Nottingham Castle Open Exhibition 2015

Craig David Parr, Still From: 'The Story Of The Clock Part II', Digital Video, 2015

Earlier this summer, I entered several pieces of work into the selection process for the ‘Nottingham Castle Open 2015’ exhibition.  I wasn’t successful but, now that the exhibition is open, I went along the other day to have a look anyway.

Sadly, I wasn’t particularly impressed.  I know that will sound like sour grapes but it’s really not supposed to.  I understand there’s an aspect of lottery about all such open selections, and that the particular priorities (or tastes) of any selection panel must always be taken into account.  In the event, the quality and validity (or otherwise) of my own entries aren’t particularly relevant anyway, as it appears that anything resembling painting was hardly on the selection panel’s agenda.  To be honest, this deliberate downplaying of a particular medium in favour of more technologically ‘sexy’ forms seems pretty shortsighted these days, and I do feel we should be over all this ideological ‘Painting Is dead’ nonsense by now.

Nevertheless, I’m certainly no media purist, and happy to consider work in any mode on a given day.  The unfortunate fact is that there just isn’t much in the exhibition that resonated with me, and rather too much that felt a bit facile or just like empty gestures.  One or two pieces really are just poorly executed, in truth.  That seems a little unforgivable, as I imagine the selectors weren’t short of entries to draw on for a show of relatively modest dimensions.

Anthony Fletcher, Still From: 'Transcend', 16mm Film Transferred To HD Digital Video, 2015

I did however enjoy the generally intelligent use of the available gallery space and the decision to create an impressive atmosphere by painting the walls dark grey and restricting the ambient lighting.  Video is the single most prevalent medium represented, and clearly benefits from such a theatrical context, (as do the other light-based pieces).  However, everything else is generally well spot-lit too, and all the work has a fair chance to shine.  It’s a shame then, that the wall captions feature some of the least illuminating and occasionally, nonsensical artist’s statements I’ve read in a long while [1.], (not necessarily the curators’ fault, I realise).

Anthony Fletcher, Still From: 'Transcend', 16mm Film Transferred To HD Digital Video, 2015

Anyway, enough with the negative comments.  If little actually rocked my world, there are a small handful of pieces that at least made my visit (almost) worth the effort [2.].  In the interests of positivity, let’s focus on them for now.

Anthony Fletcher, Still From: 'Transcend', 16mm Film Transferred To HD Digital Video, 2015

Anthony Fletcher’s video, ‘Transcend’ is a nebulous melange of nearly unidentifiable visual impressions.  Rippling water and suggestions of foliage occasionally emerge in an unfocussed manner, but mostly it just resembles a restless stream of visual ambience.  It’s probably not too difficult to just unfocus or mis-expose a variety of footage and layer it into the visual equivalent of a track from Aphex Twin’s second album, but I found the piece pleasingly hypnotic and well enough put together all the same.  The duration between its loops feels about right, and the variation in abstract visual qualities is sufficient to hold my attention throughout.  What really makes it is the deliberate use of 16mm film stock, with all its attendant glitches and analogue warmth, before the transfer to an HD digital format.  That analogue/digital stand-off isn’t exactly new territory, but it pleases me that Fletcher addresses it in a way that is as much about visual pleasure as anything else, in the first instance.

Craig David Parr, 'The Story Of The Clock Parts I, II & III', Digital Video, 2015

Another video piece that appealed to me, but for very different reasons, is Craig David Parr’s three-part ‘The Story Of The Clock’, shown concurrently on separate screens.  This is a resolutely ramshackle undertaking, recalling the absurdist existentialism at the heart of Samuel Beckett, the messy pranksterism of Paul McCarthy, or even the ribald excesses of Alfred Jarry.  In the first chapter, an (the) artist character constructs a large, clumsily-made clock face sculpture whilst wearing a crude, papier maché pig-like head.  The second part records his struggle to push this up a flight of stairs with obvious difficulty and relatively little progress, (the stairs extending much further than he's able to climb).  Finally, the pig/artist drops his trousers, produces a grossly distended fake member, and proceeds to masturbate over the clock face in what looks like a semi-industrial studio setting.

Craig David Parr, Still From: 'The Story Of The Clock Part I', Digital Video, 2015

Craig David Parr, Still From: 'The Story Of The Clock Part III', Digital Video, 2015

Clearly, we’re not dealing with aesthetic refinement or any form of subtlety here.  However, the piece has a stylistic consistency and a variety of internal (il)logic.  This is one of two pieces by Parr in the exhibition, and he has a stated mission to question ideas about cultural authority or the validity of perceived Utopias.  I didn’t really get too much of a sense of the latter from ‘The Story Of The Clock’, preferring to read it, more generally, as a thinly-veiled commentary on the futility of human and artistic, (or indeed critical), endeavour, and the inescapability of mortality.  On reflection, maybe those things do connect with the idea of Utopia after all.  Not unimportantly, this piece also made me laugh inwardly, not least over its blatancy, and the chance topical relevance to grotesque acts of public, pig-based onanism.

