Plymouth latest

Vanessa Billy | 'End of Days' |  2013 | Vase, mud, water and used light bulbs

As Exeter watches its art infrastructure wither, Plymouth's galleries are thriving. Last Thursday was an excellent crossover point between five outstanding shows.

Conversations Across Art and Mathematics at Peninsula Arts (9-28 May) was of particular interest to me after my work last year with the Oxford Mathematical Institute. Devised and curated by Barry Phipps, it included work by painter Mark Francis and architect George L. Legendre, alongside a film by Plymouth artist Heidi Morstang. A highlight for me was a wall-size print-out of Legendre's book Pasta by Design and I also enjoyed eavesdropping on mathematicians' thinking processes via Mortstang's film. But I was definitely left on the outside looking in.

good things come... at The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (25 April - 4 June) curated by Kevin Hunt and Hannah Jones featured (mostly) small works by Agnes Calf, Alex Frost, Clive Murphy, Eric Bainbridge, Hayley Tompkins, Jack Lavender, Jo Addison, Kevin Hunt, Leo Fitzmaurice, Oliver Tirre, Peter Amoore, Richard Wentworth, Ryan Gander, Ruth Proctor, Sean Edwards, Susan Collis and Vanessa Billy.  I found this collection of work very exciting, but couldn't quite get a handle on the underlying concept: that the size of an object and our attention upon it might be intrinsically linked to time.  Sadly I had to skip the companion show at KARST F*** Newton (28 April to 28 May).

Quick look in on on Holly Davey's Here Is Where We Came From at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery (7 May - 3 September) then on to Kelly Best's All Walls Are Interrupted at Plymouth Arts Centre (15 April - 11 June). I was particularly taken with a site-responsive wall drawing based on the building's slate roof (more geometry). It gave me a way back in to Best's paintings, which I've previously found hard to figure.

A sense of #AWE

Jimmy Cauty | Aftermath Dislocation Principle | 2016

The inaugural Art Week Exeter (AWE), which ran from 9 to 15 May, brought together existing contemporary art events (such as the Sean Lynch show jointly presented by Spacex, Exeter Phoenix and RAMM) with the annual Exeter Open Studios event and its low-profile shadow NOSE. Possibly one of the most successful collaborative arts ventures the city has seen, it was coordinated not by the council or by any of the city's established arts organisations, but by independent artist and curator Stuart Crewes.

I managed to check out Jimmy Cauty's Aftermath Dislocation Principle, Sean Lynch's The Weight of the the World, Lousie Ashcroft's Discrete Infinity, the Museum of Contemporary Commodities' pop-up shop and talk at TOPOS, Konstantin Bayer's art-articles, US CHAPS - a collaboration between Cannon Hill Art School and Preston Street Union and Naomi Hart's Drawn to the North.  I would have liked to do more, but time was short and the listings long (101 events across 56 venues).

The inevitable issue with new arts events in small cities is that the main audience are also the main providers of the event. So everyone's too busy doing their bit to go see anyone else's. But it was a great test-run - drawing together the diverse strands of Exeter's visual arts community in one well coordinated, well marketed and (in certain hot-spots) well attended festival, which could credibly be promoted to a far wider catchment in future years. It made me feel hugely optimistic about the outlook for visual art in Exeter.

Feed (2016)

Gabrielle Hoad | Feed | 2016 | Hand-punched bookmarks, secreted in library books

Feed considers the library as a source of information but also as a habitat where a variety of different species might thrive. Common library visitors coded onto bookmarks include Liposcelis bostrychophila (booklouse), Lepisma saccharina (silverfish), Lasioderma serricorne (cigarette beetle), Tineola bisselliella (clothes moth), Mus musculus (house mouse) and Eurotium rubrum (foxing mould).

First made for Preston Street Union's intervention in Exeter Library during Art Week Exeter in May 2016.

Graft (2016)

Gabrielle Hoad | Graft | 2016 | Digital print transfer, paint and Perspex

Images from a 2014 work Interloper were remade as Perspex 'postcards' for a project on the theme of trade/exchange. They contain images of imagined human/plant grafts set in the context of Robert Sharrock's famous 1660 account of plant grafting methods. Graft was made for an exchange of small-scale work between Preston Street Union in Exeter and Cannon Hill Art School in Birmingham. 

A first showing of outputs from this project was made in a disused shop as part of Art Week Exeter: 10-15 May 2016.

Uncertain territory

The Buffer Zone | 2016 | Photo: Susie David

Latest a-n blog post on my collaborative project with Megan Calver and Susie David, The Buffer Zone, which is supported by a bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company.
https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/the-buffer-zone/post/52448309/