Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Auto Portraits at Da Gadderie Shetland Museum and Archives Lerwick 7th Jan to 5th Feb 2012

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.


Driving in Shetland 3 10 2

Driving in Shetland 2 09 1

Driving in Shetland 7 07 1
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.