Pope visits Exeter Cathedral

From the deliberately ridiculous to the sublimely minimal - Laura Kikauka's den of kitsch leaves Spacex to make room for Simon Pope's Carved from Memory. And the contrast couldn't be starker.

The gallery now contains two speakers playing a recording of a 20-minute conversation between Pope's grandmother and a local stonemason. Not much more. Gran is doing that thing many grans do: trying to remember something - in this case the details of a gargoyle on the front of Exeter Cathedral carved by her father, but now eroded. The stonemason will attempt a recreation based only on this conversation.

I was initially disappointed to find that there was nothing showing the stonemason's attempts to draw or carve the figure. But that's to miss the point. The almost-empty gallery and the lack of visual reference throws you back in on yourself. All you can do is listen and imagine as the details of the gargoyle are teased out. You leave the gallery with your own unique mental image of the sculpture.

It's a compelling proposition, boldy stated, and the attendance of several generations of the Pope family at the gallery opening gave it personal colour too - but I feel conflicted over this show.

I'm all for quality, but sometimes you have to feel the width too. This show is occupying Exeter's only truly contemporary art space for the best part of two months. It's good, but is it substantial enough? I say not.

Until 11th July 2009 at Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF http://www.spacex.org.uk/

Utterly cluttery

The opening of Laura Kikauka’s Celebration of Failure at Spacex saw this normally austere and quiet gallery transformed into a mad interactive party space full of novelty slippers, old 33rpm records, retro biscuits…and table tennis. Perhaps because it summed up Devon’s love of car boot sale clutter and kitsch, it was one of the best attended Spacex openings in a very long time. One visitor was even asking the artist for interior design tips. Until 2 May 2009 at Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF

Time after time

Christiane Baumgartner's new show Solaris combines traditional craftmanship with contemporary imagery. Hand printed by the artist, some of these impeccable woodcuts are on a virtuoso scale. The contrast between the labour-intensive, line by line chiselling of the plywood plate and almost casual imagery drawn from video brings together two very different perceptions of time and adds exciting nuance to the idea of "stills". Until 21 February 2009 at Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF

(Not so) public art

It’s good to see the local Exeter press devoting so many column inches to contemporary art. The Heavitree News, for instance, is apoplectic over the siting of a shiny new public sculpture by Michael Fairfax on Fore Street. It’s going to cause a nasty accident, apparently, when motorists become so fascinated by the words written on it that they’ll clean forget to look where they’re going. We can but hope it will be that interesting.

Whatever the merits of the work itself, there seems to have been an unhelpful lack of consultation with local people. And, given the not-so-trifling budget of £70,000 (or £172,000, depending on who you ask), a missed opportunity for inclusive, innovative public art commissioning. You can’t blame Heavitree residents for going a bit Daily Mail.

Welcome to our stranglehold

If you're thinking of starting, joining or otherwise getting intimate with an artist-led initiative, Gordon Dalton has a few words of warning. www.aliasarts.org/GordonDalton.htm