Review of Conglomeration exhibition, Stew Gallery, Fishergate, Norwich.

63 exhibitors in one gallery in all mediums, was going to be a hard circle to square, so I approached the final hang of Conglomeration with some trepidation. Was it going to be a hotchpotch of things thrown together with little or no coherence or was it going to be a feast for the senses? My fears were not bourne out. Some neat and intelligent curation meant that the space didn’t look cluttered or over full. The placing of the works led the viewer quite naturally from one space to another with strategically placed works designed to make the bridge or segue from one zone to the next, so for example Dan Gregory’s work led the eye and direction of travel round the corner from right to left and Gregory Hayman’s work did the same at another key junction. Work was placed on the floor, wall, ceiling, used plinths, film and sound and all making optimum use of the tricky lighting scheme in the Stew Gallery.

One of the highlights of the show was Hannah Satchwell’s floating shirt sculpture. Suspended from the ceiling by near invisible cat gut, the piece seemed to hover in the middle of one of the gallery spaces, defying gravity and providing a mesmerising centre piece for the area. It’s economy, and the height at which it hung (below waist height) made it disturbing and unsettling and it dominated its space to magnificent effect. Gabriel Loy’s Mosaic, a large colour print of out of focus coloured forms, had echoes of stained glass and was strangely hypnotic. It also had a feel of an Andreas Gursky photograph with the quality of lighting and the bold colours. It had that beguiling quality, at once both figurative and then an abstract mosaic of colour and texture drawing the viewer in.

Grace McAlonan’s photograph at first glance looked like an abstract collection of shapes and colours arranged on the page. Closer inspection however revealed that they were the constituent parts of a dismantled rose. The clever and disturbing take on the memento mori was beautiful and arresting and quite rightly has resulted in a number of potential purchasers wanting copies. The piece was a natural development from her previous work with vegetable and natural forms presented in series. This piece however, was a significant leap forward and was beautiful and mournful at the same time illustrating the transitory nature of love and beauty and breaking it down into a taxonomic collection of parts.

 

Mariane Lister-O’Shea’s Doe oh Dear, a mixed media on two canvases featuring a stag’s head and neck on one and a doe’s on the other was a powerful mix of the abstract and the figurative. The backgrounds of both were painted grids of simple colour (browns) making a landscape without sympathy and horizon or perspective. The two heads were black on white flattened images on paper and laid over the background one coming from right to left from the frame and the other the opposite (left to right) together this diptych was both a parody of the hunting genre al a ‘Monarch of the Glen’ and religious icon but any suggestion of the bambi-fication neutralised by the references to hunting trophy.

Robyn Smith

Title: 生存戦略.

The abstract shapes on four pieces of paper mounted together by Robyn Smith developed her use of abstract motifs and used a single emblem, for me the most powerful of her marks and one that closely resembles the Laban dance notation method for capturing choreography. Was this conscious or accidental? The piece did not reveal. The title: 生存戦略The survival, slightly, from the Chinese does not shed further light but that is immaterial, although the viewer is left to guess why the piece has a title in Chinese characters with no translation.

Abigail Softley’s collage of triangular shapes and mark-making formed an abstract landscape which brought to mind details from a Bruegel painting, particularly Hunters in the Snow, on the one hand or a Lowry on the other. The piece had clear pattern and balance, being perfectly resolved from a compositional point of view. The links may have been accidental but the visual chemistry to the observer are none-the-less implicit if you look at the two images below. The question has to be asked of some art works as to how conscious or unconscious are the art historical references? Images are absorbed and committed to memory in both conscious and unconscious ways and retrieved or revisited in any number of ways. But, maybe references are in the eye of the beholder… This is not to suggest that the work is in any way diminished by the explicit or implicit referencing, just that we store many images and it may be a deliberate and conscious choice by an artist or, if we follow the Barthes argument, then it is the viewer that completes the work and by implication sees their own references in a work, whether they were intended by the artist or not.

