ART ''N' AB ART - Stains & Traces - A Salthouse Church Exhibition

 

When there is a exhibition that is shared between a number of artists, their artistic styles can be complementary or not. Sometimes there is too much variance in their differing approaches, its hard to discern any commonality in aesthetic or motivational approach. This exhibition Stains and Traces at Salthouse Church was rare, in that there was both individuality and a shared sense for a particular form of aesthetic exploration. There was a love for the qualities of textures, fabric, to overlay, to let them absorb paints and waxes, to roughen and fray, the quality of line and materials used was as important as the most conventional of landscape painters. Also how these can be used expressively to associate and conjure up a sense for the North Norfolk marshlands in particular

Mary Morris's works explore the textures of decay, how text and paper stains and distorts. there is something apocalyptic about her assemblages as if these strange artworks have been put together from found remnants of a lost culture. But almost as if lacking the knowledge to interpret them they are collected and displayed like artefacts in an archaeological museum often are. 

Annabel Faraday approaches her making of ceramic objects, as a form of reciprocity and produces in stoneware a version of the found objects texture. In the process exaggerating and heightening its surfaces and staining. So in this exhibition there are small pieces of ceramic made to resemble corrugated iron or boxes. The verisimilitude is only a part of the story here, for it is also about the artists closely observed eye for the significant detail to focus their skill, and your eye, upon.

  Denise Jones textile artworks utilise the fraying of fabrics, that almost unravel themselves across a piece. There is also the use of lines sewn across fabrics like drawn creases in the picture planes. The overlaying of textures and the autobiographical use of written text. 

 Carly Ralph's pieces explore repeated forms in blocks assembled like tiling. The fabrics often quite coarse and weather worn from found sources. To echo the movement of waves or the delamination of materials once they become damp. That process of change captured and hung on a wall.

 

Debbie Lyddon is probably the more locally well know of the artists exhibiting here. The hangings she produce show us very North Norfolk marshland landscapes but formed from stained and rusted canvases, pierced with rings or cut back to hanging threads. Evocatively poised in an exploration of how watery landscape can be expressed through the medium of ships canvas and boat chandlery. Her work has a strong sense of place and history.

As you can see just from these few pictures,there is a thematic overlap between them all. This gave the exhibition a coherence a lot of shared gallery shows lack. This was quite the best exhibition I've seen in Salthouse Church. I hope they all come back to do more in future years.

CARROT REVIEW 6/8