Closure of Allotted

We tried to submit the press release shown below to the Bolton News but unfortunately it was not included in Saturday's paper.

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Could you please let people know that the  Slug Society's  "Allotted" exhibition in neo:gallery27 in Bolton's Market Place - will close after Sunday's session?

The exhibition has been very well received and very well supported and the exhibitors had hoped to fulfil the advertised run until August 7th.
However the continuing success of the Market Place means its owners have now found paying tenants for the space occupied by the exhibition and those tenants want the space as quickly as possible.
The Market Place have generously  provided a new space for the neo:gallery (also on the 1st floor of the Market Place) so the future of neo:artists' exhibition programme is secure - they will restart with the Print Prize exhibition in August.
However there is no space available for the Allotted exhibition at present and so the Slug Society and the team will be packing its bags and (rather sadly) be making an early departure.
The Association of Bolton Allotment Societies are hoping that they may be able to offer the artists and writers some space for the writers' booklets and maybe a few prints at the Bolton Onion, Leek and Vegetable Show on August 20th but for now  from all concerned with the exhibition it's thank you and goodbye. 

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We could unfortunately do nothing to save the exhibition, neo simply got a message on Thursday morning (July 21st)  telling them they had to have the gallery cleared by Friday 29th July. As you can see above Moorgarth have offered them new premises further down the mall and these will be available for the next exhibition (The Print Prize) in August.

However there was no provision available for the continuation of the Slug Society's "Allotted" exhibition, so there was no alternative but to take it down.

Naturally the Slug Society (as a group) are very disappointed that the show has been closed before its planned date. We had known there was a risk that new tenants might need the space but had hoped to keep going until at least the end of the month.. A great deal of effort went into planning the show, getting funding, getting pre-publicity and creating the two publications (the catalogue and the writers' booklet). At least some members of the group now feel somewhat disillusioned at not being able to see the project brought to its planned conclusion.

We hope that opportunities will be found to show (and potentially sell) at least some of the artists' works in other venues at other times. David is keeping the blog going for a few more weeks - he hopes that the projected 'review' of the exhibition can still be completed and published.

We'd like to apologise to those who were planning to come along during the last two weeks of the exhibition i.e. up until August 7th - we've tried to let as many people as we could know about the closure by email wherever possible.

We hope that the Slug Society has a future, exactly what form it will take will be up to the members once they have time to take stock.

In the meantime, we 'd like to thank everyone who helped bring "Allotted" into existence especially our sponsors The Bolton Arts Forum and the National Allotments Gardens Trust and most of all, all those people who came along to see the exhibition, talk to us, leave comments and more...

THANK YOU

LAST CHANCE TO READ?

Farewell #27

(with apologies to e.j. thribb)

So, farewell town centre gallery

That’s been our home

This last four weeks

Well, that’s enough of that…..

We thought we were here ‘til the 7^th August but the wheels of Commerce grind ever on and new paying tenants want this space.

There’ll soon be a new store in this spot and in August neo:artists will be opening a new gallery down the mall (the old Next store) and presenting the Print Prize 2016 exhibition but in the meantime there’s no room for us at the inn so it’s ‘Goodnight and Goodbye’ for “Allotted”.

Yesterday evening was hectic, we had to produce a ‘Last Chance to See….’ Press Release to tell as many people as possible that this coming weekend will be the final opportunity to see “Allotted”, we had to email participants to ask them to come in and help dismantle the exhibition next week, and we had to contact people we’d invited to come along in the last two weeks to tell them we won’t be here. And in the medium term David is going to have to find the right way to tell the sponsors that the six week exhibition they funded turned out to be for four weeks only.

Abas may be able to help us put on something very limited at the Bolton Onion, Leek and Vegetable Show, maybe display and hopefully sell, a few prints and the writers’ booklet. Because a show like “Allotted” is also a sales opportunity for the artists, and two weeks of potential sales has just gone.

