Lloyd Durling, Please Eat Us. © the artist
Chloé Titcomb went to look at art to make you re-evaluate the everyday at Leicester's City Gallery.
Things We Lost in the Fire, first shown at London’s Transition Gallery, has been adapted and presented in a new manner for The City Gallery in Leicester.
In the exhibition, running until April 14 2007, artist and curator Gordon Dalton presents works from six UK artists - Ruth Claxton, Gordon Dalton, Lloyd Durling, Mark Gubb, Merlin James and Cecile Johnson Soliz.
The exhibition’s title comes from an album by American rock band Low, as it reflects the themes of the exhibition, which includes loss and regret and the notion of ideals being abandoned.
The works focus upon the existence of everyday objects that we all take for granted and the re-creation of existing ideas rather than grand gestures or attempts to make broad statements.
Cecile Johnson Soliz, Vases for a Painter of Still Lives. © the artist
These themes are introduced with Mark Gubb’s Kick Out The Jams, an aural and visual examination of everyday culture. It combines the familiar and the ordinary combined with the unpredictable regeneration of old ideas.
Some of the highlights of the exhibition are Lloyd Durling’s ball-point pen drawings, including Untitled, We Want Young Blood, and Corpse Flower. At first glance they seem to depict ordinary scenes such as a house or plant life - however, subtle details make the viewer immediately reassess what they are seeing. For example, the mundane image of a house is given a new meaning when you see the fire inside it.
This and other destructive motifs evoke ideas of losing the things we take for granted - like the roof over our head - reinforcing the importance of all these everyday objects.
Cecile Johnson Soliz’s installation, Vases For a Painter of Still Lives, has a similar effect on the viewer. The collection of ceramic vases, each different in style, also encourages the viewer to reassess life’s ordinary objects. The effect of this display is a sense of the familiar in domestic, everyday objects but also the repetitious nature of a catalogue.
Ruth Claxton, Lands End. © the artist
Works by Merlin James such as A Small Block of Flats and A Building depict everyday scenes, as you might gather from their titles. These familiar sights are made to come to life using a variety of techniques, for example leaving sections unpainted or cutting holes in the canvas.
Placed at the centre of the exhibition room, which seems to reflect the artist’s personal interest in space, is Ruth Claxton’s Lands End. Ceramic ornamental figurines stand upon elevated platforms of circular acrylic or mirrors.
Claxton has modififed the figurines in a variety of ways to demonstrate the awkward gap between romantic ideals and everyday reality.
Through Things We Lost in the Fire, Gordon Dalton and the participating artists have created a thought provoking experience, encouraging the viewer to re-examine mundane reality and the commonplace.
