Taking part

It was jolly affair, at last night’s opening of The 2010 Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Galleries. A mixed show ranging from contemporary drawing and painting -Graham Crowley and Tania Kovats - to traditional watercolours and oils. Including examples by Prince Charles, and not many of us have shown with royalty before! As a first-timer, it was great to take part, especially when I found I was in the good company of Core Gallery's Rosalind Davis [invited by critic, Timothy Barber], Kaori Homma and Marguerite Horner. The overall winner was a hyper-photo-realist painting of a bowl of strawberries & cream, so no surprises there.

However, it is all too easy to be cynical, turning ones nose up at the nudes, still lives, and mediterranean watercolours, when actually, it was rather humbling and, even, democratising, being part of such a variety and wealth of experience and vision. Not to mention the general feeling of bonhomie.

However, the Discerning Eye could not have been more different from a show I saw at Gift, Vyner Street, featuring work by Elaine Wilson & Paula Chambers. Wilson produces elegant ball-gowned porcelain figures, like an elderly aunt might have on her mantle-piece. However, entitled: 'Ne toucher pas', these traditional-looking china-figures cum-with-attitude, and make you smile, as they pout in blood-smeared gowns while somewhat, erotically, pointing a gun, at you, the viewer.

Paula Chamber’s exquisite objects [for babies] remind one of Mona Hatoum. Chamber’s chain-mail bonnet made from 'copper wire stripped from an electrical appliance' and entitled: 'For your own good', and the baby-grows made from stinging nettle yarn, entitled: 'For the love of God'. Another example of how the choice of title can so brilliantly enhance a work, adding another layer of understanding and cultural context. Ideas hinted at but unexplained, leaving the viewer to ponder.

I am delighted to have been invited by Jane Boyer to take part in an exhibition called Relay at Core Gallery. Jane & I met and became interested in one another's work through our respective a-n blogs. Iit is very exciting, to me, that what began as a virtual relationship with many intelligent and challenging questions, on Jane's part, has turned into showing work together. So I was really pleased to see that Jane's a-n blog Working in Isolation has been selected and praised by Sarah Rowles for exactly this reason. Jane articulates succintly many soul-searching questions about being an artist today.


And on the same subject, I want to thank Jane for her great comments about my 'stinkhorn'. [Post 9 - 2nd November]
Jane Boyer writes:  'I love the use of the stinkhorn image (how can I say that with this work? It is so difficult to separate what you do artistically with such a heinous subject). I'm responding to the stinkhorn because I've actually seen and smelled a stinkhorn mushroom and the images conjured in my mind of that memory and experience merges perfectly with Fritzl's character.
In my painting: 'Stinkhorn stands guard [The family home of Josef Fritzl, Amstetten, Austria], I used the image of a 'stinkhorn' [a phallic-shaped fungi found in countryside] completly instinctually, symbolising Josef Fritzl, and his sexually-predatory presence as jailor to his daughter, Elisabeth. Also, more subtly, as a way of considering [through the idea of fungi, itself and where it grows] what the dark, foul, airless conditions might have been like down there for 24 interminable years. 
However, I innitially felt uncomfortable and shy about using the image. It did take courage. Yet it fitted so perfectly. And a year later I am able to live with the image, as a good representation of what I wanted to say, even if it, at first comes over as a little too obvious. More recently, I have begun to draw the stinkhorn again [but from books, and not a field trip!]
I like the way 'time' is such a great and true friend in determining the strength and value of a piece of work. For myself, the pieces that have true meaning, are the ones that I come back to, and take more things from.


Image: Annabel Tilley, Stinkhorn, pencil on paper, 28x20cms 

The Discerning Eye exhibition: 11-21 November 2010

The Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1 

Open daily 10-5, admission free.

http://www.discerningeye.org/exhibition/gallery/gallery.php

Relay: Core Gallery, 27th November - 18th December 2010. 

Relay Private View: Friday November 26th, 6.30pm.

http://coregallery.co.uk/current-exhibition/