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| Andrew Smith, 'Collected Redactions 2', Acrylic on Canvas, 142 cm x 114 cm, 2020 |
As our various freedoms of movement have been partially restored in recent weeks, I've already attended a few small exhibition openings in the Midlands. The most recent of these involved a dive over to Birmingham, with my friend, Dave - to catch the first day of the joint show 'Displaced', by my sometime co-conspirators, Shaun Morris and Andrew Smith. It was also an opportunity to visit the previously unfamiliar (to me) T-Street Gallery, and also to meet its mastermind (and curator of this exhibition) Sevven Kucuk. I've no real idea about the epidemiological wisdom of The Government's lockdown easing measures - beyond the distinct suspicion we're far from having heard the last of all this viral malarkey. However, I'm no different from most folks in enjoying the chance to get out and about, and to enjoy just doing stuff again. Visiting exhibitions, catching up with friends, meeting new art world participants, and sipping the drinks we enjoyed later in the day, are all part of that. We even managed to catch a little weekend sunshine and avoid most of the jingoistic football nonsense, along the way. All in all, the job was a good 'un.
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| Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith, 'Displaced', T-Street Gallery, Birmingham, July 2021. With Some Old Favourites by Shaun, and Curator, Sevven Kucuk (C.) |
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| Shaun Morris, 'The Green Door', Oil on Canvas, 120 cm X 80 cm, 2020 |
The work of both Shaun and Andrew has featured here on numerous previous occasions, and in various configurations, and the current show represents a relatively small selection of both old and new work - much of which I was at least partially familiar with already. Nevertheless, there's no substitute for seeing actual work in a room, and it's always instructive to see even well-known work in new contexts. In this case it was also interesting to view the work of both artists through the eyes of a third party. I think it's fair to say that Sevven's thoughtful and collaborative curation have resulted in a hang that capitalises on the strengths of both the work, and the two spaces in which it hangs.
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| Shaun (2nd L) & Andrew (R), with Friends |
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| Andrew Smith, 'Collected Redactions 5' (L) & 'Collected Redactions 6' (R), Both Acrylic on Canvas, 121 cm X 91 cm, 2020 |
Whilst both artists continue to plough their own distinct furrows, there are still enough fruitful conversations between each selection to suggest some kind of loose thematic connection. In this case, that would point towards a shared meditation on the interraction we've all experienced with both trepidatious outdoor spaces and our own constrained interiors, in the time of Covid. In Sevven's words:
"We've been forced to reflect upon our relationships with areas and places we've been isolated too and enclosed in and how our methods of communications connect or disconnect." [1.]
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| Shaun Morris, 'No Particular Place To Go', Oil on Canvas, 50 cm X 60 cm, 2021 |
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| Shaun Morris, 'Lock Up' (Top) & 'Lock Up II' (Bottom), Both Oil on Canvas, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2019 |
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| Shaun Morris, 'Lockdown', Oil on Canvas, 75 cm X 50 cm, 2020 |
In Shaun's case, this knowledge serves to re-frame the palpable melancholy (or indeed, 'displacement'), that has always suffused his nocturnal visions of Birmingham's suburbs and edgelands. His customary stationary vehicles, architectural corners and street furniture continue to resonate under sombre urban illumination - partially abstracting themselves amidst dramatic patterns of coloured light and deep shadow. But now they also loom out of the darkness like ghostly presences encountered during our brief, officially-sanctioned exercise sessions. The tension between restriction and those snatched moments of lonely 'freedom', are now palpable - even in works made long before the pandemic. Whilst reassessing the past, I was also intrigued to see that Shaun has recently revisited the subject matter of his elevated motorway pieces of a few years ago. The modestly-scaled motorway painting he now shows ('What Happened to All the Friends We Used to Know') may be less immediately dramatic than previous efforts, but it's a real slow-burner. Complete with its incongruous ghostly horse, it gradually reveals itself from the prevailing gloom, like something from Sickert. The painting emphasises just how accomplished Shaun has become at depicting the effects of restricted light and colour at night.
