The Tremenheer Show

At the beginning of June I was in Penzance for the end of Studio Practice group show at the Tremenheer Gallery,  part of the Tremenheer sculpture gardens.  I have written more about the gardens themselves here, and I would say again what I said there, it is highly worth visiting in its own right. There were I think about 30 exhibitors.  I had been for the duration of the course in group B and we finally got to meet group A, see their art, see their reaction to our art.  It is always an inspiring experience doing this.

The gallery itself is an odd structure.  Wooden and churchlike, it would not be out of place at the head of a Norwegian fjord. It has two floors.  The ground floor is large but intersected with wooden beams that break up the space and make for ready made individual nooks and segments. The upstairs is long and thing, rising into the triangular roof, and has a large window at one end with a spectacular view of the bay and St Michaels Mount.  There is a lot of natural light in the gallery.

Our work was hung by the course leaders Dan Pyne and Jesse Leroy.  I quite like doing this, leaving my work with other people and seeing what they do with it.  Many artists are possessive of their work at this stage, and in some contexts I definitely can be in some contexts, but not here with people I trust.  Also in a show like this, where you are exhibiting with other people, it is not just about you.  The primary focus is to hang a good show.  While it may not have your favourite  pieces in it,  having a good show overall will show you in a better light I think.  I had taken down 8 pieces.  4 still life, 1 abstract and 3 landscapes. 

This is the other thing that is interesting about show like this, other people’s perception of which of your work is good, is often different from yours. My favourite pieces of the 8 were the two weir paintings.  I could of just taken them and forced my hand but I deliberately didn’t because I wanted to see which they chose.  They chose the still life paintings.  This echoes a theme I have spoken about before in my podcast what are you making, in that my work seems to have two audiences; the art community which prefers my more out there still life work and the general public which prefers my landscapes and more straightforward paintings.

What was interesting, was not just seeing the paintings they chose, but how they hung them.  To break up the view as you entered and to divert people left or right,  an interesting tent structure was put in the entrance way.  Paintings were then grouped sort of thematically in that those with a similar energy were put together, with the work running round the room from the more vibrant, to the calmer and back again.  The eye line was also diverted.  Not just a consistent museum hang (with everything at the same level), but different sized works at different points.  Consideration was also given to sight lines so that paintings that could be seen from different parts of the room complimented or played of each other.

This was a very interesting idea to be exposed to.  The purpose of it was to arrest people’s attention, to not just have them quickly scan round the room and look at all the paintings. So eyeline was broken up by sculptures,  against the wall as well as in the room,  paintings of different size and different media, and hung at different levels.  All designed to make people pause and look again.  It was very effective and made me thing in more detail about how to hang a show.

My paintings were spread out, others had all their paintings in the same section.  One of mine greeted you as you entered which made me happy. While people were looking around the show we did a group crit and again the feedback I received echoed what I said above, that and my paintings should be framed, the next thing to tackle.