Description:

Stand Alone exhibition

October 18, 2008 – January 7, 2009

Link Gallery, Cheltenham General Hospital

IT'S a long walk down the link corridor at the General Hospital, Cheltenham. At a quick reckoning, you could fit 100 people or more standing shoulder to shoulder into the space from one end to the other.  Tall narrow windows allow pools of light to reflect off the white walls and shiny floor. It’s not exactly unpleasant, just a bit stark, save for a touch of greenery from plants strategically placed to add a dash of colour. If you weren’t feeling your best, travelling from one end to the other would seem like a lifetime. 

 

But there are ways of brightening up the ‘journey’ – and displaying photographs by TIN members is one of them. The 30 or so images that lined the walls in the Stand Alone exhibition, organised in collaboration with Arts in Trust, added eye-catching points of interest and helped break the severity of the route.

 

Pete Davies’s vibrant, surreal work – Play for the Day I, II and III respectively - immediately caught the eye as you entered one end of the corridor. Play for the Day I shows a woman in a gaudy blue and purple kagool holding a red circular ‘prohibition’ sign superimposed over the black and white YinYang symbol. Behind her, in the form of a painted scene, is a desolate straight road disappearing into the distance, lined with the same Yin Yang signs at regular intervals. Not quite sure what it’s all supposed to ‘mean’; but then, half the joy of reading photographs is trying to figure them out. Pete’s other images were equally striking and provocative.

 

Almost at the opposite end of the spectrum were Sally Mundy’s beautiful Ice Flowers (Ice Flower ’48 and Ice Flower ’49): light, translucent pastel shades of blue, violet, burnt orange and pink flowers preserved in ice that both conceals and reveals. The images exude an intriguing ambiguity: beauty preserved, yet beauty trapped; plant life that is finite, yet frozen in time – in the ice and in the photograph itself. The plants seem to be pushing, bursting out of their cold encasement yet, of course, are immobile. The quality and appeal of the images plays with our senses.  For a moment, everything is still; suspended. At one level, the pictures are simply lovely to look at, interesting, delicate compositions; at another, perhaps, a reminder of the fragility of life and the inexorable passage of time.

 

Then there was the more naturalistic and figurative work. Paul Leader’s close-up of a clean-shaven young man and a child whose faces fill the space in Untitled 10 is an intimate portrayal with a wistful, almost nostalgic yet somewhat anxious, quality. The subjects look outwards, into the distance beyond the bounds of the frame. This is not the excited, gleeful look of parent and child observing a firework display or wide-eyed with delight at a fairground, however. It’s a more pensive, serious, uncertain moment. We can only guess at the narrative: are they (vainly) waiting for someone; the return of the mother, perhaps; has something happened? The lighting and positioning of the subjects, faces close together (support and reassurance?), child with a finger in its mouth, make for a compelling composition. Another photo by Paul – Untitled 03 – of a small pale hut in a wheat field against a cloudy sky, creates a sense of isolation through its almost abstract, graphic simplicity.

 

Ruth Blatchford’s Amsterdam is an affectionate and witty black and white image showing a silhouetted bicycle leaning against a railing on an arched bridge over a canal. Through the arch in the lower section of the picture, can be seen leafy walkways and boats on the water. The dark mass of the bridge across the centre divides the image into three horizontal layers and both separates and joins. There are different ‘stories’ in the different areas, while the ‘transport’ theme – bike and boats – and the shape of the bridge itself help to create an overall cohesion to the well executed image. 

 

There’s a tranquillity to John Kiely’s expertly crafted black and white images of the lakelands. The classically composed landscapes Wasdale, Ullswater, and Lost Cloud Wast Water, with their extensive depth of field, foreground interest (the wonderfully textured stone wall and tree in Wasdale), framing elements within the scene (an overhanging leafless tree almost meeting its own reflection in the lake in Ullswater) and lead-in lines (the valley guiding the eye to the cloud-capped summit of Great Gable in Lost Cloud) are ideally suited to the subject matter and pay respectful tribute to the stunning scenery before the camera. The landscapes may be dramatic, but there’s a serene, timeless quality to John’s images – ideal for calming frayed nerves at the end of a challenging day!

 

A calmness of a different sort emanates from Victoria J Dean’s subdued colour images of Portstewart, County Londonderry. Nothing at all is happening, but there’s an uncomfortable feel, a sense of heavy desolation. Children’s swings stand empty among outcrops of black rock and a beach with the tide out. A solid, uninspiring yet imposing high concrete wall separates the play area from what lies beyond, while what appears to be some sort of alarm system on a metal post, complete with heavy black cables, catches the eye in the foreground. On the one hand, this could be interpreted as a celebration of the human spirit, with the determination to ‘have fun’ and triumph over adversity. On the other hand, it could also be seen as human potential constrained by what appear to be rather grim surroundings; there’s a sense of being cut off (walls as barriers?) of isolation, emptiness and alienation. In another of Victoria’s images, a glimpse of solid, heavy steps in the same uninviting shabby concrete lead to where? The promise of what could be, perhaps? A beach (and freedom)?  Thought provoking images. 

 

There’s not time to mention each and every image in the exhibition. There were others in both black and white and colour, that were more abstract and, again, raising interesting questions. Karen Harvey’s mysterious They Say He Is Watching All Of The Time, with its soft focus face and bleached out features filling the frame, was a favourite with one passer-by who, when asked if there were any images that particularly caught her eye, pointed without hesitation at Karen’s and declared: ‘That one!’

 

While at the end of the exhibition Matt Smith, senior radiographer at the hospital, left smiling after becoming the proud owner of one of Christine Wilkinson’s intriguing and painterly abstract images. “This appealed to me,” said Matt. “It’s not like a normal photograph. I like it because it’s bright and colourful and abstract. It’s really intriguing.” 

 

So, a wide range of well-created work with broad appeal, as might be expected from TIN members.  But did the exhibition live up to its goal of providing strong, vivid, powerful and inspiring images?

 

The answer surely has to be an emphatic ‘yes.’ This was not a ‘high key’ exhibition, immediately hitting people between the eyes. There wasn’t the same kind of impact as might be achieved in a more conventional gallery, with all the images presented side by side in close proximity under controlled gallery lighting. Yet, in a sense, that was its strength.

   

Located in that stretch of walkway, with a passing audience, the pictures were like little nuggets, gems waiting to be discovered. They had to work to attract attention – which they seemed to manage in style.

 

As one visitor commented: “It’s really nice having photos like this for us to look at. It’s interesting, and makes it a much nicer experience when you’re here.” 

 

It may be a long walk down that corridor, but the stimulating TIN images brightened the journey – and have clearly left a lasting impression.