So I'd 'done' Henry Moore and moved on to Julia Atkinson's 'Retrospection'. Her work included plant portraits in pastels and charcoal, which were fine enough but left me untouched; discharge screenprinting (not quite sure what that means) which also didn't make me care; a single print, 'Bamboo Garden', a linocut on a veritable stack of various sheets of paper which (surprise surprise, a linocut) did please me.
The rest of her work consisted of photo collages (here's one, though the one I liked even more, of those pavement panels of squares of glass which presumably let light into cellars, isn't available to show here)
The rest of her work consisted of photo collages (here's one, though the one I liked even more, of those pavement panels of squares of glass which presumably let light into cellars, isn't available to show here)
and inkjet prints (two of the many - the second one, Graffiti 5, has pastel over the top)
and her visual connections assemblages (below is Bones - that central, marbly circle is a wasps' nest, though I don't know how she made it flat).
Although I liked the assemblages, and felt an urge to go out and start my own visual connections collections, they puzzled me slightly. Are they a form of sketch book? A visual indication of a compulsive urge to collect? A sort of school project? I wasn't sure if they had some kind of a point that I should be getting.
I had to laugh (and then look round guiltily) when I went in to this particular exhibition. The introductory panel began 'Julia Atkinson takes photographs of surfaces and patterns that the less observant would pass by' ... given the number of times you come across groups of arty types drooling over someone's photos of rust or rotting wood or railings, I'd say it was almost one defintion of artistic.
The third (free, in the entry gallery) exhibition was of oil paintings by Charlotte Sorapure. The panel said something along the lines of the pictures looking familiar themes but then the viewer would see something to throw them off balance. Maybe. There were a few with a sense of menace, but fairly obvious menace. Maybe the more subtle efforts passed me by. Some I rather liked (Into the Night, below, and the unseen brass instrument player - I'm not prepared to commit on what sort of brass instrument - from 'Ballyhoo', below that), but mostly they weren't my sort of thing.
I had to laugh (and then look round guiltily) when I went in to this particular exhibition. The introductory panel began 'Julia Atkinson takes photographs of surfaces and patterns that the less observant would pass by' ... given the number of times you come across groups of arty types drooling over someone's photos of rust or rotting wood or railings, I'd say it was almost one defintion of artistic.
The third (free, in the entry gallery) exhibition was of oil paintings by Charlotte Sorapure. The panel said something along the lines of the pictures looking familiar themes but then the viewer would see something to throw them off balance. Maybe. There were a few with a sense of menace, but fairly obvious menace. Maybe the more subtle efforts passed me by. Some I rather liked (Into the Night, below, and the unseen brass instrument player - I'm not prepared to commit on what sort of brass instrument - from 'Ballyhoo', below that), but mostly they weren't my sort of thing.
And now I'm back in the north, thinking of all the books I haven't yet made for Newcastle's Baltic Artists' Book Fair and wondering vaguely if I will, and thinking too of the collagraph project I'm quite urgently keen to finish off. Busy week ahead.
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