Size may not be everything, but 400 old suitcases suspended from the ceiling certainly make an impression.
The installation by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota at the New Art Gallery at Walsall fill a large gallery, and start off hanging near the floor at one end, and then get gradually higher so you can walk underneath. They are used and old, and you an only imagine the journeys they have made, and who their owners may have been.
Reviews
George Wagstaffe and Michala Gyetvai brighten January with joint exhibition
An artistic relationship which has helped two artists to become newly-inspired and revitalized has led to a joint exhibition in a great setting.
Michala Gyetvai and George Wagstaffe opened their show Powerful Forces with a talk about their work. The exhibition is open to the public until February 13 – and well worth the journey.
It is on at the Michael Heseltine Gallery at the Chenderit School, a visual arts college in Middleton Cheney, near Banbury. The gallery is made from glass and galvanized steel with cedar panelling, and is built in lean-to style against the school wall, offering wall spaces and plenty of room to display Michala’s large textiles and George’s sculptures in a way that looks like it was designed around them.
Thanks for the memories – the year in art in Coventry and Warwickshire
So, time to raise a Private View glass of probably-questionable wine to the last days of 2013, and look back at another year.
To those who complain about Coventry in particular being a cultural desert it’s worth pointing out again that I’ve filled 52 weeks’ worth of columns with reviews of art exhibitions, plus short bits about art-related activities, and longer pieces and interviews on this blog. Yes, not all the exhibitions may have been world class but there’s a lot going on around here and new quality artists keep emerging.
One of the best bits about doing the column is going to many of the private views, or opening nights, and also experiencing some other whacky one-offs.
Bark and Butterflies installation plays star role in Coventry Peace Festival
An installation telling a story of suffering and survival in Siberia is a fascinating piece of work, and a great part of this year’s Coventry Peace Festival.
As a child, if he didn’t eat his dinner Adrian Palka used to be told off by his father angrily saying that when he was young he’d had to survive on just bark and butterflies.
Many years later, Coventry University lecturer and artist Palka traced the terrifying route of his father and grandfather’s exile to Siberia and found himself in the hot summer surrounded by the swarms of butterflies his dad had talked about. The result is Bark and Butterflies, an audio visual installation on show in the foyer of Coventry University’s Alan Berry Building (opposite the cathedral steps) until Friday evening, and very much worth a visit.
Canaletto paintings return to Warwick Castle for Arts at the Castle show
Mick Jagger and friend with one of the Canalettos visible in the background – now it is back without the rock star
After a varied past featuring Mick Jagger and Capability Brown, Canaletto has come home to the castle, for a month anyway.
At an atmospherically-lit opening night with prosecco, canapés and the great and good of Warwickshire for company it was a charming welcome back for the works.
Two paintings of Warwick Castle by Canaletto from 1752, owned by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, have been loaned to go on show in the room they used to hang in until November 29, and can be seen by all paying visitors.
Ragley Hall Studio stables exhibition is superb end to inspiring summer
Michala Gyetvai with some of her works
Location is everything so they say, and you can’t beat the setting of another exhibition by a lucky group of artists.
Back in the spring, I was lucky enough to go to the private view at the start of Dawn Harris’s time as artist in residence at Ragley Hall, near Alcester. She explained then that the residency was called Negotiating Heritage, and she would be considering why heritage was important to the community. Along with Deb Catesby and Michala Gyetvai, she would be working from studios in stables at the Hall to create works there.
The summer has ended with an exhibition from Dawn, Deb and Michala and eight other artists, all working around the Negotiating Heritage theme.
Pop Artist (and woman) Pauline Boty finally gets the attention she deserved
Colour Her Gone by Pauline Boty
The past few decades are full of examples of people who looked good, and died young, becoming a legend and an icon. Unfortunately her tragically-early death did not do this to the artist Pauline Boty, but an exhibition and book are likely to bring her the lasting fame she deserved.
Pauline Boty, Pop Artist and Woman are the title of the exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and the accompanying book by the exhibition’s co-curator Sue Tate. Both tell Boty’s story but more than that, place her in the 60s world which she seemed to revel in, and also examine her role as a woman artist, and what that meant at the time. Tate’s book includes many images but is scholarly in approach, coming firmly from a gender analysis perspective which is refreshing.
Adam Buick’s Pembrokeshire kiln opening event is a new art first
I’ve been to lots of exhibition openings – but never a kiln opening before.
This was a holiday treat too, something I found out about while away in Pembrokeshire, but it’s a good idea which could do with being copied.
The ceramicist in question was Adam Buick, a name to watch whose work has already featured in national art, design and style publications. He focuses on making white porcelain moon jars, inspired by the Korean dal-hang-a-ri vessels, but of widely varying colour and size.
Retrospective by Warwickshire artist shows 40 years of beautiful paintings
An artist with a long-established career is holding his retrospective at a lovely Warwickshire gallery.
Michael Felmingham, who was born in Birmingham in 1935, taught for many years at Leicester and then Coventry Colleges of Art, and in 1989 retired from teaching to concentrate on his painting. He works from a studio in Leamington, and the exhibition includes many images of his adopted home town, as well as the countryside, his garden, and as a complete contrast, Venice.
The Gallery Upstairs in High Street, Henley-in-Arden, has shown his work since 1994, when it was run by Reg and Mag Moon, above Reg’s pottery. Their son and daughter now run the gallery – in a very pleasant space which was once their childhood playroom – and Carey Moon and a couple of other potters also work downstairs.
Such is the popularity of Michael Felmingham’s works that a quarter of those in the exhibition were sold either when the brochures were sent out, or on the opening day of the exhibition.
Charity shop finds turned into Coventry city centre art exhibition
If you think you’ve seen a new charity shop open in Coventry city centre – you’re partly, artily, right.
The Charity Shop Tour Shop is open in an empty shop at 19 Hertford Street, just off Broadgate.
It consists of items from Coventry-based artist Lorsen Camps’s The Charity Shop Tour project, and responses to them by artists Dave Gray, Jamie Randall and Ben Rowe.
The tour took place in 2003 and involved Lorsen travelling around the country visiting 1,306 charity shops in six weeks, and then producing a book about the project. The exhibition marks the tenth anniversary of the tour, with the additional works added to it. The items have all been carefully documented and you can read what they all are, and which shop and town they were sourced from.
Private View II 