February 25, 2008
The energy and expression on display from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art this week is quite something. What immediately strikes you on entering the large gallery is the sheer variety of media there were – life photography, 3D installations, video installations, pop-art inspired paintings, performance art and – in a minority but a definite presence – some painting and drawing of a more classical style. At the opening, four bands played, all of them unapologetically individual, much in keeping with the mood of the exhibition.
In the centre of the larger upper gallery was the raised ‘library space’, where you could find amongst the video installations some printed text – but leaflets of explanation these were not. If you wanted explanation, you needed to talk to the students themselves. Take the performance art piece of the girl laid out on her side, on the floor, in a two-metre-high hoop dress: my first thought when I saw her struggling against the weight of the dress behind her was that this was some kind of protest against the restrictions of feminine fashion - it brought to mind Naomi Campbell’s platform heels catwalk fiasco – but the explanation was more interesting than that. The artist in question later showed me photos of the beginnings of the piece – a 4-metre-high hour-glass hoop structure she had made out of steel, which she had later cut in half and covered with fibre glass resin. The ‘dress’, a fabric-covered section of this on the gallery floor, was authentically heavy and had a history.
And I couldn’t mention performance art without talking about the girl whose piece involved emerging from an oversized (cardboard) cake decorated with (real) strawberries and cream with a real cake on top. The pink-gloved fingers came first, grabbing at bits of strawberry more and more greedily until finally a hand burst through the top of the cake to reveal a curled up figure inside, like a duckling in its egg.
Taken together as a whole exhibition there was an overwhelming range of styles and modes of expression – more than enough to feed any art fan’s appetite for the new and the adventurous.
In the centre of the larger upper gallery was the raised ‘library space’, where you could find amongst the video installations some printed text – but leaflets of explanation these were not. If you wanted explanation, you needed to talk to the students themselves. Take the performance art piece of the girl laid out on her side, on the floor, in a two-metre-high hoop dress: my first thought when I saw her struggling against the weight of the dress behind her was that this was some kind of protest against the restrictions of feminine fashion - it brought to mind Naomi Campbell’s platform heels catwalk fiasco – but the explanation was more interesting than that. The artist in question later showed me photos of the beginnings of the piece – a 4-metre-high hour-glass hoop structure she had made out of steel, which she had later cut in half and covered with fibre glass resin. The ‘dress’, a fabric-covered section of this on the gallery floor, was authentically heavy and had a history.
And I couldn’t mention performance art without talking about the girl whose piece involved emerging from an oversized (cardboard) cake decorated with (real) strawberries and cream with a real cake on top. The pink-gloved fingers came first, grabbing at bits of strawberry more and more greedily until finally a hand burst through the top of the cake to reveal a curled up figure inside, like a duckling in its egg.
Taken together as a whole exhibition there was an overwhelming range of styles and modes of expression – more than enough to feed any art fan’s appetite for the new and the adventurous.