Just spent about 4 hours in The New Art Gallery Walsall. For those of you who’ve never been, it’s fab, well worth a visit… I urge you to look it up and make the time. Stop in the Midlands instead of zooming through with your eyes shut.
I am rather lazy, and have a bit of a dodgy knee, so I always get the lift to the top and work my way down on foot. In the lift I encountered two quite scruffy, grubby, sticky looking lads, about 10-11 yrs old. One of them sniffed wetly and noisily and said “Like yer shoes” to me (Turquoise converse, yes, very nice, my current favourites). I said thanks and asked them if they visited the Gallery often… “We come every Sat’dy when us mums are shopping… or if we’re bored on a Sundy… and in the holidays cos they do stuff.” I asked if they looked at the art or just hung about a bit… “We always have a look when they put up something new, then if we don’t like it we just hang about a bit. I like the animal drawings though (in the Garman Ryan permanent collection). We likes this that’s up on the 3rd floor now though. There’s drawings of places done from by where we live, and under the motorway, and they’re done in biro. Anyone can draw in biro can’t they? You can get a big bag from the pound shop. My mum got me some last week.” There was another big sniff, they got out at floor 3 to have another look at “There is a Place…” I carried on up to the fourth floor with the hugest smile on my face.
On the fourth floor (Blue skies, nothing but blue skies) were two arty types complaining that they couldn’t go out on the terrace to take photos of the Blue Skies of Walsall. There was a force 10 gale going on, and it might be dangerous I suppose. The sky of Walsall was far from blue, but it was tempestuous, the view progressively murky shades of grey and static, apart from the sharp glints of moving light reflected on cars on the M6. Stunning.
Whenever I go to Walsall, their gallery is always full of families, lurking teenagers, all ages, ethnic groups, classes, educated, not-so-educated, all engaging with this space. I don’t know how NAGW do it, but they do it REALLY well.
Oh… he was right. Laura Oldfield Ford’s works in ball pen and acrylic were wonderful. They depicted areas of dereliction and neglect with a care that was captivating… and beautiful.
