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.