We (Robert and David) had started to plan the final thoughts (the one that would have gone up on August 5^th). It would have featured David’s cartoon of a hard-up and homeless poet, sitting begging on the pavement with his sign ‘Will rhyme for cash’. As with all David’s cartoons the poet looked very like him. But there hasn’t been time to finish it. Maybe we’ll keep the blog going. Maybe we’ll put the cartoon on the blog with the poet surrounded by piles of unsold copies of “the back of the seed packet”.

It’s been an interesting project, but for now, the party’s over (and other clichés)…

Whither (or should it be wither) the Slug Society now?

So here we end “Gallery Thoughts” and (if you have been) thank you for reading them

Robert Eldon

David Jackson

22.05.2016

GALLERY THOUGHTS #4

The view from the desk

Sitting at the desk at the front of the gallery, you’re on the edge of the exhibition looking in. A lot of the exhibits are concealed from your view by the big square central pillars.

And you start to wonder as no-one comes in for a while, does the view through the front doors encourage people to enter the gallery? Do people realise we’re open to the public, that we won’t charge them?

To your left Margaret’s ‘Honeysuckle’ painting gleams spot-lit, to your right are Susan and Jennifer’s fabric hangings, while through the gap between pillars you see the edge of Maggie’s clay table with it black wooden dining chairs.

Carol’s glass piece is sideways on, the green frame is clear, but the writing on the glass is lost.

Ahead three of Kevin’s photos are visible, and the edges of Maggie’s mobile spiral and dance in the air currents caused by the fan.

Finally. In the far distance, at the end of the gallery, you can just make out the three previous issues of ‘Gallery Thoughts’, tiny grey and black rectangles between the porthole-like mirrors.

Which brings us back to why I’m sitting here writing this, because this will be Thoughts #4.

Being on the edge of the gallery looking in is pretty much the writer’s view in life. That of the ‘observer’, whether engaged or dispassionate, whether omniscient or ignorant, this is the natural role for a writer.

And that’s what I feel I am, a word artist looking in on a world of visual artists, from one world, one set of parameters into another. In a way it’s like being at a theatre, looking in on someone else’s performance through the ‘fourth wall’ rather than feeling like a participant.

Did we, in this exhibition achieve a marriage of our disparate art forms? I tend to think not. Of course there are a few examples of ‘text art’ on the walls (Rabbit, Up Against It, Winter Beauty). Did you notice them as you walked through this gallery, what impact did they make? Can text compete with image? Does text indeed belong on wall (other than as graffiti)? Robert would argue it doesn’t.

Because it’s the visual art that dominates, the images that remain in the memory.

Maybe you’ll look at ‘the back of the seed packet’ – the anthology of essays, stories and poems that we created to go with this exhibition. Should we have integrated the catalogue of exhibits with that booklet, made a joint publication of it? I think we should have, but the way the funding came through mitigated against it. A lesson for next time perhaps, if there is a next time and if we want our writing to be read.

David Jackson

15/07/2016

GALLERY THOUGHTS #3

We continue our series of pieces written by our writers while they're 'minding' the gallery with this piece from Robert Eldon, prompted by a visitor's comments.

What looks like a Community Notice Board sits above Ros’ “Conversations / Seed Trays” piece, back to back with Margaret’s “Allotment Diaries”.

And the visitor said that ‘it shouldn’t be there’, it ‘brings the gallery down’. It ‘makes it look like a Branch Library’ (for those who can remember such places) and it ‘detracts from the art’.

And I think this betrays a very elitist view of what a gallery is, an exclusivist view of what art is and who it’s for. It’s a view that ‘art is for some (vague and unspecified) art elite, (other artists?) that’s the group we should be addressing. Anything that might affect their verdict must be erased.

Yet neo:gallery27 is in a shopping centre. The vast majority of the people walking past aren’t artists or from some elite group. 

 And that viewpoint also holds that the work on display must be work that is aimed at the tastes and preferences of that narrow target group (the term ‘accessible’ suddenly becomes a term of disdain.) Anything else is ‘amateur’ or ‘community art’.

Allotted is not about “community art, it’s about promoting professional art into the community and that surely is what a gallery in a shopping centre needs to do.

