Another first for our new gallery in more ways than one. Our fourth exhibition can be fairly described as 100% contemporary and interactive. It also has its own brochure. Called 'The Self' and curated by Alice Thickett, a Gallery activist and Nottingham Trent University student who usually looks after the Gallery on a Tuesday, it is an innovative mix of confrontation, mood, insight and curiosity, at least from the perspective of this viewer. The brochure says 'the artists exhibiting not only use art to express themselves creatively, they use it discuss the meaning of "the self" itself'. So, please come along and see for yourself.
As always, we offer viewers a virtual tour of 'The Self', going from left to right around the gallery walls and plinths, plus a few distractions along the way…
…including Alice herself, looking radiant and happy as she waits for the first visitors to arrive for the evening preview on Friday.
Before the start of things, Alice presented Alyn with a small gift as a way of saying 'thank you' for all his help and encouragement. It is these small moments which make The Crocus Gallery special. Enough of sentiment. Let the tour begin…
…at the entrance, where this is what welcomes visitors to The Self.
The welcoming exhibit by Ivana Stojcevska is a creation made from 'the leftovers' of works she destroyed 'in order to explore… the feeling that destruction produces. The following pics of the exhibit offer a fraction of the ways in which this work can be viewed.
This final pic is of a burnt fragment of a destroyed Ivana work of which did not make it into the bandaged exhibit. It hangs, alone, on the Gallery wall.
On Saturday I returned for a second look and found Patsy, who can often be found 'front of house' at the weekends, pondering Ivana's work. She makes a perfect picture.
Next comes a visual 'portal' by Clare Harris which invites the viewer to use her work 'to release the unspoken feelings which get carpeted over and socially rarely mentioned'.
Then its into the backroom art space (being used for the first time) by George Darby and Martin Pearce. Here you (or is The Self) becomes a listener. The installation, for that it was it might be called in another art space, prompts images in one's mind to accompany the sounds. George and Martin describe the experience as an opportunity to ignore 'the constraints of traditional harmonic functionality'.
It's also a chance to have some fun if you are a young visitor. Perhaps I am mistaken and it is really a magician's box. There may be arms but, I promise you, there are no wires, so there is no risk of electrocution.
For some, the work of Bogumila Matylda Czerepak may be the most challenging. She says 'My message is not to simplify physicality and underestimate it, but to look at it as a source of importance'. It is her work which has prompted the notice in the window by the Gallery's entrance about the suitability of some of the exhibits for children.
Our virtual tour ends with two works by Chloe Barrett. They are quite large and this pic does them less than justice. Looking at them, I thought how striking they would look as reliefs on a building wall, either internally or externally. After, I read Chloe's entry in the brochure and found the following: 'My life models are equivalent to a building, they therefore only retain object value from which to convey structure and expression through paint'. As I type this I realise that I have a wall at home where I can hang them, but before I can do this I need either Ernie to come up or to rob a bank (assuming they are for sale).
The good news is that Chloe's pics and all the other exhibits in The Self show can be seen every Tuesday–Saturday 11am–4pm until Saturday 4 September 2010. Altogether, an unexpected confrontaion of the senses in the most unlikely of Nottingham locations. Miss it and ponder your foolishness for a long time to come.
A
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