Slick or Slack private view

Slick or Slack private view opening night Tuesday the 23 October 2012. Here is one of the artists standing by his work which is the green painting on the left and the red painting on the right. It is a group show and will be up for a month. The Art Project shop/gallery has a new printing machine so prints can be made of the work. In the near future they would like to run art workshops.

Here I am having a laugh with the other artist. I only met everyone on the private view. The gallery is run by a group of people from NANSA and volunteers. They all had a meeting and decided who's work was going to be shown and then a group hung the work. Paper work was done by one of the volunteers. I just had to turn up at the private view which was fantastic. I had done some twittering and face booking of my own for publicity but the gallery did all the proper publicity.

Everyone was offered drinks and nibbles. My friend Ann Nicholls the photographer also know as Dandy Snap came along and her other half Roland.

Lots of discussions were had and everyone had fun.

Volunteers up since 8am hanging the artwork and adding finishing touches.

More fun to be had, Richard had been having fun with the new wall cabinet. Which they hope to put more expensive art materials. At the moment they sell brushes, paint, canvas, frames, art books and lots of very useful art materials.

A reflection in the mirror of the artists and visitors to the gallery.

Richard photographing Sarah Cullum with her dog paintings which she started painting when she went to art college. 

Here is the visitor's book, price list and posters.  

Ladies who came in to look at the work and got very excited by the paintings.

Richard on the left is an abstract painter and also works here at the Art Project Shop.

The gallery filled up with people coming to the exhibition.

A reflection in the window of the art on the walls and the scaffolding outside through the window.

Robert and Ann arrive by bicycle which is the best way to come to an art opening.

Earlham house shops in Norwich is under going some huge renovations which hope to be finished in February but this has not effected the shops like the Art Project Shop.

Stuart Cullum the artist standing with his portrait paintings and Richard photographing him.

Here is the words about the show taken from the website. 

Slick / Slack 24.10.2012

SIMON CARTER SARAH CULLUM STUART CULLUM

PAUL HACKETT ANTHONY HARRISON RICHARD MANN ELOISE O’HARE MARTIN PAYNE URSULA SPOTISWOODE

This show explores the far reaches of painterly taste. We have thrown into the pot a veritable clash of styles and idioms.

Edouard Manet, the original slick/slacker, turned the whole world of painting on its head in the 19^th century and set in motion the “decrepitude” of this medium. This show is a roundabout tribute to his achievement.

We invited a range of painters to submit to this show, and only a brave “few” have responded to the challenge.

Can “he” paint; is it “art”? How many times are these questions aimed in a barbed way at this subject? Since the mechanisation of the reproduction of three dimensions on a two dimensional surface the craft of painting has been put into question and the question of art too. So be it, we continue anyway!

Is knowledge of this debate a help or a hindrance? Well this show won’t necessarily help us answer this question but it is worth asking all the same. All the artists in this show have a way of tackling their medium as they see fit. There are those who take the paint by the scruff of the neck and go for the immediate effect - we are taking about Simon Carter,  Sarah Cullum,  Eloise O’Hare,  Martin Payne and Ursula Spotiswoode, its not simply expressionism, as we know it, but it is in that region. Others have a more considered approach and act as a counter to the ‘anarchy’ that is breaking out around them - Stuart Cullum and Paul Hackett represent this tendency. However Richard Mann approaches his subject with very little regard for any convention.

The title of the show doesn’t do any of the work justice, we are not asking you, the audience, to try and squeeze what you see into these very loose categories, it is just a way of commenting on what is fast becoming a prevalent and fashionable style amongst painters today as they turn their back on art in general and re-discover the basics of modernist painting before the orthodoxy of Greenberg took hold.