Programme

Strange Days and Some Flowers - A group show of strange and uneasy work by Dan Baldwin, Don Brown, Laura Ford, Matthew Houlding, Robin Mason, Jock Mooney, Mika Rottenberg, John Stark and a new commission by Graham Hudson.

When we were children many of us will have imagined walking around on the ceiling, exploring a world which was familiar, but strange. Where beasties lurked in place of our jumpers, where up was down and grass looked a little bit like our shoe-laces. We had an innate ability to disassociate ourselves from reality, we saw the world from impossible angles, disorientated and surreal, but also playful, exciting and constantly shifting.

Strange Days and Some Flowers provides a rare opportunity to revisit this world. There is no ‘theme’, no curatorial thread, and no sheet of A4 ‘interpretation’ to help you navigate through the space in a linear, formal manner.

Instead you are invited into Graham Hudson’s partially occluding maze, catching a frustrating glimpse of John Stark’s spooky bee-keepers, metres away but not quite reachable. Several slightly disorientating minutes later, you’re sharing an intimate booth of steel with a couple of Don Brown’s alluring Yoko’s. One shrouded, one stood elegant and proud in her pants, vest and platform shoes. In the considerably sparser second gallery, Mika Rottenberg’s Tropical Breeze plunges you into a unique world of sweat, transportation and the odd naked man in running shoes.

Strange Days and Some Flowers is a purposeful jumble of utopian propaganda, religious multiplicity and enigmatic beautiful characters. The funny, the disturbing and the outright bizarre. Reflecting the complexity of our world, simultaneously unsettling and humourous, terrifying, strange and amusing.

This exhibition re-launches the newly refurbished Storey Gallery. It’s a celebration of the diversity of contemporary art practice, an exemplar of ambition and beacon of things to come.

Curated by Storey Gallery

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Venue: Storey Gallery
Dates: 13th July 2009 – 3rd October 2009
Opening Times: 11am - 5pm Tuesday to Saturday, late night Thursday
Tickets: free entry