Exhibition Visit. Unknown People, Cleethorpes Library

Unknown People

There is an air of mystery surrounding this exhibition.  It sees artwork created by Local artists Sue Stone, Linda Ingham, Julie Gough and Eileen Bunn based on archival photographs from the Hallgarth Collection of photographs held by Lincs Inspire Libraries.  I was drawn to this exhibition partly from the fact that work was based on archival images as it reminded me of one of the genres that I had studied in the early days of Body of Work.

Linda Ingham is an artist and curator who exhibits internationally and has work in both public and private collections including The University Museum of Art, USA.  Her work will be touring China as part of the Contemporary British Painting Group.  She is a curator for Abbey Walk Galleries and the Arts Meidian initiative.  She has used images of unknown women from the Hallgarth Collection and has based her work around this u'unknown-ness' of person and place.  She is also fascinated by the disparity in technique between the photography for the original image, rephotographing with mobile phone and paint.  All of the pieces are connected to a place: an outline of Lincolnshire, with embroidery thread.

Sue Stone is a textile artist.  The pieces in this exhibition celebrate the lives of unknown children.  Each one, she says, has their own story to tell.  Faith, hope and fate all have their own part to play in the narratives presented.

Julie Gough lectured at Grimsby School of Art, now part of the University department and she has an MA in Fine Art from the University of Lincoln.  She now makes her own work alongside exhibiting with and coordinating the work of the East Coast 7 post graduate art group.  I have always been fascinated by Julie's work.  She uses a wide range of found objects and narrative to create work which reflects her love of story telling.  She says that her work frequently provokes ambiguous impressions and it is always playful, although occasionally sinister. Here she has used the photographs of unknown people in the archives to construct fascinating stories about their lives.  Here work with found objects complements the narratives.

Eileen Bunn is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at the university of Wolverhampton.  She has used the images from the archive to investigate the subject of class divide using the contrasting images of studio portraits of wealthy children against those in the 'slum life' catalogue.  I enjoyed Eileen's work, particularly the largest piece in which I found much to question.  I also thought that the way she had displayed her work was reminiscent of the the work of OCA students John Umney and Stephanie D'Hubert at Sheffield Cathedral.  The way she had used opening drawers in the chest to display her work reminded me of the Sheffield exhibition.

One other reason why I was interested in this exhibition was because of the venue.  It is somewhere that I have considered for an exhibition for my work.  On making enquiries I discovered that it is available for hire and there is not a huge waiting list.  It is self-contained and would be a perfect size for a one person exhibition.  At the moment I have 16 images in my BOW and 4 would fit comfortably on each wall.