Reflections on Hinterlands Exhibition
I’ve discovered recently that working on a joint exhibition featuring two people is very different to working on either a solo or a group show. The work has to fit together as one, and this is dependent on real trust between both people involved. It’s also vital to put the curation and final selection of the work ahead of the need to show all recently produced work; the overall sensibility and look of the exhibition has to feel cohesive, and this sometimes means leaving out pieces that you like, or wish to sell!
Because Aaron and I will be doing a talk about the exhibition for Guernsey Arts who sponsored the show, and the general public, now felt like a good time for reflection after the show has been open for a week.
At the beginning of last summer, Aaron and I had a conversation about the idea of holding a two-person landscape exhibition. The catalyst for this was seeing our work in the ‘Exile and Return’ exhibition last May: a group show to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Channel Islands from Nazi occupation. Our work felt congruent - both because it was landscape based, but also because it held a sombre and slightly eerie undertone.
Once we’d secured a venue we met regularly for updates and to discuss the broad sense of direction the work was moving in. Aaron had been working on this body of work for four years in the periods between documentary projects. He already had a large number of photographic images but wanted to ensure that there was some crossover in relation to sites that we were working from. I was still immersed in developing work that considered the impact of the German occupation on the landscape and the dark social history underscoring this.
We met at two local sites that were important to each of us. For me, this was the Saltpans near my home, an area of marshland where the industrial chimneys and lights of the electricity power station shone through the desolate waves of pampas grass. Aaron had been working up at Le Guet, a site of 100 year old Monterey pines, many of which had been felled by the savage power of storm Goretti in January. Their giant tangle of roots jutted upwards leaving vast inky dark craters amidst the thick bed of pine needles and brambles covering the steep hill to the bay below. Several pieces of new work emerged from these joint site visits.
As the Gate House gallery is on the site of a local college, due to safeguarding restrictions we could only hang the work the weekend before the exhibition opened. This felt like quite an overwhelming task on the Friday night when I dropped off my smaller paintings. Hanging, while deep in conversation with Aaron over that weekend, made me realise what an art form good curation is. We both had very similar ideas on what worked and what looked out of kilter and this felt reassuring and harmonious. It meant that although various areas were arranged and rearranged over the weekend, we reached a consensus on what should be omitted and why; both feeling that our work shown paired well together, and both omitting work or changing the format or size to make it feel like one body of work.
The opening last Friday was packed and visitors really seemed to enjoy the interplay between our work. It is not common to see paintings and photography shown together as often these pairings really do not work. A relative visiting from London for Easter, said she felt it was common to view photography as somehow being more ‘real’ than painting, the latter often being perceived as more interpretive, yet Aaron’s photos felt in some way ‘otherworldly.’ She felt it was interesting to see the same subject treated by different artists in different mediums but knowing there had been a dialogue.
It will be interesting to give a talk in the next ten days and perhaps have the opportunity for some more conversations about the work with visitors. For me, it takes a while to obtain a sense of distance from the work, so talking to others about how they perceive it is incredibly useful.
The next couple of weeks I will spend time with the work when I open and lock the gallery, drawing out corms and rhizomes of new ideas to help push my art practice in new directions.
I shall miss Aaron greatly. He and Carmen are moving to Scotland to be nearer their family. Thankfully, north of Inverness, there is a great deal of wild beautiful landscape for him to explore.