Visual Arts

A new exhibition, 'Acasa' arrives at Leeds Art Gallery from Bucharest from Thursday 13 September 2007. Two Romanian artists, Gabriela and Valentin Boiangiu, now based in Bradford, build an interactive piece of art which is constructed, literally, from postcards they have invited artists from around the world to send.

The postcards, through image and text, convey personal views on what the concept of 'home' (Acasa is the Romanian word for home) means to people of different backgrounds and cultures.

Installed in the Gallery space in the form of a 'dwelling', with a specially commissioned soundtrack by sound engineer Phill Harding, the exhibition seeks to visualise perceptions of 'home'. By displaying the trace of letters to and from home gives the exhibition a powerfully suggestive theme. Their artworks are loaded with the presence of those familiar and evocative signs of connection: handwriting, envelopes, names and addresses, postage stamps, postmarks and the stickers – 'Prioritar' and 'Par Avion'.

The exhibition forms part of 'Trading Spaces' for Celebrate Leeds 07, a series of contemporary projects that explore a theme drawn out from the significance of the 1207 Charter in defining the origins of the modern city of Leeds in terms of 'trade'.

The projects aim to inspire thinking about the idea of Leeds and its links with other places, imaginative and real, ideas of 'here' and 'elsewhere', based on ideas of trade and exchange. Romania, joining the EEC at the start of 2007, is one its the newest members.

Gabriela and Valentin Boiangiu, brother and sister came to Britain at the end of the 1990s to further their art studies and now both teach and practice as artists in the region. 'Acasa' has previously been exhibited in Craiova, their home town in Romania, as well as Bucharest.

'Acasa' runs from Thursday 13 September until Sunday 28 October 2007 at Leeds Art Gallery on The Headrow.