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"Toast" to the Arts
As active contributors and patrons of the Northern arts scene, we at the
Gerald & Toast always try to keep a topical eye on what's happening at the many local galleries in the region.
This month sees the opening of an exhibition by local man Les Shankly entitled "What It was Like Down A Mineshaft". This follows last year's highly successful display of etchings by the same artist entitled "I Was A Miner, You Know". Les is seventy years old and has all his own teeth.
"Britain = Nazi Germany" is a
student exhibition. A group of six apparently "highly talented and innovative" art students from Hampshire have created an installation which cleverly juxtaposes the inner life and the outer life while simultaneously impressing us with disparate snapshots of modern Britain.
Torquil Johnson has placed three bags of flour in a 600 x 800 ft room. The room is perfectly normal except the doorknob is Thatcher's head. Rhiannon Davies has suspended a large burnt out television from the gallery's ceiling which she paces around naked occasionally shouting abuse at the paying customers.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is an installation entitled "Oh My God" by David Harrison. David has filled a small room with minced beef and placed a "For Sale?" sign in the middle of it, questioning our attitude to the BSE crisis and therefore on a wider scale, our attitude to Margaret Thatcher.
Currently not working due to a creative block, young genius Nathan X has surprised us all with a late addition to the exhibition. His piece consists of a door with a metal bar across it, with a green and white lit up "Fire Exit" sign above. The genius lies in his suggestion that for all our inner complexities and traumas, we can all step outside into what he calls simply "the car park".
"Britain = Nazi Germany" runs until December, no-one in the real world actually gives a toss and the whole thing is paid for by
our fucking taxes.
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