto the streets of Blackpool.

Alongside the main exhibition, the gallery also staged an exhibition in its Rotunda of drawings from the Blackpool Illuminations Archive.

These Art Deco designs dated back to the early 1930s and to a time when Blackpool was just starting to establish its pioneering name within the history of light and neon.

The NEON exhibition was funded by money from a Coastal Communities Fund grant awarded to Blackpool towards the Illuminations.

The Grundy launched its Light programme with 2015’s exhibition Sensory Systems which attracted 7,000 visitors.

After a four month run, NEON: The Charged Line is now closed and the galleries will re-open on February 28 with the Blackpool Art Fayre.

The exhibition at the Grundy Art Gallery received positive reviews from visitors, chiefs say.

Coun Luke Taylor, lead member for arts on Blackpool Council, said: “I am absolutely delighted with the success of NEON: The Charged Line.

“Not only is it one of the Grundy’s most successful exhibitions ever, it has also received excellent feedback from the people who came from across the country into the gallery to take a look at the fantastic exhibits on display from top artists.

“The way that the exhibition tied in with Blackpool’s history of neon light use and the LightPool project as a whole really caught the public’s imagination and introduced them to a new form of light being used as art.”

Coastal Communities Minister Andrew Percy said: “Thanks to £2 million from our Coastal Communities Fund, the festival was one of the star attractions of Blackpool’s growing tourism economy.”