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