Exhibition Review - May Redfern interacts with a thoughtful exhibition curated by the author Tracey Chevalier at York Art Gallery until January 11 2009.
International best-selling author Tracy Chevalier has curated A Thousand Words, the latest exhibition at York Art Gallery.
Best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring, a novel based on a painting by Johannes Vermeer, the exhibition invites visitors to chalk up their own ideas for stories on the gallery walls.
Situated in the main gallery space, Chevalier has chosen 17 paintings from the permanent collection and evenly spaced them around the walls. They include portraits, still life and landscapes by many artists including Harold Gilman, Barbara Hepworth, Jack Butler Yeats and Gian Lorenzo Bernini and John Piper.
Blackboards surround the artwork and chalk paint is used across one wall at the far end of the gallery and beneath the paintings.
Chevalier has chalked up her own welcome message: "When I look at art I often think about the stories that might emerge. If a painting offers us the middle of a story, what happened before? What happens after? I’ve chosen the works of art here because I think they’re full of possible stories. We’ve given you the space and materials to make up beginnings, middles and ends for them."
Questions are written in large letters above the pictures to prompt visitors to come up with their own ideas: What just happened? Why is he looking like that? What have they been saying? What is she thinking? What will they do next?
These prompt a range of comments from funny to romantic. We may never meet again… (1950-57) by Yeats, an out of focus abstract work predominately painted in blue, leads a visitor to suggest that "he cried out in anguish from the pain her betrayal [sic] had caused."
Richard Jack’s large scene The Return to the Front: Victoria Railway Station (1916) which features a platform packed with uniformed soldiers, causes sober reflections: "My dad bill could have been on that station" and "my dad was there 1914/1918 in the royal field artillery. He was one of the lucky ones."
A portrait of a rather plain looking Miss Adams by Phillippe Mercier (1741) hangs next to a Head and Shoulders Portrait of a Man (c1910) by Roderic O’Conor. This suggests the subjects are in the same place, although painted over 160 years apart. "Who is that interesting man over there?" asks Miss Adams.
Gallery staff continually walk round with dusters. Describing themselves as ‘self appointed sensors,’ they keep the best comments and wipe out the occasional rude ones while creating space for new comments. The staff photograph the boards regularly and display some of them in binders available in the gallery.
There is a reasonably sized children’s table with art books and drawing materials and a video, which follows an education workshop for children describing what they like about the pictures.
However because of the height of the chalkboards, younger visitors won’t be able to reach up to contribute their own ideas. Small chalkboards would have enabled smaller visitors to leave their own comments or pictures as their unique contributions.
This exhibition is a good space in which to create your own ideas and share them with others. It would make a great icebreaker for a first date or for a sociable meeting with friends of all ages. Alternatively visit alone and let your imagination run wild.
