19 August, Birmingham. I’ve come to do the rounds of some of the art exhibitions, in particular Steve McCurry’s photographs. These are stunning/amazing/worrying/frightening etc depending on the subject and your/my reading of them.
What interests me these days in exhibitions (in addition to the obvious) is framing and display. I walked through some of the modern galleries in BMAG, most of the 20th century work is unframed, hung on white walls. The next room has coloured walls, poor lighting, a heavy 19th cornice, huge marble door surrounds, and all the usual visual encumbrances of traditional galleries.
In one such room is a full size reconstruction of Jacob Epstein’s ‘Rock Driller’. Ignoring for the moment the fact that the figure is made of resin and has the wrong material look of the original, it is positioned so that it can only be seen against a series of doorways in perspective recession, and any amount of confusing background material.
In the same gallery is a Peter Lanyon framed in a heavy browny/grey moulding with a gilt line which ‘rings’ off the blues and greens in the painting (‘Offshore’, 1959).
The McCurry images are presented in two ways. The very large prints are panel mounted, unframed, and work well. The smaller (say A1 for reference) are glazed with a black frame. Why? The difference in presentation suggests that there might be another difference that we should be aware of. But there probably isn’t.
His print ‘Beggar Woman with Shadow’ (Kabul 2002) resonated with me because I have been working with shadow for the past couple of years, both photographically and in paint.
More on frames, later.
A quote from McCurry: “You can’t get hung up on what your ‘real’ destination is. The journey is just as important’.
Just So.
