This gallery I have visited a thousand times throughout school and it hadn’t really changed much; the same taxidermy and the same classic one off drawings by Lowry and Hockney roamed the halls. The only new and prominent exhibition was by Jasmir Creed. A local artist who put together works under the name ‘Dystopolis’ using kaleidoscope imagery of busy scenery and landmarks in her own manipulated view of modern urban, city life.
I really enjoyed Dystopolis and spent most of my visit in that room. Not much else to say about my visit, the other few rooms were less than satisfactory (other than the previously mentioned pieces of a few artists which were very intriguing) and unless there’s another exhibiting artist I probably wouldn’t return to the gallery.
We were also lucky enough for Jasmir Creed to be our visiting artist on Wednesday, meaning we had a really informed 2 days. I found that her ‘Urban Forest’ series was very similar and recognisable her style, still using distorted figures and cityscape but more commonly in darker colours and shades.
She spoke of the inspirations in her work and how she adapted techniques or colour palettes to suit a certain mood that she wanted to reflect. It was reassuring to see that some of her influencers were older, more impressionistic artists such as Edouard Manet or even writers, including Peter Ackroyd. I was surprisingly able to see correlations immediately between her own work and her inspirations’. Creed’s work is often disfigured and not quite in focus, almost in a dreamlike state or imagination but using everyday situations and subjects. It is particularly prominent in ‘Steel Webs’ 2016, which is a black in on paper piece portraying the criss cross of glass and metal buildings alongside a sea of figures, only properly visible after a few seconds of adjustment to the image, similarly to how the crowd in Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folies Bergere’ who are a mass in a mirror’s reflection only becoming clear because of their outfit colours and skin tones.
HXLLISON ART HISTORY 