It’s about creating and interacting with different audiences. It’s about making the wider public of Bolton aware that the gallery in the Market Place (and the artists who exhibit in it) exist. It’s about getting the public interested in the subject of the exhibition, it’s about getting them to want to see the works, and finally about getting them to actually enter the gallery.

 Such an audience is not to the exclusion of other audiences, there must remain a place for the ‘intellectual’ exhibitions, but surely over the programme exhibitions need to be inclusive.

In my own field, there’s a form of writing which is aimed at and seeks the approval of other writers. It’s called the ‘literary novel’. And as one American writer wrote recently – ‘the term ‘literary novel’ is industry shorthand for ‘disappointing book sales.’ So, if for no other reason than the economic survival of the artist group, the more people and the wider the cross-section of the public that enter the gallery, the more catalogues will be sold and the greater the possibility of selling work.  And surely it should be by selling work that the ‘true’ artist becomes viable.

Robert Eldon

07/07/2016

What's on?

Part of the exhibition's remit - and part of the basis for the support we have received from the allotment community and in particular the National Allotment Gardens Trust - is to promote the community aspects of allotment sites.

Many of our Bolton allotment sites are having events over the summer designed to bring the public onto the sites and show them what we do.

abas (the federation of Bolton allotment sites) has produced a poster which is prominently displayed in the gallery. A4 copies of this poster will be made available to Site Societies at the abas meeting on July 11th (Astley Bridge Cricket Club - 8.00 p.m.)

The poster is reproduced below:

Details of this programme appeared in the Bolton News w/c July 4th and the details have also been sent to Bolton FM's "Community Corner".

The 'Gelati' Man

(photo by Jason Simpson neo:artists)

For the launch party for "Allotted", Dave Jackson took the role of the 'ice cream seller' dishing out free ice cream (made by his son Rob) to the guests.

(Rob) Jackson's ice cream is home-made in Bolton from (whenever possible) locally sourced ingredients (they're are currently foraging whinberries for this season's whinberry ice cream). Rob and Dave sell their ice-cream (along with Lancashire Cheese and Black Peas) at a number of artisan and farmers' markets in Lancashire and North Cheshire - among them Sale, Hoghton Tower, Bromley Cross, Romiley and Cuerden Valley. They'll also be taking ice cream to the Open Day at Sapling Rd Allotments on August 14th and they'll have ice cream, cheese and some baked goods such as their cheese and onion bakes and pasties at Harpers Lane Allotments' Open Day on the 11th September.

For followers of local food, Rob has a blog-site www.jacksonsicecream.blogspot.co.uk

GALLERY THOUGHTS :FIRST IMPRESSIONS

An early press release for this project said: “We’d like to tell you about a project in Bolton – ‘The Slug Society’ – which involves artists and writers in celebrating their experiences of allotment gardening and food growing .

Now when most people think of allotments, they probably think of elderly men in flat caps, a bit like Peter Tinniswood’s ‘Uncle Mort’ sitting in sheds and cultivating the land by knocking their pipes out on it.

Yet allotments nowadays are home to a whole range of creative people, and there is a strong influence of women in modern allotment gardening, evidenced by the number of women artists in this exhibition.”

Yet sitting in the gallery I’m surrounded by images of old men in flat caps, in paintings, in drawings, in the photographs and in the videos. Given that, can we legitimately ask the question: Are there too many old men in flat caps?

Ok, so one portrait is of the artist’s grandfather, and older faces often offer more character, the evidence of a life lived, but the only female face is “Pam” in Kevin’s photographs. (Ok, I’ve forgotten the all-female line-up in Margaret’s committee photo, but give me a little poetic licence please!)

I know (being one myself) that old men have to have somewhere to go, otherwise they just clutter-up their homes and drive their wives mad (another cliché), so the array of ‘man caves’ on display serve a useful purpose. (Is there a female equivalent of a ‘man cave’? A ‘she den’, which would abbreviate to a shed wouldn’t it?)

I know that Margaret and the others would argue (very convincingly) that their work shows a distinctively female gaze on allotments, but (as Ros’ piece in “the back of the seed packet” sets out) there are women on plots and children come on a lot more now, do the images in the exhibition reflect that? And does the question matter?