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| Shaun Morris, 'What Happened To All The Friends We Used To Know', Oil on Canvas, 50 cm X 60 cm, 2021 |
As usual, Andrew's recent output is a rather more oblique and open to multiple potential interpretations. It's a feature of his work I've always relished - even if he has occasionally joked that he reads my blog posts to find out himself what his work is actually about! As ever, he now presents work in multiple media, with notable diversions into experimental writing and video. However, his main contribution to the show is split between painted-over photographs, and somewhat larger, nominally abstract paintings. The former are, by his own account, grabbed (direct from the screen) from the popular T.V. property show, 'Homes Under The Hammer'. Knowing Andrew, as I do, there'll be at least some satirical intent there, but in the context of this exhibition, the main effect evoked is one of unsettling enclosure within alienating domestic spaces. How many people have found their familiar surroundings transformed into psychically overloaded terrain under lockdown conditions - I wonder? How many were unable to relocate within their preferred time-frame? How many more found themselves frittering their enforced imprisonment whilst staring blankly at facile T.V. shows?
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| Andrew Smith, 'Cubist On The Water (Homes Under The Hammer'. Acrylic on Digital Print, 58 cm X 43 cm, 2021 |
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| Andrew Smith, 'Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appalling (Homes Under The Hammer)', Acrylic On Digital Print, 58 cm X 43 cm, 2020 |
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| Andrew Smith, 'Landscape With Empty Light Subject (Homes Under The Hammer)', Acrylic on Digital Print, 58 cm X 43 cm, 2021 |
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| Andrew Smith, '...(The Caretaker Edited)', Video, 2020 |
If the paintings seem a little more straightforwardly formalist at first viewing - they soon prove to be no less layered and mediated in their unfolding. Their interlocking, flattened shapes and compositional arrangements are assembled from multiple digitally filtered and superimposed photos of scarred and stained exterior walls. If (like Shaun) Andrew has found himself focussing on quotidian details in a time of reduced horizons, he's also wasted little time in distilling them into yet-more unfamiliar environments via the expedient of heavy digital intervention. What really hold these pieces in slightly wonky balance are the occasional (very) vestigial clues to an original subject, and also the the push-pull of small painterly accidents, versus possibly arbitrary decisions made at the keyboard. Should the colour schemes suggest some degree of more elegant respite in trying times - Andrew himself reminds us they are often the chance result of the mechanical translation from photograph, to digital file, to painted canvas. Again, we're prompted to question how much of the everyday experience we once took for granted, has been driven yet deeper into the digital domain - or reflected back to us on mis-calibrated screens, in the last eighteen months. Will that do, Andrew?
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| T-Street Gallery Windows, Birmingham, July 2021 |
To conclude, mention should be made of T-Street Gallery itself. It occupies a modest, but perfectly serviceable space as the adjunct to a long-standing shared studio complex, at the interface between the leisure/cultural hotspots around Broad Street, and the more down-at-heel environs of Ladywood. In recent decades, many striving artists in search of studio or exhibition space will have become connoisseurs of run-down, post-industrial premises. Nevertheless, T-Street occupies what must be one of the more dilapidated examples of the breed. Luckily, I myself find it hard to trust anyone who can't appreciate a proper bit of urban grunge. The fabric of the building includes numerous fascinating infrastructural clues to its previous incarnations, amongst crumbling masonry and cracked panes. Nevertheless, I couldn't help noticing that the somewhat questionable integrity of the roof has been carefully shored-up, immediately above the gallery space, and it's testament to the energy and determination of Sevven Kucuk, that she's been able to carve out such a venture, almost single-handed. She's also achieved it in the face of pretty limited resources, it would seem. If our relatively brief conversation is a reliable indication - her motivations seem spot-on, and if any form of grass-roots Art scene is to survive in this country, it will doubtless be through the efforts of such folk.
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| Vertiginous Post-Industrial Ambience, T-Street Gallery, July 2021 |
'Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith/Hr Smoke: 'Displaced', continues at T-Street Gallery, Top Floor, 55 Great Tyndal Street, Birmingham B16 8DR, Until 18 July 2021.
[1.]: Sevven Kucuk, Exhibition Guide Notes, 'Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith/Hr Smoke, 'Displaced', T-Street Gallery, Birmingham, July 2021.
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