The bloc project collective of group members came together for the first time to produce an exhibition that could be the smallest in Sheffield. The room is tiny holding 8 pieces of work but it offers a wealth of inquisitiveness and ambiguity. Curator, Robin Close, chose work that showed exploration and negotiation through different platforms and most pieces were not what they seemed on first glance.
The photographed dead lizard jumped out against the plain white wall and showed Louisa Harris’ skill to inject life into death through colour and a sense of mischief.
Sean Williams piece might be called ‘Castle’ but it immediately strips away connotations of wealth and nobility by creating a fragile and awkward looking shed. Williams’s use of watercolours emphasises its delicacy by making it look as if it will collapse any minute.
Alternatively Luke Chapman’s homage to the Holmdel Horn Antenna stands out in the form of a cosmic sculpture, which juts out in the middle of the room. Ever sat down and watched static T.V. to pass the time? I’d like to think nobody does but Chapman tries to evoke the sense that people are actually watching radiation from the beginning of time when they do. He does this by placing a T.V. underneath a dominant foil model to replicate the discovery of cosmic microwave radiation.
Competing for your attention is Susanne Palzer’s twisted and broken table with blank postcards on the floor. Aptly named Postcards from Bloc the piece is a working project by which the creator plans to create a set of postcards of her studio pieces. It almost teases the audience into the type of work we can expect by cleverly keeping you guessing by not revealing much at all.
After your eyes have scanned between the prominent pieces you almost miss a pencil sketch taken straight from its pad in raw form. It’s a small A5 piece yet is placed on a whole wall to subtly show desolation and it’s like accidentally walking into a room of a person’s deepest emotion and feelings. It shows an environment lost and forlorn and the monochromatic sketched lines highlight this.
Mark Doyle’s projection of shadows catches your eye but the obscurity of it asks the audience to decide what the shadows mean to them personally. The composition shows the battle between light and dark and meaning and identity while Daniel Fogarty asks for a philosophical understand to his art.
Named Spinario it’s a page photocopied from the book Taste and the Antique: The Lure Of Classical Sculpture which tells the myth of a shepherd boy he had to deliver a message to a Senate before he removed a thorn in his foot. The artist transfixes a stapler to the page to represent the thorn that needs removing and places by the door of the exhibition it fittingly suggests the end of the boys journey.
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