SeeD exhibition review

SeeD organized by Phil Taylor presented new work from a group of lecturing staff at South East Derbyshire College. Ranging from textiles and photography to painting, drawing and sculpture each artist took the nucleus of SeeD into their own reality. In exhibiting their work, the lecturers aimed to demonstrate to their students some of the commercial skills needed to turn their talents into a living. In a consumerist world this seems to be a particular avenue for artist revenue and more often we can see in galleries such as Saatchi where art is being made on demand and for the market of money. However this is not to say that art for the passion and discovery of it is extinct, in fact I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of an anarchistic stance towards the market of art. Think K Foundation (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) burning a million quid.

In the Surface gallery I was instantly drawn to two wooden carvings of what looked like Afro-Caribbean women. They stood apart but seemingly together through a metal constant. Artist Patrick Lwasampijja had chipped, hacked, buffed, forged, sliced and bashed the form evolving shapes through technique of craft. The use of the materials and process undertaken adapting the physical structure gave suggestion to man’s impact upon geology. The dextral sculpture exposed half the internal mind, a lump of wooden matter suggested, notions of mental wellbeing, and the state of race and play on words half-cast. The batik interpretations hung against the wall gave insight into the passage from 3 to 2D in a step forward. Walls stand flat, lifeless and ending, the batiks had compressed the spirit of the works into a pale shadow.

The Bride, Patrick Lwasampijja (mixed media)

Taking the 2D into the future of walking through walls was the work of Phil Taylor. His doorframe pasted with aged emulsion smeared layers of fifty years of neglect. This was a walkway into the design etched and beveled edge of the paint. Precise lines were poised to create a dimensional quality of two points upon the horizon, architectural and cubic. Biro blobbed it suggested the quick workings of an architect so furious to get down a model of roof, wall, space and sound, a sketch almost tears from the pen. The piece had the history of traditional painting and drawing techniques glazed across its surface. It’s two tone form and squared frame sat smugly like a mix of abstract expressionist Franz Kline’s painterly block arrangements but delicately toned down, combined with the linear trait of drawer Paul Noble, yet as more of a study.

What also captured the interest of my mind were rectangular relief blocks, canvasesque works covered in a seal of peach plaster with an occasional periphery of an edge peeking out. From   the  surface   rigidly  poking   towards   me were metal frames, fences cast in the void. It had a coarse and yet smooth  finish  like the  work  of Antoni Tapies relief’s on wood. The artwork reflected the unfinished new builds happening across Nottingham, the rusty steel rods poking out from slabs of concrete. There was sullenness to the trio of works, like something that once was which has now been covered over. The excavating of the bodies from the home in Margate flew into the fore of my mind as I realised how this artwork had great power in pulling threads of life and death, hidden and the excavated.

A well-presented show overall omitting the interpretation blue tacked to the wall for one work. In the desire to sell works framing always objectifies and neatens the edges, it has been used to its end here in colour matching finishes. Let us hope that the students of these lecturers look outside the box (gift wrapped and all) and into the ideas of work, its craft, developing happenings, performances, interventions… but that is another show to come.

SeeD art exhibition is at the Surface Gallery until 29 November

The Surface Gallery