Still Ill by Marcel Craven at Red Gallery Hull

Contemporary Art Exhibition (Mixed Media on board)

I try and get to events at Red Gallery on Osboune Street when I can.  This was one of the best  I’ve been to in a long while. Marcel Craven (if anyone knows a website for Marcel) delights in  in-jokes, word play and puzzles in his work.

I think he likes the idea that people are compelled to stare intently at his paintings and work things out if they are to understand them. And those discoveries won’t necessarily be the same for each person.

I decide on a whim to do each of the three rooms in the Still Ill show separately. It was the right move. I spent close to fifteen minutes in Room 1. It takes me an age to work out the black on white THOUGHIMANOUN, when I finally see it I’m rewarded with a wonderful sense of achievement.

Marcel has used paints, pen, pencil, sticky tape, “Whatever’s in my pocket at the time” he tells me. He likes big bold lettering then obscuring it with layers and textures to reveal something else. He plays tricks on the audience, using  misdirection to confuse and mislead.   The large pink work on the back wall looks like an oversized card offering services that you might find in a phone box. The phone number on it someone tries to ring but it’s not the function that is important but the numbers themselves. There’s a mystery in there.  I’m pleased to see the Buy Me Today piece again  I remember it from the art college-driven Tate Hull  intervention at Clarence Flour Mills a few weeks ago.

The Taste painting looks very vibrant. The letters on this one are almost covered. It seems to me to be about representing the physical notion of taste; I’m thinking tongues, saliva rather than the notion of preference or discernment.

In room 2, I’m thinking of political protest slogans; by the way the letters and words jump out at you like marchers’ banners. I pause over the idea that the backgrounds have a landscape quality and the tall lettering is like the towers on a bridge. But there is much more to this room than first meets the eye. I won’t give the game away suffice to say there is a key. There is always a secret but once you have this vital bit of knowledge the pieces make sense. (I had to ask Marcel)

In the third room I get a quote from a bystander “deeply political and moving art works…”

I like the cut-out news print and the Orwellian overtones of the second of these more literary pieces; it feels to me like a comment on the proliferation of news: ideas which tie in nicely with my dissertation proposal.  Across the back wall is emblazoned PROS AND CONS in three separate coloured blocks.  Pros and cons, pros and cons…professionals and Conservatives, prostitutes and Conservatives? Wordplay after the fact to create your own meaning.

Also present at the opening were the designers of the posters, Ryan Kitching and Nancy Hawksworth. It was thanks to their efforts that I became aware of tonight’s viewing, amongst all the plethora of club night promos, lectures and final show fundraisers.

I struck up a conversation with one Adam Atkinson he told me about a blog or book called Letter-bombing possibly his or a someone elses. I marvelled at the precision and painstaking artistry of Adam Wilson  a fine art student who is currently looking for studio space and another chap called Daniel Symes…I’d imbibed one or two complimentary sherbets by then so can’t quite remember this meeting with quite so much clarity, something about sketches maybe?

Any help filling in the gaps in my knowledge then post something on the Red Gallery FB.

Show runs 14 – 28^th May 2011 10 – 4pm except Sundays.