Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Hotbath Gallery, Bath
6 August – 17 September
Reviewed by: Julia Moszkowicz
'Into the Light' is an open exhibition initiated by the Bath Area Network for Artists (BANA) and consists of fifty artworks contributed by members of this expanding organisation. The exhibition is part of a major research project for BANA to develop its identity and sustainability, and has evaded the strong preferences of a selection committee to present a representative overview of the network.
Anne Morrison's Knickers is a video presentation of the fickle qualities of shadow (cast by the aforementioned articles on a staged washing line). The gentle movement of these undergarments, whose precise relationship to the social world becomes monumentally unimportant, is presented within a fixed frame, thereby allowing attention to be drawn to the inconsistencies of sunlight and ambient sound. Meanwhile Ed Holroyd's Counterpoint oscillates between different spatial, and hence imaginative, possibilities as it simultaneously constructs itself as word and image.
Jane Bentley-Taylor's Seascape is a serene photographic image that offers tonal complexity in preference to a finite sense of time and place, exploring the possibility of temporal and formal ambiguity within the potentially grounded precision of the photographic act. The clarity of its thematic concerns, however, is undermined by a decision to prefigure the image with an arrangement of sculptured forms that questions the intentional boundaries of the piece.
BANA has taken the risk of representing the fullest range of media skills and artistic interests, and the reward for gallery visitors is an engaging event that forces creative acts of interpretation. Some of the journeys undertaken will inevitably exceed the expectations of the contributors, but herein, perhaps, rests the very notion of a democratic event.
Writer detail:
Julia Moszkowicz is a lecturer in Visual Culture at Bath Spa University College.
Venue detail:
Hotbath Gallery
City of Bath College, Hotbath Street/Beau Street, Bath BA1 1UP
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