If A Picture Paints A Weekend Away...

Rather than rushing back to Leicester after the Friday night private view of the ‘If a Picture Paints…’ exhibition, I made a weekend of it in Birmingham.  It allowed me to revisit the gallery on the Saturday and reflect further on the work and the exhibition experience as a whole.  It also provided an opportunity to celebrate my close friend Susie's birthday in a different city, and to explore some of the photo opportunities I suspected were lurking in the Digbeth area near the gallery.  The luxury of a big bed and leisurely hotel breakfasts were an attraction too.

Work By: (L-R), Shaun Morris, Andrew Smith, Chris Cowdrill & Andrew Smith

Two Of My Paintings With Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris
& Andrew Smith

Still Life Paintings By Shaun Morris

Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith

Friday was all about the buzz of the exhibition as an event, but Saturday demonstrated it can still be difficult to coax people into a gallery under normal conditions, however diligently you publicise it.  If only a trickle of people found their way in that day, I still think it was right to opt for a weekend opening and can’t fault the collective effort to raise awareness of the show.  The Works gallery is a good space and suited the exhibition well but, being on the third floor of an old industrial building, must struggle for passing trade.  I guess the lure of Brum’s extensive retail honey pot nearby was always going to provide severe competition too.

Ceramic Piece By Craig Underhill, (Foreground), With Work By: (L-R),
Myself, Andrew Smith & Chris Cowdrill

Ceramic Work By Craig Underhill

Nonetheless, it was good to spend more time with the work, to chat to Shaun and Andrew again and get to know Chris a little better.  I appreciated seeing how the work appeared with some daylight illumination too.  Andrew’s paintings, which had seemed quite muted the previous evening, started to sing next to the large gallery window as surprising amounts of colour seeped out from their accumulations of visual incident.   I was drawn to make comparisons with my own paintings’ more overt, on-the-surface garishness.

Paintings By Andrew Smith

My Paintings 'Home 1' (L) And 'Broken 1' (R)

My Painting 'Shut 1'

I like what Indigo Octagon are trying to do as a collective and am convinced that artists gathering together to provide their own support mechanisms and shared energy is a canny strategy in these days of increasing financial and cultural poverty.  I chatted with Chris about the potential for different projects under the same banner to involve varying combinations or degrees of involvement from core members whilst drawing in outside collaborators as appropriate.  It works well enough for musicians, (Massive Attack being an obvious established model), so why not artists?  I was encouraged to meet a group for whom the main priority appears to be the work, with everything else seemingly just about maximizing the chances of it reaching an engaged audience.  In a hollow, P.R. driven culture, where every dream is retailed back to us, the value of encountering reasonably like-minded people is incalculable.

Paintings By Shaun Morris

Earlier, I had wended my way slowly to Pershore Street via the seriously dilapidated industrial back streets of Digbeth.  The streets I traversed are dominated by massive brooding railway arches which, as Andrew pointed out, lend them a slightly Gothic, or even De Chirico-esque, quality.   During my short walk I encountered numerous good examples of urban text, decaying surfaces and general entropy.  I’m sure I only scratched the surface(s) and intend to return for more photo-perambulations very soon.

Surfaces And Texts, Digbeth, Birmingham

The day concluded with a meal and drinks with my friends and a chance to marvel at the apparent 'last days of the Roman Empire' unfolding on Broad Street.  A real find for me was ‘The Yardbird’, tucked in next to the municipal library.  Somewhere between a bar and a club, this intimate venue revealed itself to have a very happening vibe with lounge décor, an open minded crowd and excellent Jazz/Funk/Soul/Hip-hop sounds.  Full marks go to the proprietors for pitching the P.A volume perfectly too.  It’s good to know my arthritic knees still permit occasional dancing even if my Sunday morning head doesn’t like me drinking!

Private View: If A Picture Paints A Good Night Out...

My last post mentioned how various events in Birmingham have been occupying my time just lately.  Prime amongst these was the private view for the exhibition, ‘If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words, Why Can’t I Paint’, organised by the Indigo Octagon collective and in which I participated as a guest artist.  Although the show had been open for a few days, the Friday evening event was an obvious opportunity to draw as many people as possible through the door and was, in that and several other respects, a real success.

Being at a geographical remove, I’d had a relatively little hands-on involvement with the show’s practical preparations and was unsure exactly what to expect prior to entering the gallery for the first time.  Additionally, I was rather breathless from the rapid race over through Friday evening M6 traffic, (thank you, Road Gods!), and a hurried hotel check-in.

In the event, I was delighted to see how well the exhibition looked and just how much care, thought and sheer hard work, Shaun Morris and the other guys had put into the hang.  Although generally familiar with the soft themes underlying the show, and some of the work on display, I hadn’t anticipated just how well different pieces would relate to each other across the room.  It was fascinating to observe the subtle correspondences between the differing preoccupations of the five artists emerge as one moved around the gallery.  I think one of the main achievements has been to allow these connections to be discovered and reflected upon naturally without too much spoon- feeding or conceptual contrivance.

It’s always scary to expose one’s work to a public arena and in the context of other artists’ output.  I was relieved to find I haven’t been fooling myself, and that, out in the World; my paintings can justify their creation.  Of course, there’s always a list of things one might do differently and certain aspects of the other participants’ work may suggest possible new ways forward for my own.  This is particularly true of Andrew Smith’s engagement with some concerns that I share but across a variety of platforms.  Despite my commitment to painting, he takes greater account of the flux of urban existence, and the relationship between environment, text and thought processes, than I have managed so far.  His video work, painted photographs and textual paintings supplied much food for thought.   Craig Underhill’s ceramics engage with the nuances of distressed hard surfaces to which I’m often drawn, whilst Shaun’s painted motorway nocturnes and Chris Cowdrill’s painstaking, collaged illustrations tackled those mutable zones at, and just beyond, the margins of any conurbation.

