Held at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane the show sprawled out across 5 large spaces – the work was not densely arranged and each artist got their generous quota of space. The Illustrators displayed their works in a concertina, (snaking down a large space that also contained Photography) which acted as large scale portfolios, with work by different Illustrators jostling against each other, and benefitting from this more crowded presentation Jim Spencer created a range of portraits in harsh linear monochrome and the soft faded washes of old encyclopaedia entries, portraits which he subjects to strange distortions on his website, and Gino Cullen showed careful illustrations of shopfronts, little pieces of sociology.
I loved the delicate work of Freya Barnsley, who accompanied her life drawings with fond, bleak and funny captions.
Caption 1: Hanna. My housemate of 3 years, Hannah wore a full face of make-up and chain smoked through the entire sitting
Caption 2: Mama. The only one who could sit still, I regaled her with memories from my childhood, whilst she semi-listened to the Archers.
Alexandra McCoy created little layered boxes that were strongly cinematic, bristling with tension, adventure and tales of the unexpected, as well as a sweet miscellany of guitars.
Photography at Middlesex might loosely have been divided up as work displaying strong photojournalistic tendencies and work displaying fashion influence: A.S. Hamilton sort of combined both, couching his work in the tongue in cheek language of the mythic travelogue, discovering the famed beauty of the Acholi tribe.
Nadia Otshudi presented her fishing tale set in Senegal, Bernat Millet documented the ravages, both physical and political, to which the Nomadic Sahawaris have been subject to, while Jozef Gurzynski led us behind the scenes into the crematoria of London.
Francesca E. Harris showed a portrait of a Scientific writer as part of her series ‘Psychonauts’, documenting people who ‘explore their minds through the use of psychoactive drugs’, while Phil Robinson presented quietly interesting and calm landscapes of Spain.
Laura J. Powell created Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite influenced ethereal photographs, while Carlotta de Rysky showed black and white fashion photographs, that were powerful and interesting in their purity and possibly indebted to Bruce Weber. Sinead Skinner, after Cindy Sherman, acted the photographer as subject, imagining herself in different contexts and eras.
In Fine Art, spatial works were created by Vanessa Lee, whose ‘Tracer Sa Route’ combined cartography imposed on to pendant photographs, hanging from innocuous but strangely ominous brackets. Alison Paul created a threatening installation around themes of surveillance and the punitive system, working with a very effective shorthand of stacked cctv monitors, tangled sticks, and neon extremities screaming decay. Margaret Moore’s ‘Still Sounds’ combined images of her family on white sheets floating with lightness in the breeze of open windows and a audio piece evocative of the soundscapes of daily life, in line somewhat with Gaston Bachelard’s wonderful ‘The Poetics of Space’ and concerned by the way in which a sound can “trigger a memory”, and “redefine our sense of time and space”.
Stephen Morgan created a really great and enigmatic work -ceramic glazed swaddling clothes, cracked and fragile, emerging from a drawer, and lit from below, like some apparition.
Leo Buckingham create a muted large scale painting with wonderful tact of what seemed to be the indeterminate inside/outside of a London bus, while Subesh Thebe created a confident abstract painting out of cold tones. Dante Villa presented ‘Mindbody’, four pages that bore the traces of an elaborate and ritualised performance, before which the artist fasted for 24 hours.