Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Surface Gallery, Nottingham
2 February – 3 March
Reviewed by: Aaron Juneau
On discovery we are besieged by a dizzying barrage of arbitrariness in which individual works wrestle for rights to an accommodating space. Pervaded with fragmentation and heterogeneity, this general feeling of perceptual flux is perhaps facilitated by the ever-intrusive presence of designer CoCo Cottrell’s Beautifully Destroyed. The title itself alludes to the disruption of harmony instigated by the plethora of garish commodities such as a baby pink guitar and a pair of converse sneakers, revered by Cottrell for their seductive aesthetic.
Inane objects hang conspicuously from strings attached to the ceiling and inhabit each interstice between the paintings, drawings and photographs of Gary Colmer, Craig Hardy and Rebecca Ayre, that seem almost reticent amongst the fragments of attic detritus. The notion of detritus is cleverly mirrored in Cotopaxi, a large, billboard-like, printed photograph by Peter Norman depicting a cemeterial vista of abandoned commercial airliners.
Amanda Doran’s ambivalent objects present forms of fetishism and sensuous provocation, a wonderfully tentative balance between notions of banal domesticity and emotional disturbance, whilst in the interactive installation of Charlotte Pratley, medical prescription takes on a sinister guise as the viewer is offered pills filled with crushed glass.
‘Something for your CV’ attributes an indivisible connection with disorder: the chaotic, irresolute, perhaps even the pseudo-anarchic. This is what happens when nine volunteers are given free reign over a gallery space. Perhaps a response to the mundane nature of gallery work and the laborious task of continually hanging and re-hanging to meet artists’ pedantic specifications, in fact what we have in ‘Something for Your CV’ is a novel attempt to subvert the conventionality of the curatorial process, left precariously open in the knowledge that after one week the curatorial torch of responsibility will be handed down, leaving the fate of the entire exhibition at the disposal of a member of the public chosen at the opening, as they are invited to completely re-configure the work.
Writer detail:
Aaron Juneau is studying Fine Art at Nottingham Trent School of Art and Design.
Venue detail:
Surface Gallery
Nottingham Voluntary Action Centre, 7 Mansfield Road, Nottingham NG1 3FB
No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?
To post a comment you need to login
Back to top