Beware All Inexperienced Boatmen is the randomly selected title of a student show in the uni gallery space, swiftly yet thoughtfully curated by our tutor last week. The quote is from the essay, The River Po, from The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger, that I had on my desk. It seemed to make an immediate connection although I felt a little guilty at the haphazard method of choosing it (I did say swiftly). I re-read it. Berger is writing about the film Gente del Po made in the mid 1940’s, by Michelangelo Antonioni. He describes the river as, ‘A sprawling story of regular repetitions and unpredictability’,* with a still surface and hidden currents, and a famously un-penetrable fog that shrouds visibility; hence the warning. The work relates well together all having been previously exhibited separately and is now presented together here at the beginning of our final academic year. A point at which forward motion is necessary and urgent, ‘to negotiate and finally join the beyond.’*
Beware All Inexperienced Boatmen
Buckinghamshire New University Gallery
Saliha Elhoussaini
Gill Gregory
Marion Piper
Cally Shadbolt
* The Shape of a Pocket, John Berger, BloomsburyPublishing Plc, London, 2002.
