Summer Exhibition

Summer 2007 Exhibition

From York Press, Charles Hutchinson

REJOICE in York winning the European Tourist City of The Year prize.

The ArtSpace gallery's co-owners, Greg and Ails McGee, may not be York natives, but they were so delighted by the verdict of the European Union gods that it sparked the latest exhibition at the Tower Street gallery.

"From an artist's point of view, it's a fascinating privilege and allows for countless interpretations of the city's previously monolithic beauty, " says Greg.

"For years, Richard Barnes and Tim Morrison have been reflecting the bristling, breathless magic in York. There's an exciting balance between York's baroque bombast and its more feminine, fluid sense of fun, the same fun that attracts tourists and natives alike."

Ails takes up the point: "You can see it in the outdoor cafés, or in the visionary small businesses on streets such as Gillygate, or the festivals, the music scene, and the art scene - York is a happy place to be in many ways, and the creative response to what it means to live here is much more flirty and loose limbed than it was ten years ago."

Introducing the exhibition format, Greg says: "Barnes and Morrison are the two figureheads of our Summer Exhibition; they're like the Minster and Clifford's Tower. They stand out and draw in the viewer, and then our other artists do the same job as Shambles, the ghost walks, the riverboats.

"Garry Barker's response to the American Dream in his Western World cards will provoke you, while Sally Parkin and Colin Pearsall's icily precise work balances out the dew-glistened foliage by Huntington Road man Peter Hope.

"Christine Limb's canvases stand out as luminous and slow burning; Lesley Seiger's work is characteristically hot blooded, and newcomer Jo Bramley's pieces are bitterly beautiful, like the Museum Gardens in November."

The central works are those of Richard Barnes and Tim Morrison, the ArtSpace's two big summer signings.

Barnes's portrait of the Minster in oil, acrylic and emulsion stands out, the boldest application of colour to the venerable church's contours since Frenchman Patrice Warrener lit up the Gothic building so memorably with his projections in 2005.

"I've had a year's sabbatical from my job teaching art at Bootham School, and it's been fantastically beneficial to my painting, starting with a trip to Africa that has led me into painting spontaneous, richly colourful pieces, " he says.

"They're kind of improvised as well, which is a big part of the African tradition of music and storytelling."

Richard visited Cameroon, staying in a village of the Bamiliké people, and he found it a profound experience.

"As my brother-in-law is from the village it allowed me to live a life that a tourist would not normally be able to live.

"What was interesting was that they didn't like photographs being taken at all. Something bad had happened to someone in the village and so to bring out a camera was a bad thing to do, " he recalls. "So instead of being a digital camera trip, it turned into an art trip and I filled a big sketch."

The resulting artwork marries African brightness with York's historic buildings. "The paintings are the opposite of what photos can do.

They're very physical, very subjective, very much about what happens when you paint. Like in the Minster painting, where there are great gobs and spills of paint."

Analysing his bold palette of colours, Richard says: "The idea was to rev all the colours up to their highest ratio, and that's come from Africa, where all the colours are revved up to the maximum when the women dress up. You think the colours won't work together, but they do."

Tim Morrison's three studies of St Helen's Square, hanging side by side in the ArtSpace front room, are similarly alive with colour in oil and acrylic.

"I must have painted St Helen's Square on and off for five years, as I'm drawn back to the places that fascinate me, drawing on the spot and then painting from memory, " he says.

"With these York paintings, maybe I'm being too critical of myself, but I think they're possibly too colourful, but then people love colour? and when the sun breaks through, like it has this week, the most glorious colours do shine out from the buildings."

Tim's paintings combine the permanence of buildings with the changing patterns of movement and light in the square.

"At its best, you're trying to show how the buildings looked to you and to represent your scrutiny of the scene. Sometimes, if I can't get it right, I'll try to make it jazzy, so it's a balance that rarely works, " he says.

He is underestimating his artistic skill. "People say they keep seeing something in the picture they didn't expect, so I'll take that as a compliment. What you want is for a painting to meet people halfway so that they can take over and finish it. That's the X-factor about a picture."

The ArtSpace Summer Exhibition runs at The ArtSpace, Tower Street, York, until September 7.

The ArtSpace issue 8 Editorial Summer Edition

Last month York was crowned ‘European City of the Year’. Over 3 million visitors this year will flow in and then flow out again, experiencing and recording the city’s more Taj Mahal-esque wonders: the Minster, the Wheel, Betty’s Cinnamon toast. One can’t blame ‘em. York possesses a baroque bombast that equals Munich. The wonders are there to be plundered and, like a stadium filling veteran rock band, the hits are all anyone’s bothered about. There’s no St Germain art scène here…

Well, that’s bulldust, brothers and sisters. B-U-L-L D-U-S-T. Happily, through a fusion of vision, serendipity and well-timed support, York’s art scene is flexing its muscles with more derring do than ever before, and the tourists are loving it. Visionaries such as Kindom on Petergate, City Screen, Blue Fly Café Bar, Snowhome on Gillygate: all have their eye on the tiger, all inject spice into the mass pilgrimage to York. The city’s festivals are increasingly thrilling, none more so than YoMü featured in this very artzine: YoMü, an 8 day banquet of glorious ideas and gorgeous art on which to glut the eye. 50 years of twinning with Münster is celebrated with aplomb. You, friend, are obliged to sample the fun. Timetables are in this mag and everywhere around the city.

            The ArtSpace segues nicely with the craic by holding our own ‘Summer Exhibition’, featuring artists from  Northern Britain. Their names are on the front cover. Take heed! For soon their names will be written in marble and stone. Seriously, we’ve arranged for the coolest, most effortlessly looselimbed artists to reflect the fun of summer – from the hot neon roar of Richard Barnes’ York pieces, to Peter Hope’s dew beslobbered foliage; from Lesley Zeeger’s uber flirtatious abstracts to Colin Pearsall’s opulent colourscapes, The ArtSpace is thick with magic and fun and sex, just like a good summer should be.

 

PS Regular readers will have picked up on our penchant for persuading those of you with taste to start buying original art: do it! You’re not mainstream, so jettison the tat and buy something real, something with soul. And haggle the price! It’s all fat for the goose.

Greg McGee, July 2007