Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Anish Kapoor - Flashback Exhibition at Manchester Gallery 14/04/11

The curator of this exhibition, Natasha Howes, told us a little of the background of this artist; he was born in India and then came to live in the UK in 1973. His sculptures are constructed from widely differing elements. There was one made from stainless steel, a huge sphere with what appeared to be an infinite aperture descending into it's centre. Another was called 'When I am pregnant', and was a fibre glass shape appearing to grow out of the wall and resembled a pregnant stomach. I was unable to see this because the sculpture was more or less the same colour as the wall and there were no contrasts to enable me to define it.
There was a huge rectangle of stone, again with a rectangular aperture towards the top of it, and then there were a series of small sculptures in primary colours red, yellow, blue, and black, each covered in colour pigment. Each item within this sculpture being of varied height and construction. Natasha told us that the technicians and artists working with Anish took up to 2 weeks to install each sculpture having to carefully cover each one with the pigment. Apparently this has to be done whenever the sculptures are moved to a different exhibition venue. There were also sculptures made in wax and another appeared to be growing out of a wall at shoulder height.
Some of the items bore a definite resemblance to a body part and no explanation is given by the artist about such items. He obviously intends the viewer to place his own interpretation on his work. Ann gave us her usual exciting audio description of the sculptures we were lucky enough to see, and I think it must have taxed her imagination considerably in order to be able to come up with the vivid descriptions of the shapes and colours that we saw.
Meg Parnell and Kate, who job share at the gallery, worked hard to make sure that our visit went smoothly and that as a disabled group we were well accommodated.
At the end we went to the education suite and had our usual cup of tea, coffee, of juice and a delightful biscuit, and in all a most delightful morning was spent at this gallery visit.

Our thanks to Mary and her volunteer drivers for making this visit possible and we look forward to our next trip!