This was a very exciting and inspiring show. There were strong overtones of that fascinating area of sci-fi which I have always been drawn to – that idea of conjectured futures and fictional pasts without falling into the Frank Herbert trap of explaining everything to death; rather, letting the art do the talking in the classic ‘don’t tell me, show me’ way.
The media, the processes and the formats worked so beautifully together. The not quite woodcut, not quite engraving feel, the essentially monochrome pallet and in several works presenting a number of simultaneous perspectives and/or temporal layers gave such a powerful sense of myth or familia/unfamiliar story telling accentuated by the scroll format had an almost religious potency.
That added conundrum of “If everyone’s vanished then who’s telling the story?”. I love those kinds of ‘standing on the outside while being in the deep interior’ is also a fabulous way to remind the viewer that this is not a documentary; this is really good visual art.
I think lastly the dramatic presentation and serious lighting gave the work an underpinning gravitas, but the work did not depend on it as similar works of Ashe’s that I’ve seen at Homes a’ Court and the Horn Gallery attest. These works are self sufficient and without any show biz boost are still intrinsically very gutsy, very evocative works with that difficult to achieve balance of how much to show, how much to allude struck with much grace. Working in a representational mode is always fraught. Humans are hard wired to seek patterns and meaning as quickly and efficiently as possible – something to do with the fight or flight thing perhaps. If the work is self-evident, the mental curiosity is soon sated but if the work is not coherent enough, there is an instinctive reflex to move on.
This show lives in the Goldilocks zone and lives there with elegance.
Stuart Elliott
Comentarios