Despite having visited before, I’d forgotten a lot about York Art Gallery. The minute I stood outside it however, it came flooding back. The exterior screams “municipal UK art gallery” right enough but indoors is quite different. The layout is tastefully modern, airy & has lots of glass. It looks good. The foyer is also the shop & the particularly good thing about the shop is it sells art materials as well as books & merchandise. “Come on!” says York Art Gallery. “Get involved!” in a way that most galleries actually don’t. I like it.
One thing I had remembered was the vast amount of POTTERY in there, so I approached with some caution. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not the biggest fan of the Applied Arts, in fact I moan extensively about them. This is unfair, but I’m very picky about pots. So imagine my mild dismay when we arrive to find the only paying exhibition is Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art. If they’d only changed that “ceramics” to “paintings” or even “sketches,” I’d have happily paid the money. I might well have missed the expo of a lifetime, but a small glance online suggests it’s not for me. Besides, there was enough good stuff to keep us going.
At present there are three other interesting sections, so since this is diary-esque territory, here are my impressions of them.
York Art Gallery Collection: Queering the Burton
For this section, the Gallery has worked with the York LGBT Forum to “make the Gallery an inclusive & welcoming place for everyone.” This promise manifests itself through “telling the stories & sharing perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex & asexual people” alongside the art. The gallery has taken its existing displayed work & relevant other pieces & combined them with captions that include stories & interpretations seen through a LGBT+ lens. It insists, “Our use of the word Queer is a positive affirmation,” & at least one of the captions deals with the fact that this was at one time a homophobic slur. As someone outwith this community, the show seemed very positive & celebratory, enabling me to see some of the works from a different point of view. It makes me wonder if other galleries could be doing more to offer new perspectives on well- or lesser-known artists & compositions.
The Lamp by Amy B. Atkinson (1859-1916)
We’re already seeing a positive move in some spaces towards honest captioning & explaining of the past regarding race & colour in respect of their exhibits. How successful York is in its endeavours is obviously not for me to say of course but I hope it accomplishes its mission to welcome more people into the art world that might not have felt as if they were represented before. I think as long as this isn’t a one-off or the end point rather than a work in progress, it’s on the right lines. In any case, I’m always excited to see a Gwen John or a Stanley Spencer & the examples in the Gallery are particularly good. There’s a superb Grayson Perry pot in this room too, so you know, I’m not entirely prejudiced against ceramics.
Pictures of the Floating World: Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints
As you might expect, this exhibition is housed in a dimly-lit room to protect the fragile works but it also fits the atmosphere of many of the works. It’s difficult to convey the enormous influence Japanese art exerted on European art & various significant art movements. “Ukiyo-e” means “pictures of the floating world” – even in Japan they’re keen to remind us of the transience of life but they also celebrate the beauty of nature. Prints on display also include historical, theatrical & what could be considered genre paintings, depicting everyday life & activities. There are beautiful works by Hiroshige as well as some but I was hoping for some Hokusai & was rewarded with several fine pieces – hooray! But the 18th & 19th Century obsession with Japanese art wasn’t a one-way thing & in this show, we see how Japanese artists were in turn influenced by art from the west in terms of art elements such as variation in tone.
Aesthetica Art Prize 2022
There was something compelling about being in a darkened section of a room watching silent, out-of-sync clips of three different women screaming their heads off on repeat to a backing track of birdsong & forest breezes & it wasn’t just the fact that there was a place to sit when an unprecedented UK heatwave was occurring. It definitely helped though. I offered a number of predictably arty interpretations for this exhibit, none of which corresponded with the caption, haha. It’s a rule I have: always make up your own mind first. You can’t be disappointed. If you & artist agree, you can be smug. If not, well you’ve learned another perspective & that’s no bad thing, is it? Apart from this exhibit though, the prize is an annual way to celebrate contemporary art by inviting us to examine the world as it is now. It’s an attempt to explore where we are in relation to the environment, communication, identity & “most importantly, it reminds us of our humanity.”
Sarah Choudrey
I’m not always convinced by installations as a means of communicating ideas or even provoking thought (or provoking anything other than annoyance) & sometimes I think it comes across as more off-putting elitism that still pervades the art world. The Aesthetica show however was engaging & I especially liked the pieces that had the whiff of science about them, for instance a “thing” that measured something or other in plants & Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility. These mixed media works had a clear climate change & environmental theme but the use of collage & paper just seemed accessibly clever & easy to relate to. I’m not saying artists shouldn’t challenge the viewer – quite the opposite – but too many contemporary artists seem keen for us to notice in awe & wonder how clever they are.
& let’s face it. Nobody likes a smarty-pants.
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