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After a hectic Christmas and being fed up with the weather we decided to have a few days break in Buxton, a nearby spar town. The hotel was booked and we set off Not being able to book into the room before 2.00pm we decided to stop in Stockport and visit the gallery. Then found out this was closed on the Monday. Never mind we proceeded to Buxton and went for a walk in the town. I had an exhibition there a few years ago and decided to visit the gallery. This had closed down until May for refurbishment. After lunch and viewing our options we found a studio, showing the work of local artists and checked on the internet this was open until 4.00pm. We arrived at 2.00pm and found a notice on the door saying it had closed at 1.45 for a Spring clean. Never mind we could call the next day. You guessed! We arrived next morning to find a new notice up saying that they had now decided to close for the week. So much for art gallery visits. Anyway the second day was reasonably warm and a clear sky for most of the day so I was able to do a few quick sketches as reference material for future paintings. So all was not lost and we had got away for a few days.
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Whatever you think about Facebook using it has provided me with several opportunities. I have made new friends, met other artists and discovered new places and galleries.
After a visit to Chester I decided to come back via Frodsham. I had seen a few posts by artists exhibiting there and this was an opportunity to see the gallery. I was pleasantly surprised by the park it was situated in and impressed with the arts centre. Two large galleries, a room where a class was taking place and a really nice cafe. It was an ideal hub for local artistic activities. I enjoyed the exhibitions although it seemed a shame that none of the excellent paintings had been purchased. Will certainly return when the weather improves and spend more time exploring the area as well. As the weather has been inclement I have had several opportunities to visit local galleries. In one a full wall was taken up with pages ripped out of books and with sentences highlighted. On the other side of the gallery the artist had rubbed the words off pages and the dust made by the rubber was then heaped in piles on a pedestal. I have long found it fascinating that when you visit some modern art exhibitions the explanation of the work requires a degree to understand. Surely it is better for a work to stand on its own! This was contradicted on a recent visit where the artist had used sentences to form a picture. These were both in Arabic and English and overlaid. This proved to be an effective use of words within a piece of art. In another gallery I saw the opposite of this where traditional paintings were hung. Viewers could look at these and imagine what is happening or being said. Surely this engages the viewer and no written explanation is needed. After a visit to HOME, a modern venue, it was interesting to see what Manchester Art Gallery had on show.
I had heard about the Impressionist exhibition but had never heard of the artist Wynford Dewhust. "A controversial figure on the Anglo-French art scene at the turn of the twentieth century, Wynford Dewhurst is most famous for his 1908 work The Picnic, in the collection of Manchester Art Gallery. He was born in Manchester in 1864 and began his career studying law. He moved to Paris at the relatively advanced age of 27 to train as an artist, returning to France throughout his life to paint in the valleys of the Seine and the Creuse in the style of Claude Monet, who became his principal mentor. This exhibition brings together a large selection of Dewhurst’s shimmering paintings with archival photographs and documents to reintroduce the painter to his native city". I was impressed with the fact that this was an exhibition featuring landscapes, one of my favourite themes and one that doesn't seem to be favoured by galleries at the moment. A wide range of work, although it was easy to see at times whose style he was imitating, that did detract from the work at times. Well worth a visit and hopefully the start of a revival in the galleries of landscape paintings. I had planed to visit Home the new arts Venue in Manchester and today being dry and bright made my mind up.
After a short walk and a break in the restaurant for a drink I went down to the gallery for a look at the present exhibition. Modern art is not always to my liking but was pleasantly suprised by the work; interesting sculptures and prints as well as a thoughtful narative and film. Will certainly visit again. "Maclean uses the fairytale genre to examine the murky boundary between childhood and adulthood. She explores ideas of happiness and childhood as qualities that can be packaged and sold resulting in dark and unsettling adventures located in a netherland reminiscent of the supersaturated, candy-coloured palette of children’s television." "Resembling hybrids of bored commuters, cutesy kids’ TV monsters and sickeningly engorged biological organs, the sculptural figures also function as inanimate viewers for a series of infographic videos, displaying spreadsheets, bar graphs and market research surveys to their unblinking users. Playing on ideas about the cult of youth and the exaggerated enthusiasm of happiness marketing, they take the form of part playground-equipment, part grotesque and bloated mannequins, which upon closer inspection are being eaten alive by swarms of razor-toothed dolls." |
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