Evening of contrasts in Devon on Friday night, punctuated by a hasty fish supper eaten on a bench overlooking Plymouth's Sutton Harbour. I'd just been to the opening of a new print exhibition Up Close at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey and was about to see Hannah Silva preview her new performance work Opposition at the Barbican Theatre.
Opposition: A Little Political Speech Opera is a work in progress: a move from Hannah Silva's more low-key voice- and text-based performances to a theatre production including props, choreography, music, lighting and effects. It showcases her playful, fast-talking, cut-up vocal technique to comment on the emptiness of modern political speech. An interactive show, it asks the audience to take ownership of significant quotes from famous politicians that pop up throughout the script. It was funny, rivetting and occasionally biting. It was also completely topical, including Twitter feeds and recordings of that morning's devastating news of the Japan earthquake.
Meanwhile back in the parallel universe that is the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, time stands still. There is still only one gender that really matters and the rest of us clear up after them. For Up Close, the pristine gallery is host to work by over 30 artists (mostly women, oddly enough) along with individual wall texts telling us what they love about the printmaking process and how inspired they are by nature. It's beautiful, buyable work, competently done - and some of the subject matter stretches beyond tired old landscapes. But, as a whole, the show feels unambitious and stifling.
It's organised by a venue concerned with the promotion of craft and craft education, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much focus on new ideas or difficult questions. (Though the show Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution in Plymouth has plenty.) Up Close is, I'm afraid, just a little bit too concerned with keeping everything nice. It's almost as if it wants to pretend that the last couple of years of economic, social, political and environmental turmoil never happened. After that, Hannah Silva was quite a tonic.
For details of future performances of by Hannah Silva, visit www.hannahsilva.co.uk
Up Close runs until 25 April 2011 at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AF
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