As well as graffiti spotting, we decided to check out some more free art of the indoors kind in Bristol over the weekend, which led us to Spike Island, just around the harbour from the SS Great Britain. Spike Island is a contemporary art space which hosts visiting exhibitions as well as work-space for artists.
The first exhibition we saw was the summer show of the Fine Art students from UWE (University of West England). Mainly a mixture of objets trouvés, video art, and piles of junk (literally), a lot of the work didn't seem like it took much talent to devise or make. I'm not a huge fan of art that's controversial for the sake of it, or trying to fool you into thinking it's better than it is, so we quickly moved on.
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| UWE students working in the Spike Island studios |
Next up was an exhibition of artists' postcards (showing until Sunday 17 June). "Artists' postcards" was taken very loosely, meaning everything from holiday postcards sent by artists to postcards of artists' works; traditional photography, Dada, Fluxus, poetry, cartoons and more. All of the works exhibited came from the personal collection of writer and novelist Jeremy Cooper who has just released Artists' Postcards: A Compendium.
One of my favourites was this David Shrigley drawing mocking Damien Hirst, called Brilliant.
Apparently saving the best til last, we came to Crepe Suzette, the first UK solo exhibition by Daniel Drewar and Grégory Gicquel (also running until 17 June). The main attraction of this exhibition is a range of stop-motion animations which depict clay sculptures in various states from lumps of clay to fully formed figures, all shot out in natural locations (lakes, forests etc), creating a commentary on the ephemeral nature of art. My favourite video was one in which clay legs seemed to dance across the screen, as they kept being made, destroyed and remade along the lump of clay - putting some fun back into sculpture!
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