February Castlefield Gallery Associates Session: Show See Say

For Castlefield Gallery Associates members only.

Show See Say are regular events in the Castlefield Gallery Associates programme, providing members with the chance to present their work, test ideas and get critical feedback within a supportive group of peers. Members can either do a ten-minute Show and Tell presentation to the whole group or have a more in-depth half hour crit showing recent work or work in progress to a small group.

Our February session builds on the momentum and enthusiasm generated by January’s Peer Support session with short Show and Tell presentations by Nerissa Cargill Thompson and John Powell-Jones and longer crit sessions with Suzanne Bethell and Michelle Olivier. There’ll also be an opportunity to talk about next steps for those wanting to setting up a peer support group.

Suzanne Bethell
Colour, its potential to excite the eye, engage the heart and alter mindstate, is central to my art.

Working intuitively, my pieces are abstract, often inspired by a sense of place, season,
time or mood, generally in series, large scale on canvas or smaller on paper. Painting and mono printmaking can become integrated – so a piece which begins as a painterly monotype may be scratched and worked into, using a range of mixed media and collage.

Nerissa Cargill Thompson 
Recent graduate from MA Textile Practice at Manchester School of Art trying to find my way in the art world. I want the viewer to stop and look closer; to consider the old and discarded through photography and three-dimensional textiles. My work investigates how things change appearance & shape over time, not just eroding or decaying but also new layers of growth, giving interesting juxtapositions of structure and colour. Initially I exhibited my photography and textile work paired together or as stand-alone pieces but recently these have merged and photography of my sculptures has grown to become the artwork.

Michelle Olivier 
I would have to immerse myself in the weird world of European racism…and wasn’t sure I would be able to stomach it.
-Andrea Levy, 2010 (on research for The Long Song)

My current work examines the representation of mixed-race people, informed by my Anglo-Indian heritage. The film Pish-Pash evolved in response to conducting archival research, which showed Anglo-Indians as airbrushed from history or negatively portrayed. Feeding is the metaphor used for the familiar, unsatisfying, and sometimes sickening process where I felt starved of texts that did not regurgitate traditional narratives and instead swallowed data that was bitter. Pish-Pash is an Anglo-Indian rice dish, like porridge, that can be eaten as comfort food.

John Powell-Jones 
I’ll be showing work I’ve been making during the Conversation Series II with Venture Arts:
Conversations Series II, led by Venture Arts and in partnership with Castlefield Gallery and the Whitworth, is a collaborative residency that bringing together three learning-disabled artists who are part of the Venture Arts supported studios, to work alongside the three visual artists. The group will develop shared ideas, create new work, and reflect on the labels placed upon us by society.

The work is themed around discussions that we’ve had during the residency, specifically those around the nature of labelling and our fascination/fetishisation for categorising what we deem as ‘different’ accompanied by the pursuit of normalising to fit with ‘modern’ society.

The work consists mainly of video featuring various costumes and characters made during the sessions with the other artists.

Image:  John Powell-Jones – Slime of UR Life (film still, 2019)