THE ALLEYNIAN 708 | OUT OF THE ORDINARY
THE ALLEYNIAN 708 | OUT OF THE ORDINARY
ART
EXTRA ORDINARY
LEO STERZ (YEAR 11) FOUND PLENTY TO EXCITE THE IMAGINATION AT THE INTRIGUINGLY NAMED ‘HUMDRUM’ EXHIBITION
U niting abstract and fine art, Humdrum aimed to art studio to the overgrown entrance of a humble side street – the kind we probably all live a couple of doors away from. The concept was developed in a huge variety of ways, from Rob Reed’s fine pointed needle-like brush strokes to Ruth Chambers’ perfect patterns and Bruce Ingram’s powerful collages. In this exhibition bringing together the work of 12 brilliant artists, there was truly something for everyone. One of the most notable pieces was Ian Gouldstone’s endless algorithm, based on the Angry Birds game coding; while at first it was not noticeably similar, with time and a bit of patience you began to see the depth of their similarities. Glockenspiel noises came into play alongside the visual motion of the blocks colliding with each other and firing away. The setting of this piece in the lower level of The Store was perfect, with the dim lighting and the outside light seemingly sliced through by the metal grid behind you. The presentation of the piece was also important, with the black painted celebrate the mundane and overlooked corners of our everyday lives, from the dirty floors of a colourful background a stark contrast to the white laundry on the drying rack in front. The cumulative effect of these conflicting yet complementing colours was that of a multi-textured canvas spreading across the towels and t-shirts on the racks. Ruth Chambers’ work also embodied the idea of bits and pieces, through drawings on the inside of envelopes which were ripped open to expose the folded insides. This work explored the themes of language and communication, reminding us that in a modern age of texting and instant messaging, the humble, and possibly outdated, letter risks losing its significance. Plato once said, ‘rhetoric is the art of controlling the minds of men’. This work emphasised the enduring power of our shared language. The essence of Britishness was explored in the paintings of Adam Hennessey. The seagulls in one image looked tentatively through the black chequered pentagons of a football, connecting with the observer through their lopsided gaze. Hennessey’s frequent incorporation of birds in his work was particularly engaging, as in London we don’t have
too many one-on-one encounters with birds in our day-to- day lives. His abstract composition also had great charm, distorting scale to create complex, many-layered images. James Irvin is a video artist who had his display on the top level in the corner of the room; the screen the video was playing on was placed on the floor and angled up towards the ceiling, which created interesting reflections on the walls, and bleached some parts of the screen. To create his work he used his phone to record himself in different places around his house, before using photoshop to put a piece of cactus in the centre of the video and distorting the colours, making greens and blues out of the original basic colours. Bruce Ingram was another of the artists presenting, and he also curated the exhibition. His multimedia collages spread out across the room, and culminated in two central pieces on the top level in the corner. One was a collage of a pair of Adidas trousers and lots of snippets of paper, mixed with a collection of paints, pencils, pastels and plaster, all creating the effect of a wrinkled surface. Revealed in the middle were the three white stripes, instantly recognisable as the famous sports brand. Robin Tarbet was another of the noteworthy artists in the exhibition, with his concrete-looking structures protruding from their surroundings. He uses jesmonite to cast packaging into building-like structures. Displayed on a pedestal in The Store, they recalled the concrete solidity of the Christison Hall. In his work I could see a city, a commercial centre, and a metropolis of high-rise buildings, with miniature people waiting to burst out of every orifice in a massive rush-hour swarm. Overall, the exhibition seemed to embody an urban society whose values and habits have been changed and warped and distorted. The varied pieces, in my view, were connected by the title, reminding us that we are in a phase of technological development through which our notions of up and down, and of left and right, are distorted; where nothing is quite as it seems. This was a busy exhibition to accompany a busy school and a busy world, bursting with ideas!
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