The Men They Could Hang: (L to R), Craig Underhill, Some Bloke From
Leicester, Shaun Morris, Chris Cowdrill, Andrew Smith

Work By Shaun Morris, (Left & Centre) And Andrew Smith, (Right)

Ceramics By Craig Underhill

Many exhibiting artists will probably admit that private views sometimes alternate between the slightly intimidating and the dispiritingly vacuous, but this time round it seemed the large gathering comprised people who’d come for the right reasons.  There was plenty of genuine interest in the work and lots of positivity and general good humour. I met many new faces and enjoyed numerous conversations. It was evident that the I.O. team had worked really hard at getting the word out and it paid off, with the room remaining full nearly all evening.  The exhibition brochure was a stylish art statement in its own right and the souvenir badges provided a nice touch of affordable ‘merch’.

Shaun & Andrew Perform 'Music For Service Stations'

Box Of Knives

The exhibition’s mixed media aspect was further enhanced by the inclusion of live music that turned a private view into a real multi-dimensional event.  Although Shaun and Andrew will maintain their performance of ‘Music For Service Stations’ wasn’t wholly successful, I was impressed they’d composed a piece specifically for the event at all.  They were followed by a committed performance from local band Box of Knives that went down very well with the room.

It Was a Mixed Crowd

Although our numbers were a little reduced through illness, I was pleased to be able to take a small contingent with me to add to the crowd.  As well as thanking the I.O. guys for making it all happen, and everyone who attended, particular thanks are due to Lorel, Susie, Pauline, Dave and Sid for helping to make it a great weekend altogether.  More of that in my next bulletin…

'Thanks For Coming'

It’s worth mentioning that the show continues until November 23 so here’s hoping that, before then, some more folks make it along to the Works Gallery, Jubilee Centre, 130 Pershore Street, Birmingham B5 6ND.  Oh, and if you want to know who Harvey Smoke is, - ask Andrew.

If A Picture Paints A Press Release...

I've already mentioned the group exhibition in which I'll be participating later this month in a previous post.  The opening is just a week away now, so here's another reminder by way of the official press release.  A rather splendid accompanying booklet has also been produced including images and writings by the participating artists.  Physical copies will be available at the exhibition but you can also view it here.

PRESS RELEASE

Indigo Octagon Presents

If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can’t I Paint

The Works Gallery, Birmingham

Tuesday 13th November to Friday 23rd November 2012

‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can’t I Paint’ is the inaugural exhibition by Indigo Octagon, a loose collective of Birmingham based artists, designers and makers. The exhibition is eclectic, bringing together a diverse range of work by 5 Midlands artists. The show has a sense of a ‘mix tape’ aesthetic, ideas and themes presented in the work of one artist being taken on in the work of another.

In Hugh Marwood’s mixed media paintings for example, inspiration is taken from the layers of graffiti and writing to be found on urban surfaces, the walls and boarded-up windows and doors that the artist passes on his many walks as he considers the psychogeography of the city of Leicester. While a form of writing is collected and re-presented in Marwood’s works, it is, by contrast, obscured in the abstract paintings of Harvey Smoke, which take as their starting point the artist’s autobiographical writing painted onto the bare canvas. Smoke then paints, pours and builds up over time, a complex series of marks, colours and shapes that, in revealing themselves, bury the originally, now secret, text.

Craig Underhill’s sculptural ceramics reflect his interest in evoking the feeling of landscapes that he has travelled through. He is influenced by the visual effects created in these landscapes by human action, in particular the often overlooked physical marks, structures or patterns that are the traces of everyday life, and which are revealing, in various ways, of our relationship with the natural world. The direction and development of Underhill’s work is strongly affected by his interest in exploring materials and techniques. Like many ceramicists he is fascinated by the aesthetics and characteristics of materials, the ways they are

transformed by artistic, and other, processes.

A direct link with Craig Underhill’s slab-built vessels can be seen in the dark shapes of the cast concrete columns beneath the M5 motorway at night, as depicted in the atmospheric and psychologically-charged paintings of Shaun Morris. The sodium light that spills from the motorway above, cutting through the black void of night, reveals shards of the landscape below, and in so doing brings the English Romantic landscape hard up against the lessons of post Abstract painting. Images and the painting process battle it out, with the large areas of depthless black set against more representational elements that create a dynamic illusion

of space. Illusion is further explored in Andy Smith’s painted photographs. Patched-up, neglected buildings, a carelessly daubed steel bollard, painstakingly painted over by the artist, seamlessly blending the printed and painted surface. There is a playfulness in the seemingly banal non-subjects, the neglected detritus carefully rendered in paint.

A similar sense of care for the forgotten and overlooked can be seen in the illustrations of Chris Cowdrill. Weeds, wild flowers and plants intertwined around an ugly wire fence are beautifully drawn. A blackbird perched on bare winter branches evokes the atmosphere and texture of winter with great precision and clarity. Cowdrill’s illustrations invite us in to look more deeply at the nature that insistently, quietly, asserts itself around us.

Join Indigo Octagon at the Private View on Friday 16th November from 6-9pm. Refreshments will be available, you can meet the artists, and there will also be a musical performance by artists Andy Smith and Shaun Morris composed in response to the exhibition, as well as live music by local up and coming band, Box Of Knives.

Hope to see you there...