Just got back to France from Shetland, which was the warmest place in the UK for much of January, arriving to a good few centimetres of snow and freezing temperatures. Da Gadderie (do I need to translate? I think not) is a great space and footfall was pretty good. Up Helly Aa was on during the show so there were a good number of visitors from outwith Shetland.
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Auto Portraits is a series of drawings done with a glue gun. I make pencil sketches first while travelling between France and Shetland, which usually takes in London en route, I'm not driving! I then work up the final piece in the studio. I deliberately hung the work close together to mimic cartoon strips as my work is certainly influenced by them. I had a comments book for the first time at a show and I think some of the things people said were interesting, Shetlanders are fairly shy so this was a good way to elicit a response. I particularly liked the one which said “Takes a lot to bring a smile to my face when I have a hangover”. I'm going to take that as a compliment. The majority of the drawings were about Shetland but I also put in a few French and London ones to contrast and compare. I gave a talk one lunchtime to a group of about 17 or 18 which I felt went well Its good to have a sounding board sometimes to examine things from a different perspective i.e. Joe public ( or should that be Fergus or Maree?) Anyway back to the main subject. The next step (along the road) for Auto Portraits is to find a suitable venue in France where I will show mainly French drawings.
There is a
review of the show on The Northings online magazine and find below some pages from the comments book. Rob Colclough was also showing at Da Gadderie at the same time.
