The Bangladesh-born, London-based artist Rana Begum says she has never been a particularly avid user of social media, but began to use Instagram as a way to “keep up to date” with exhibitions and what other artists were up to, especially after having children. “It is a great way to discover artists and feel connected to the art world,” she says.
Occasional Geometries (15 July-29 October), which opens this weekend at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) near Wakefield, has been primarily selected by Begum from the Arts Council collection. But the exhibition also includes works by artists that Begum discovered on Instagram, such as Nicky Hirst and Charlotte Moth. Hirst’s work in the exhibition, Instagram Feed (2016), is taken from–and named after–the social media platform. The images are taken from her feed and then organised under different hashtags, in this case #drawing63 and #abstract63.
The exhibition takes its title from a work by the British artist Richard Wentworth, Tirana 1999, Occasional Geometries (2000). The work is typical of Wentworth’s photographs of geometrical patterns that he has noticed on the street. YSP is encouraging visitors to upload their own images of patterns they discover in their day-to-day life, tagging them with #occasionalgeometries.