ROBERT ELDON

OPENING DAY

Saturday afternoon saw the launch of the exhibition proper.

We'll try to put a proper review in next week's "Gallery Thoughts"

Over 180 people attended the preview event including two presenters from Bolton FM, our local radio station.

The project had had good coverage in the Bolton News during the week and at one stage we hoped we'd get TV coverage from Granada Television (but the weather turned and the planned filming session with artists on allotment sites had to be cancelled).

At the launch the most frequently used term about the exhibition was "accessible", people understood what it's about, could relate to the work and were emotionally engaged by much of it. A number of visitors commented on the fact that it had made them feel better and reminded them of the joy and pleasure that gardening and food growing can bring.

Some felt drawn into the exhibition by Margaret Jackson's bright "Honeysuckle" and "Sunflower" paintings and then lead on into the main body of the exhibition by Janet Brady's large charcoal drawing of a man sitting outside his shed which hangs on the far wall .

Kevin Shipley's photographs are a major draw, the characters are well known and recognised. Similarly Steph Shipley's video and images from Shepherd's Cross St Allotments attract an interested crowd. There are appreciative comments about Ros Davis' "Winter Beauty". Maggie Hargreaves growing table attracts a lot of interest, while the true plot-holders spend ages on Margaret Jackson's allotment diaries. One early visitor wanted to carry off Carol Barlow's stained glass piece "Trespassers will be composted!"

Finally, Jennifer Gilmour and Susan Syddall's textile hangings based on Florence Avenue make a real statement and it's very much worth your time listening to their recordings of plot-holders on site there. The remark about showing carrots is worth a trip in itself.

Some reactions are interesting: Visiting site committee men seem particularly drawn to Dorothy Ellin's piece "Conflict" - does this tell us something? Some people seemed affected by David Jackson's piece "Rabbit". One visitor commented of Maggie Hargreaves "Shed" that he'd wanted to see inside that shed for thirty years but he'd never been allowed a glance!

No images yet, if you want to know what it looks like - then come along to neo:gallery27 - Thursday to Sunday 11.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. - and see for yourself.

PS The free "Allotment Ice Cream" was an undoubted success, served up by David doing his act as an itinerant ice cream seller (see Jason's picture on Twitter) complete with blue and white jumper, apron and straw hat.

PPS A number of visitors said that they had been surprised to find an art gallery like neo:gallery27 in the centre of Bolton, it had altered their perceptions of the town. Others said they'd made a special journey to see the exhibition as they "didn't really come into the town centre much these days".

GALLERY THOUGHTS

 All participants in "Allotted" take their turns at looking after the exhibition - acting as security, talking to visitors and hopefully selling works and publications.

The original idea (well David and Robert’s idea) was that the writers would use the time they spend ‘minding’ the gallery to write.

Sitting in the gallery (particularly on quiet days – of which there haven’t yet really been any – we had over fifty people through on Friday) – gives a writer lots of time to think, undisturbed by the demands of the day (such as ‘I’ve made you some coffee, come and drink it now’ or ‘I forgot to get any watercress, can you go to Sainsbury’s?)

 So we decided we’d write a piece each week to be called Gallery Thoughts.

We are trying (Margaret feels David is particularly trying) and we have produced two pieces so far. The first (by David) was rejected on grounds of “inappropriate language”, while the second (by Robert) was felt to be “likely to offend”. Robert has now written that ‘while writing, and indeed art, probably should offend and shock, it mustn’t offend or shock the writer’s wife.’

David has reverted to being ‘the gelati man’ (copyright Malcolm Pryce – “Last Tango in Aberystwyth”) for the day. Robert has been inspired to change his ambition from getting a play on Radio4 to becoming the Frankie Boyle of Bolton Allotments, and is working on his next offering.

The more sensitive hope that Ros’ return may provide some more seemly material.

 Meanwhile ‘the naughty boys’ skulk in their corner plotting their next outputs, Watch this Space!

ROBERT ELDON

DAVID JACKSON

Saturday 2nd July 2016