- Venue
- Kingston Art Group
- Location
There’s that adage that ‘one man’s meat is another’s poison’…. so ‘one man’s exciting development opportunity is another’s misery’?. Once upon a time every aspiring top ten city had to have its own exciting sexy cultural quarter/cafe society. So what happens when all those plans go awry? Well, something else happens that is even more exciting and ‘sexy’; something that someone behind a desk in some council office has not seen before.
The ‘not seen before’ in this case is the current exhibition by AndyP at the KAG Gallery in the Fruitmarket of Hull. Andy’s exhibition ‘Space is the Place’ is one of a series by KAG studio members. The exhibition could be titled Every Dog has its Day. Every Dog has its Deity is an installation/sculpture piece that starts with a painting, in lurid blues and oranges, of a Shrigley-esque dog on its back legs holding a placard on which kiddies’ plastic lettering spell out the aphorism above. This painting, leant against the gallery wall, surmounts an antique Indian portable shrine. This ‘shrine’ is home to various toy cowboys and Indians, bits of tinsel and origami paper dogs. The origami surrounding the shrine is made from the loose leafs of the exhibition’s ongoing comments book. All of these components are lit by the reflected lights from a glitter ball. The dog having his day in this case is Andy’s Jacob.
Further into the KAG Gallery space is an installation of two paintings behind a stark copse of suspended white painted tree branches amongst which are also suspended vertically yellow and blue neon tubes. This makes for an odd cooling effect after the glitz and orientalism of the previous installation. The floating white timber and the two loosely painted canvases on the walls behind brought to mind in me the Anonymous Place series of woodland paintings by Werner Fohrer – north European Romantic winter woodland – stark tree trunks and branches silhouetted by low winter sun. The installation …. Woods for the Trees is a pithy and humorousplay on words, but for Andy it is another memento mori for Jacob. This love for his canine buddy is more overt in a very witty piece of painting that is placed outside the gallery space in the building’s back yard. Cosmic Zoom is a Doig-esque painting of a human and canine sat in a canoe in a still sea at night; looming behind the canoe is a wind farm. The turbine blades appear still also; between the blades are the stars in a clear sky. The immediate surprise of the placing of the painting and the having to view through binoculars is a nice surprise that makes one LOL. However, I do think the quality of the painting could be appreciated nearer at hand – a viewing distance of a fifty meters or so may be ‘challenging’ but the quality of it need not be part of a quirk.
Painting closer at hand I think outshines their being co-opted into various gags and being subject to varying support by objet trouvé, as in Tilting Taj and The Crows Balance. A wall painting does state that Fun does not have one size, especially when being dive bombed by various Airfix 1/72nd scale World War 2 fighting machines.
I loved the exhibition and its daring. If Hull gets the opportunity to be City of Culture 2017 then KAG Gallery and all the other ‘un-planned’ culture in the Fruitmarket will certainly provide Hull’s own stars.
Space is the Place is on until Monday 26th August and there’s a ‘bit of do’ on Friday 23rd from 6pm. The KAG gallery in Humber Street is open Saturday and Sunday 11.30am until 4.30pm. For more info visit www’kingstonartgroup.co.uk
