Sitting and Looking

The majority of gallery visitors generally experience displays at a slow walking pace. It’s refreshing, then, to happen upon a group show that tackles the art/design/craft encounter, with a view to encouraging quiet contemplation of works in a world full of distractions. While several of the objects, images and furniture here are worth taking the time to sit and regard, like the equally distinctive smells of fish and coffee wafting out of the cafés opposite, why would one choose to experience them together?

In reality these stunning period rooms feel a bit like a rest stop for the museum-weary rather than an active site of multi-disciplinary engagement. The grand interior momentarily affords Gordon Baldwin’s truncated-woman shaped ceramic ‘Vessel’ a touch of minimal, Kettle’s Yard magic, until viewed in context as one of an ungainly series. Making use of one of Jim Partridge/Liz Walmsley’s (JPLW) fine scorched-oak benches, I took in El Ultimo Grito’s deviant-red latex-covered desk under bright hatchery-type lights. It’s an excellent object but one designed for close inspection rather than distant reflection, as if awaiting a material moment of transformation.

Next door, Garry Fabian Miller’s bold camera-less photo of primary coloured squares provides a more obvious moment for Rothko-esque contemplation, but any sense of chromatic tremor is hampered by the lack of clear space to view. Similarly, there’s nowhere to sit on JPLW's ‘Cross Benches’, which play host to some covetable examples of Nel Linssen’s paper jewellery sealed under Perspex cubes. The spaces for looking and for thinking here are sadly cluttered with many incongruous things and thoughts.