SHERINGHAM DIARY No 87 - Getting Art & Ab Art

As I predicted last month, the blog's claim to being Big In Singapore has now reached its expiry date. So the halcyon days of hundreds of views has ceased. There has been a small, yet poignant, readjustment of expectations to be gone through. The cloak of humbleness settling once more over my shoulders. 

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After years of thinking North Norfolk had nothing interesting to offer in the area of contemporary art, I've suddenly been to two really fine exhibitions in the space of a week.

Karen Turner

The first was the latest exhibition at Artspace in Cromer. A diverse show The New Face of Portraiture, each providing a different perspective on what the word 'portrait' might mean, either in subject matter or presentation. It ranged from conventional yet confrontational painted portraits of faces, to documentary photos, and mixed media performance assemblages. So, something for all the family.

There were two stand out artists for me. One were beautifully executed. colourful saturated representations of large women. Challenging both ones sense of what beauty is, and who can possess it. The other highlights were small items of clothing, one held together with very rusty safety pins, the other pinned with thorns and decorated with pearlescent beads and seashells. The latter looking like both an ornamented jacket and a view of the coastline. Each piece of clothing with a small label like photo pinned into its collar. Brilliant stuff.

On our penultimate Sunday off together before the shop goes into full seven day seasonal open mode, we went to Salthouse just a few miles along the coast from us. We often drive through Salthouse on our way to some where else. See, there is an art exhibition on, assume it will be the usual bland watercolours and continue on. But today we chose to stop, have a fine coffee and cake in The Salthouse Stores. Before going up the hill to the church. Where an exhibition called Salthouse Revisited by a group of artists called Anglia Textile Works, was being held.

Niki Chandler

Again this proved to be a bit of an eye opener. Here was a broad and exploratory range of approaches to how you could make art from textiles. Some using traditional applique, others collages of dyed rags and stitches in cloth, or exploring the geometric layering of coloured gauze as a thing in itself and as a printing medium. 

Hannah Rae

Now I'm fully operational with the bus pass. I'm beginning to venture further afield. I made a solo journey to Walsingham the other day. When I arrived, it was half closed, but at least this proved it was feasible. It felt odd Hubby not being with me. I've got accustomed to conversation and exchange of opinions. I guess I will become used to that the more I do it. I'm thinking of doing a bit more 'church larking' which is something I used to enjoy back when I holidayed alone.

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Perhaps we were pushing our luck, but we went to see an Art Exhibition at the Cley Marshes Visitor Centre, entitled Paint & Pixels, this had two exhibitors, who I must say deserved each other.

Exhibitor One, produced half competent paintings copied from photos, of birds or animals. Sometimes suspended on a blank shit brown coloured background, perhaps thrust uncomfortably into a contrived natural context, or attempted to create a novel three dimensionality by sticking said painted bird to the glass.

Exhibitor Two, took photographs of the Norfolk countryside. Nothing wrong in that you might think, and neither does he. Proudly boasting that he doesn't use any photo shop image management. But, so he says, merely highlights the colours already present. Which is not what he is doing really. What he means by that is that he wacks the contrast to the max, the colour likewise, and saturates the living hell out of it. Producing luridly coloured landscapes delivered out of some drug induced fever dream.

Combined, they provided simply the worst exhibition of art we have seen this year on the North Norfolk coast. Which is saying something, as the competition for that particular epithet is hotly contested in this and almost every year.