This might appear at first sight to be a rather odd question. I’m prompted to ask it, however, by the experience of this week. I’ve hung my exhibition in the South Square Centre (Almscliff: an enduring obsession) and on Wednesday evening the “Unit 9” group of artists met for one of our regular sessions, and for a part of that time gathered in the gallery to look at my display. There was an opportunity for questions and discussion, and I was struck by the evident incomprehension of a couple of my colleagues. Reflecting on the experience afterwards I came to an interesting realisation.
The purpose of the exhibition is to record my relationship to Almscliff Crag over a period of many years. The point is to make explicit the interest of the relationship between me as an artist and my subject-matter. A couple of my colleagues (one of whom certainly is quite successful professionally) it seems are focussed upon the idea that an exhibition is primarily an occasion on which you set out to sell as much work as possible. To this end you only put up your best work. The idea that the long process of engagement with a subject might have had prolific results, as the result of obsessive engagement with it, and that engagement itself might be a worthy object for public display, does seem to have been a difficult one for some artists to grasp. Why would I bother to frame some spontaneous little sketch from a notebook? Why is such material on show beside evidently finished pieces over which I have expended a good deal of judgement and effort? The purpose of my show, however, is to suggest that the process might, on some occasions, be as interesting as its results.
The official opening of the show takes place tonight, and it will be interesting to observe the variety of comments that (I hope) will be recorded in the visitors’ book. It will be interesting also to compare the public response to this exhibition and my other one, opening at the Manor House Museum and Gallery in Ilkley, on 15 April.*
* About time …. running until 25 April.