Richard Sandell, Images From: 'A Tough Year For The Sirens', C-Type Photographic Prints. 2014

Oddly, the other two pieces that held my attention are both photographic projects relating to swimming pools [3.].  Richard Sandell’s paired photographs are apparently part of a project documenting both the travails of mixed gender, age and sexually oriented synchronised swimming team, and the issues of discrimination raised by their experiences.  In fact, it’s all a fiction, and the hilariously mis-matched team members depicted in Prof. Sandell’s beautifully composed changing room settings are actually members of his family.  I enjoyed this combining of an apparent documentary approach with a wholly fictional narrative, as well as the essential humanity at the heart of the project.  The insertion of all-too-real individuals into a context as artificially formalised as synchronised swimming seems rather well-judged.

Richard Sandell, 'A Tough Year For The Sirens', C-Type Print, 2014

Richard Sandell, 'Renato', C-Type Photographic Print, 2014

The second pool-related piece is Holgar Martin’s ‘Main Pool - I Have Been Swimming Here For 15 Years’.  This is another beautifully exposed and composed image, this time with a rather more straightforward documentary agenda.  It is part of a project to document  Nottingham’s now defunct Beechdale Swimming Baths, and its changes over the years since it opened in 1970.

Holgar Martin, 'Main Pool - I Have Been Swimming Here For 15 Years',
Archival Photographic Print, 2015

It occurs to me that, sensually, large, communal swimming pools are  a distinct category of place.  They are very much a world of light, reflection, formal geometry and particular recurring colours.  They are also redolent of certain, instantly recognisable sensations of smell, humidity and acoustics.  Martin implies plenty of that in his image, but all that delicious, limpid geometry is also typical of a particular mode of Modernist design, which in turn speaks of the idealistic, communality of spirit in which many public pools were once built.  I grew up taking the construction of such places as a public amenity for granted.  I can’t help suspecting that, nowadays, the majority of swimming pools are created as part of private, subscription-only health clubs, or in the basements of billionaire oligarchs.

There we go then.  I started this post in a bit of a grump but, clearly, there were some genuine pleasures to be had, even in a somewhat disappointing exhibition.  Perversely though, I’m going to end as I started…

A Word To The Wise:

Should you find yourself visiting Nottingham, (an experience I would normally endorse), do yourself a favour and avoid the City Council-run Broadmarsh Centre Car Park.  I’m generally a fan of the dystopian glamour of your average dilapidated multi-story car park, but this one’s becoming almost unusable.  I queued for 45 minutes at several mal-functioning ticket machines, along with an increasingly disgruntled crowd of Saturday shoppers, just for the privilege of paying for release.  What’s worse, once a harassed member of staff finally appeared to take money in person, my parking fee had actually clicked over into the next tariff, with no talk of a refund at any stage.  On top of the Castle’s admission charge, it was hardly a cost-effective way to spend Saturday afternoon, Nottingham City Council (and, more to the point, Mr. Osbourne). 

“All that relish for failed utopias doesn’t look so clever now, does it, smart lad?” - I bet you’re thinking.


'Nottingham Castle Open 2015' continues until 8 November at: Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Lenton Road, Nottingham NG1 6EL.  I'd recommend allowing enough time to view the whole collection, if you're to get your money's worth.

[1.]:  Writing such stuff in a coherent manner certainly isn’t easy, as I myself discovered, earlier in the year.  All the same, I’m not sure it really helps to just use ‘emotions’ as a vague, catch-all term for, well, nothing very much.  At least try to communicate something a little more specific, folks.

[2.]:  If not actually the Castle’s £6.00 admission fee.  Perhaps my mood wasn’t helped by the fact I had to wade through the Beer Festival taking place in the Castle grounds, before I even got to the main entrance.  Don’t get me wrong, - I enjoy a pint of the proper stuff as much as anyone else.  In fact, on reflection, perhaps I should have stopped off for one on the way in, - it might have helped.

[3.]:  Whilst writing this post, it does occur to me that one of the more impressive aspects of this show is the way that the curators have managed to connect certain thematic threads within it.  That’s something one wouldn’t necessarily expect from an open exhibition, for obvious reasons.