21/11/2017 - HULL TRIP - FERENS GALLERY

I joined up with the university trip to the Turner Prize shortlist exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. I was glad I had preorganised to go ahead of time in the end, as not only was the trip late but also as I had visited both the uni gallery and the Deep in the days before, I was already feeling quite inspired by all the material I had already seen and was ready to absorb more.

The layout of the gallery impressed me. Hull had been awarded City of Culture for 2017, so all of the arts projects in Hull had been given a major push, and I had definitely felt many reflections of this during my time in the city. The gallery had produced a promotional two part newspaper detailing features of the exhibiton which was presented in the central information room. From a curational aspect I thought this was a great way to get word out about the artworks in a relatable format. I had seen it used before effectively at Boomtown Festival, where they produce festival newspapers to inform festivalgoers of events going on around the event, but had not considered it in a gallery format. There was also something visually appealing about people wandering around a gallery, browsing newspapers while taking in the artworks.

As well as the shortlisted Turner Prize artists there was the Ferens Collection, a selection of classical paintings, and a curation of works from the Young British Artists. There were a few paintings from the classical collection which particularly appealed to me, particularly one of a beautiful arrangement of oranges into a still life by Pieter Janssens. I read that artists would disrupt household objects in this way to test themselves against a variety of surfaces and textures. If they could accurately capture an object in such a visually complex setup, it demonstrated their skill as a painter. As a viewer however what I found so captivating was the patterns exposed by altering the fruit, and the unique cross section represented, unchanged there as it would be in an orange of today.

There was also another painting by Daniel de Blieck which stopped me because of the beautiful way he rendered perspective. When reading further I found out that this was actually potentially a combination of several churches from around Rotterdam where Blieck was thought to have worked, and was exaggerated for effect to increase the presence of the architecture.

My favourite artist of the entire gallery was Hurvin Anderson, one of the shortlisted artists. I really liked the way his large canvasses capture plantlife, incorporating flashes of unnatural colour which somehow still appear entirely organic and suggesting half formed branches and leaves which twist in and out of legibility and leave the eye to only half assume their form. The painting to the left interestingly blended aspects of nature and industrialism which let nature remain at the forefront of the subject, bordered only by subtle markers of civilization.

 It didn't surpass my notice that I was once again feeling drawn to work which relied heavily on suggestion and silhoutte to produce connotations based on instinctive recognition of natural forms and colours. I felt like this was definitely opening up onto a new angle for experimentation in my work. When I read the information about Anderson it only served to inspire me further.

I learnt of how he occasionally undertook preparatory works with transparent paper, onto which he layered and arranged all the elements of his painting before starting. This explained to me how he was able to suggest so much form with only the minimal components, due to to slow process of reduction which allowed him to catch the balance of abstraction on a knife edge of suggestion.

I myself happened to have brought a roll of clear acetate from Tiger during freshers sales and immediately felt inspired to experiment with this idea. As someone who is quite meticulous with presentation and arrangement in my work, I think this could potentially prove to be very useful within my artistic practice. It also got my head thinking about ways to combine this process with my source material gathered at the Deep, to start experimenting with underwater subjects and see what interesting things come up.

As well as this there were some large woodcut prints presented by Andrea Buttner which impressed me mostly because of the extent to which I have learned about the printing process lately. The prints were very large and even, which was a feat in itself when working with plates of wood this size. Seeing something that we had already practiced on such a massive yet well executed scale made me really appreciate the resources available to high level artists. The series contained rudimentally depicted beggar woman, their identities concealed and only their state of begging maintained. I felt that the process at this unusual size could have been contextually highlighting the plight of the homeless, using basic raw materials blown up and magnified to un-ignorable scale.