Make Colour Sing, Nottingham Pop Up Exhibition

Pop ups, by their nature last only a short time and this one finishes Sunday night, having been open almost all of this week, at Nottingham Society of Artists Gallery,  Friar Lane, Nottingham. It’s a survey of contemporary abstraction curated by printmaker and painter Laine Tomkinson, who includes some wonderful prints of her own in the show, where colour-resonance is a major preoccupation.

Her screenprints sometimes resemble collages in their multi-layered-ness, some may even be collage, which could be a sub plot for her curation of this exhibition.

Collage artist EC has three works in this show. They are small and in one sense quite delicate, I get the impression that they could easily be damaged, yet the paint handling (these collages appear to be made of cut-up paintings) is so sturdy and confident, that the works also look robust.

John Stockton’s prints are photographed collages that lose their materiality in the transition from thing to image, whereas Martin Heron’s beautiful drawings appear to dematerialize as repeated lines of colour tail off in concert, creating gaps where the paper is left bare, perceived as positive shapes that glow. His ink on scrim pieces also dematerialize into shifting shades and hues of reflected light.

David Manley’s large vertical paintings on paper, play with both the physicality of paint, (we get drips and scribbles and mixed-on-paper areas of colour), and its image-making potential, (we find ‘primitive’ evocations of signs and symbols here and there). Paint is at one and the same time, physical stuff that can be pushed around canvas or paper and an immaterial vehicle for colour, and sometimes for associative content. (In my photo a bit of Nottingham architecture is also reflected in the glass.)

Neil Clements small paintings on card are direct presentations of colour-shapes, often two colours only, creating figure-ground shifts, my perception of them continuously alternating between positive and negative, impossible to fix on one view and have perceived the whole.

Richard Perry uses colour to describe the various planes of geometric shape in the small scale sculptures on view here, but colour behaving as it does, description gives way to dissolution, not of shape but of weight.

In works on view here it is the materiality of the support and the demateriality of the colour, as something that exists only in perception to which I keep on returning, as if colour could switch to auditory channel and sing.

Now Has Already Gone! (How Soon is Now, Abstract painting in Nottingham)

Still on the theme of shows I cannot get to, there’s even this one in Nottingham for the next few days, and although I live there I am just not around enough to actually get there. This is especially annoying as I am the one often complaining that it’s difficult to see abstract art on show around here.

That it is a pop up show means it’s here and gone in no time so aptly titled “How Soon is Now?” (27 Jan to 3 Feb only, with an opening night on Saturday 30 January from 6.30pm till 8.30)

Claudia Bose, Make Words Flow, 30 x 30cm

So a very hurried post this one to highlight what’s happening and maybe to say more about it another day.

The venue is the Nottingham Society of Artists gallery, 71 Friar Lane, Nottingham NG1 6DH

Twelve artists work are featured in the show, spanning a range of disciplines; painting, mixed media, screen-printing, photo montage and sculpture. Showing fifty artworks highlighting the inter-connectivity of the featured artists’ work, in particular; adroit handling of colour and imaginative reworking of everyday materials.

Noela Bewery, Counterflow-Khaki

Many of the artists are primarily painters, Noela Bewery, Lois Sabet, Claudia Boese for example, make paintings that are full of colour: acid yellows, warm pinks and vibrant greens. Jai Llewellyn, David Manley and Terry Greene all have a careful eye for colour, form and geometrical arrangements, mapping out elegant, sophisticated paintings.

The work of Rachael Pinks, Lauri Hopkins, John Stockton and Laine Tomkinson transform discarded book covers, cardboard, waste materials or rejected screen prints, re- imagined as vibrant digital collages or stunning mixed media works.

Lois Sabet, Eclipse

Clay Smith and John Stockton make beguiling photo montages that have an immediate and disruping political connection; featuring aircraft, sheep/cars in surreal displacement, or views of the landscape as if from an intrusive reconnaissance flight.

John StocktonUntitled-254 small

That’s it…more another day!