 

Gregory Hayman, Jubliee

Finally, I come to the piece Jubilee by Gregory Hayman. An explicit reference to the work of Robert Gober, and an iconoclastic take on the iconography of monarchy which seeks to cast the queen as a chess piece at best and a two-dimensional character at worst. The piece dominates a partial corner with gloomy malevolence. The queen looking out over her domain, wistful and glum, her chest pierced and revealing an opening that shows a hose which connects to the rear like some perverse tracheotomy, is it ventilating the patient or giving vent to the artist’s splenic views of the monarchy? We are not enlightened. Suffice to say that the hose makes it exit via an horse’s rear! The prints are monochrome and made on found plastic banners whose purpose is obscured by the broken words of Jub and ilee to make the reference, but does this broken lettering also reference an opinion about the broken state of the nation the queen rules over or her broken reign? It’s a piece littered with references and meaning and maybe double meaning or maybe that is the viewer completing the piece and not the intention of the artist at all.

 

 

Thoughts on a Discussion with Roger Ackling

I had a meeting with Roger Ackling which was really terrific. He’s an older artist who does pieces with wood where he burns a design into them with a magnifying glass in a single sitting usually. They are quite small and he exhibits widely throughout the world and lives at Voewood at High Kelling near Cromer. He is also and external examiner for Edinburgh School of Art.

Roger left me feeling well and truly challenged and I began looking at my work to date and the possibilities of things I could do in a new way. As a consequence, my mind has been racing ever since and I had a night of wild thoughts and crazy dreams!

We looked at my imagery and the biblical themes and myths, he was especially interested in the Angel piece and I shared my thoughts about trying to make a series.

Roger also thought I might have something good going on with my hanging/suspended pieces and suggested I might want to investigate further possibilities of doing more of that and using/suggesting the weight, he said I might consider using my own weight and calculate what it would take to support that and to represent that in a hanging piece and multiples or additions in weight might be used and represented.

We also talked about things half seen or where a sense of illusion is created using a wall and a viewing hole and maybe mirrors behind to give a sense of false depth or distance. He also showed me a trick using a coin where you turn it to reveal the same face you were looking at!! I have tried to recreate this and cant master it!! Grrrr

He suggested looking at Alexander Calder, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems especially the annunciation for inspiration – I talked about the very masculine representations of angels and why I had given this one genitals and the resulting pregnancy of the virgin Mary.

We also discussed the Holy Ghost and the ways that it/he is represented and then about ghosts in general and how many people in discussion have a ghostly tale to tell….I didn’t tell him any of mine!

We also talked shadows and silhouettes.. things that are there but not mentioned and a reply Lowry gave to someone who once asked him why none of his figures had shadows and Lowry replied: ‘because they are real enough already’.

We talked presence, inversions, elevation and playfulness, Tony Cragg and illusion – Roger did 2 drawings in my sketch book to try and illustrate what he meant…

He suggested that I set myself a challenge to build something and then to see what I can do with it from the POV of the viewer – to get an idea, develop it, respond to it e.g. I may take the idea of angels but set out not to let anyone see what I’ve made, rather a hint of trace of its presence – a reflection or shadow maybe….

We also talked about the trajectory of things – how they fall eg we looked at the Mourning cast piece I made. He especially liked the use of the plasticine bits that I cast the aluminium figures from – he said imagine how the white ball might fall if it had rolled down the incline of the base and onto the floor and where it might come to rest and how that would change the way the viewer would experience it….

We talked about vacuums and I thought again about the vacuum forming plastics and how I might make objects in outline form from things I had already made but taking them on to another level….

He told me about a pocket exhibition he had given of his work (which are small) after taking pieces to an exhibition in his pocket to Japan.

We also talked about exploring performance art – he mentioned a Yoko Ono piece in a café in London where she and a friend walked into a café got out a large black bag unzipped it then they both climbed in and rolled around on the floor looking like they might have been making love – they then stopped got out as if nothing had happened packed up and left the café – he said it was a great compelling performance..it made me think about parachute games the kids have played at their parties and the shapes made under the silk – will do some more thinking about that and have already had some ideas about how I might use the parachute in a piece….

We also talked about things moving and letting things go – look at David Nash’s work he said.  Also transformation and fragmentation, non figurative and my desire to be more abstract – release the object or the image. 

It was the most stimulating tutorial yet that I’d had in terms of setting me thinking about taking my work on.. liberating productive thoughts in many new ways while using some themes and materials I had already worked with.