- Venue
- Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery
- Location
- East Midlands
The website of Ferymynwoods contemporary art carries the banner statement ‘infiltrating the everyday’ it functions as an ‘off site’ interventionist agency, without a primary venue, it works in any number of contexts. The Castle Museum and Art Gallery is a prime example of a classic municipal art space, dealing with the dual challenges of both the art of today and the history of yesteryear. Together they have put together an intriguing programme of art that begs pertinent questions of its place and value.
I was interested in how this overarching statement would be applied to the far from everyday Ducal elegance of Nottingham Castle. The answer to this conundrum was a strategy of gentle subversion of both of the venue and of this statement. By flipping the whole thing on its head. In essence, infiltrating the extraordinary with the everyday.
The works on show are scattered through the galleries and grounds and took some seeking out. Even when encountered many where hidden in plain sight. They range from the site specific intervention of certain artists, to the site sensitive where pre-existing work was deployed to activate a different reading of its particular place.
I’ll start with Alan Kane, who shopped for his art, hanging charity shop naff artworks, sourced from the City amidst the historic salon hung Long Gallery. This warmed the cockles of my heart. The question of ‘what is worthy’ and the whole issue of the museum as a ‘storied space’ (as opposed to neutral territory was touched upon). I recently hung onto to some dodgy drawings I found in a case at the textile bank. Lonely art, looking for a home. It looked so cold and helpless. It made me think of the PIL song. ‘we only wanted to be loved’. The key thing this artist’s offers the viewer is an interrogation of value, status, placement and assumption.
Whilst the former is a collector and placer, Debbie Lawson is the kind of artist who applies different kind of creative toolbox. By utilising high production skills she takes the domestically coded materials of wood and carpet to create taxidermy style wild creatures. This is a master class in visual code shift. Two different things, a form and a material combine to generate a third set of meanings for the viewer. A classic example of this is her Persian carpet upholstered Stag head. Piling the language and connotations of the colonial big white hunter onto the already power encoded gatehouse. She creates a surreal exploration of the evolution of privilidge at the expense of the natural world and global wildlife.
Susan Collis is a the big name on the bill and whilst not developed for the show, the considered placement on her paint splat embroidered decorating sheet on the floor, made me grin and grin again. I had an interesting chat with a colleague about whether or not it changed the work if it was hand embroidered, or digitally scanned and machine done. Regardless I really enjoy the counter point of the apparently worthless with the apparently valued. This will have been missed by many, but then that is one of its key agendas. In our quick fix digital world we tend to blink miss it, then move on. This piece invites you to stop and have a proper look. Her rawl-plug piece is mischievous. It relies on you having high expectations that a ‘proper’ gallery would not just leave 4 rawl-plugs unfilled and over painted on the exhibition wall.
From an art of the ‘have they made it?’ to a piece of obvious hand work in the installation pieces by Shane Waltener. He weaves with a team of helpers, curious string web forms that arc from tree to tree. I saw the image of these and the ‘how it’s done’ video before I met the work proper. Often ephemeral sculpture looks better in its documented form than in its actuality. Often it takes on the big outdoors and dies without the frame of the lens. But not one bit of it in this case, here was work that really worked well. The string weaves between the trees and steel ground pins, created a sensual and dynamic rhythm that took your eye and body on an engaging journey. This cross referencing of the trees and weave was both formally tight and conceptually effective, signposting the Cities heritage without over spelling it out.
Back inside the café Mark Dixon infiltrated glass centred wooden tables with plaster casts of various forms, from swish hair handsome boys, to skeletal gothic forms. The challenge for the less aware Café sippers would be to regard these as more than very delightful fancy tables. But then perhaps that’s the point of infiltration, perhaps it’s more about assimilation than evident exposure. Perhaps it saves the reward for those who can be bothered to hunt it down.
It was great to see the visual work of one of Nottingham’s best critical writers, namely Wayne Burrows. He weaves spoken word together with evocative imagery, drawing on curiosities from the collection of decorative arts at the Castle. This interrogative re-framing is considered and effective. As an artist who also writes it gives me reassurance to see a writer who also ‘arts’ so to speak. It takes guts to step out of the comfort zone and Burrows can hold his head up high.
The audio work by Jason Sign was out of order when I visited, but it ‘sounds’ like a great venture. A man impersonating known wildlife noises and building a fictive set from his own mind and vocal chords. Then broadcasting these to an unsuspecting audience. A lovely idea which I hope to encounter sometime soon.