Students’ new wave exhibition of maritime artworks.
“The work of 55 students, including sculpture, fashion, photography, painting and craft objects, will be displayed in Gallery 4 throughout the exhibition, which runs until 30 May”
There’s a wonderful church like quality to a gallery, light fighting itself a welcome, or for a more friendly kind of place, light seeming to drop in and coat it, blanket like. The echoes of people clicking their heels on the parquet flooring, muffled sounds, someone taking confession in a room hidden from view, all you need is for a young alter boy to sway by wafting incense and you can be easily confused into dropping to your knees and screaming “it was me – and I am sorry!”. The nearest I experienced to the waft was when two men hurtled past me pushing the tea trolley, cups clattering and tea-spoons a-jingling. The new exhibition at Ferens Gallery, Hull, Ink or Swim, offered all this and more, as I wandered in and out of the exhibits in Gallery 4. The pieces that caught my attention, held it and then would not let me go, were the clothing. I was unprepared for these items to be there and once found, it was difficult to leave them and discover the other items.
My favourite piece was grandly titled Mystic Glow.
The three contributing artists (surely though they are designers and / or seamstresses?) Shamina Begum, Holly Fallowfield, Sophie Parkinson have made a most luxuriant, stylish and playful dress – how I wish they’d fashioned it on a live model, a photo or two to show me, the layman what it looks like when filled with life.
I loved the constructed furls neatly hanging from the waist line, mathematically placed at equal intervals all around it. Like looking in to a birds nest and seeing all the fledglings, beaks wide open clamouring for more, more what? I am not sure... space, time, anything to fill the void. It was like looking at an untamed umbrella and the urge to reach out and touch it was strong. I wanted it in my kitchen as a replacement for the drawer that holds ‘stuff’. All those neatly formed pockets – ooh the things I could drop in to those spaces, plastic coated wire ties for around a bag, the odd penny, my phone charger, a lonely knitting needle, that recipe quickly written down with nowhere to put it, my cat. I also wanted to pick it up and turn it upside down, curious to see if it held a contrasting version underneath itself, one of those Topsy-turvey dolls originally made to fool the ‘massa’ on plantations, the white doll when he was around, and when he wasn’t, turn it upside-down and as if by magic out would come the black doll. I think I would have been asked to leave if I’d done that though.
20 paces further along another beautiful item of clothing was calling me, this one, Ivory Siren by Roxanne Avery, Hansa Kandiah, Laura Thompson was an exoskeleton, although the artists describe it as inspired by “skeletal whale remains” in my imagination it took the format of a white beetle, well constructed outside and warm and squishy inside – which, when worn, is exactly how it would be. J
Almost stylish, nearly wearable I wonder how many times it would get caught up with every day obstacles, how many times would the chair you’d been sitting on attach itself and decide to follow you around once you’d risen? Walking past a door handle and having to fight your way in and out of a room? It was rigid and somehow delicate, how I do love a good oxymoron, to wear an oxymoron would be a delight. Lady Gaga-esque...
I can hear the ‘dowdy, practical’ grown-ups tutting from here. Can you?
He waited for Alice and went home....
My bonus club points were paid in full as I (totally unexpectedly) met the artist responsible for ‘Waiting For Alice’, here. I don’t know who was more blown away, me for meeting her, or her for having to deal with my obvious pleasure at finding her!
Jackie Needham is a gentle, timid, delightful lady. She created my most favourite exhibit, from a previous show. What are the odds of ever meeting the artist? She was uncertain whether, or maybe even what to share with me, a complete stranger, about an obviously very personal piece of creativity. She mentioned her siblings, and that hare was some kind of representation of one of her younger brothers. I do hope she contacts me, or gets her-self a web presence to enlighten those of us who were particularly taken with such a lonely, sad and quite statement. I hope that hare has now had his fork and spoon untied.
Hare’s chair, sitting there looking pure, lonely, vulnerable, and lost. It was a really touching moment, and I would have loved to have taken photos of hare being placed into his travel box, I hope she let him out when he got home, I hope he finds Alice.
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