Charlotte Price's "Walking the Hedgerows" Exhibition

I had been to the opening of Charlotte's show on the 30th May at Artmill Gallery in Hyde Park Rod, Plymouth. She had been setting up her exhibition as I came in to collect my work from the our previous exhibition there. I thought her work was beautifully fresh and showed what a stretch of hedgerow can inspire.

Hedgerow Drawing - Red Leaf 

Mixed Media on Paper

30cm x 20cm

The exhibition was wonderfully curated with shelves full of brambles and oak leaves from Charlotte's studio. There were also blocks, that looked like plaster impressed with leaves and twigs. I was lucky enough to talk to her on the last day of the exhibition, Saturday 20th June. one thing that intrigued me as an artist was the use of magnets to hang some of the unframed pieces. The magnets and washers came from a company called first4magnets.com. The verdict is still out as to whether these effect the pictures as the have a fairly strong magnetic force. She said that initially she bought some that had a 4kg force on them which was far too strong. The framed pieces were all done framed by James Edger of Artmill. Some of the delicate screenprints were framed in a thin oak frame which suited the subject perfectly. 

The Verdigris Bramble

Mixed Media on Paper

80cm x 101cm

Late Summer

Screen Print

42cm x 152cm

My favourite of all are the black screenprints because of the wonderful textures she gets and the dragged effect of the paint. The plants form a wonderful silhouette (even if they do play havoc with screens which I think have been ripped several times. These were often framed in simple black.

at the same time their stillness seems to contain speed No.2

22cm x 18cm

at the same time their stillness seems to contain speed

22cm x 18cm

I would gladly have several of her pieces on my walls if I could but at the moment I have neither the money......... or any free wall space. A beautiful exhibition.

For more details do visit her websites at http://www.charlotteprice-art.com/index.aspx and www.axisweb.org/p/charlotteprice

Plymouth University Degree Show

Val and I visited the university Hot '15 show on Friday June 19th starting off in the Peninsula Arts section of the Roland Levinsky building. This section had a mixture of fine arts, photography, illustration and design. On the left as you walk in is an impressive charcoal and gouache drawing by Joy Smith, called "Reverie" which probably measured around 8 feet x 6 feet. Luckily you could stand back the distance the picture deserved. The one that impressed both of us was a piece by Esme Stewart called "Earth Pigment" that used wool and three kinds of earth collected at three locations in west Devon and east Cornwall (Cawsand, Mothecombe and Magpie Bridge). The earth was ground in a mortar and pestle. The wool strands had been covered in ground earth pigments and 'twanged' against the wall creating irregular lines. the wool had been attached to nails at either end of a horizontal line. After twanging the left end of the wool had been detached and let fall to the ground. The floor was covered in the residue of the earth. The wool, still attached on the right-hand side, formed a series of curves that were left lying where they fell. A beautiful piece that, of course, will no longer exist once the exhibition is over. That, feels a bit of a shame. There is an interesting piece on Esme Stewart here.

We the looked at the first floor fine art degree show display in Room 101. Two things that surprised me; 1. That the artists were not present. Two sat at one end but given that there were probably 20  featured you would have thought that there would have been more around; and 2. Most artists work had no artist statements, details, business cards or portfolios. Speaking to artist Charlotte Price on Saturday, she said there seemed to be a growing trend at galleries like White Cube for giving no information about the work at all. To me that means that many post-post-modernism works will only be judged on visual evidence of the pieces themselves. I wonder how that will alter people's appreciations of the works. I would expect - massively.