Return

There's a week left of the 'Return to Byzantium' exhibition at the Turnpike, and I've revisited several times this last month. There's also been some great feedback, and a couple of reviews including one online from Corridor8:

"Like Yeats’ poem, Pearson’s work has a mystical quality about it. Images emerge, fall back, and re-emerge with new detail as your eyes dart across the paintings and attempt to decipher their message. You fall into a lucid dream-like state where the bizarre characters within the works develop narratives of their own: ‘Hi Pink Antler Guy, where are you asking to take me?’"

I continue to be very impressed by what the Turnpike offer. Every time I've visited there's been activity in the gallery space. Usually sessions for children and families, responding to the paintings through dance, writing, or drawing. Several friends have come over too, including an old friend who travelled from Amsterdam, in large part to see the show. There's no doubt that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm now feeling sad that these great paintings are soon to return to 54 Manchester Road and be placed back in stacked up piles. Waiting how long before they're taken out to be seen again?

The Turnpike, Leigh

The exhibition is going up in readiness for its opening this Thursday evening. Helen Stalker, Matt Retallick and the team at the Turnpike have been as helpful as anyone could have hoped, and already its looking fantastic. 

There's not been much for Ella, Alastair, or myself to do as they have an experienced team hanging the paintings. Other than driving over and unloading yesterday, and then laying out the work as we wanted it, everything else has been done by the gallery. Today, having noted some bad scratches in one or two places, I came back with Dave's restorers kit, and Ella brought her distilled water and baby wipes to clean the few dirty patches. 

The gallery itself is now looking classy, and their refurb has worked really well. In addition Helen has arranged a whole raft of activities that have been inspired by the exhibition. Our friend, the artist Alan Birch has been working with local schools including Moorside Primary School and Bedford High, to create prints inspired by Dave's 'Calendar Customs'. 

The artists from Pen Chant are showing their dance-and-poetry work inspired by Dave Pearson 'Newfangled!' on Friday evening at 7.30pm, and on Saturday 23rd there's a new idea being tried - a community lunch between 12midday and 2pm. There have been a number of community workshops too, including work with Roma children. 

Hearing and seeing all of this going on alongside a show which returns to the material Dave created for the 1994 exhibition has been very inspiring. Although the lighting still has to be put on the canvases, the smaller works still have to be hung, and a final tidy before the gallery opens for Thursday, its already clear that this is going to be a very special event and one that the Studio is proud of being part of.

Dave Pearson: Return to Leigh

Actually it should be Dave Pearson: Return to Byzantium, and it's opening shortly at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh, Wigan. 

It's a return because most of the work in the exhibition was shown in the same gallery in 1994. But this time we've stripped that show down to its essentials. In other words we're simply exhibiting the large central panels, without the smaller pieces that were originally placed around them. So it's a kind of Byzantium Unplugged.  

The Preview is on Thursday 21st June, 6 - 8pm. After that it's open until August 4th. 

Getting the pieces out from storage and looking at them up close has been fascinating - finding all the little details (above and below) that get overlooked when you're standing back and looking at the large triptychs, most of which are around 4 metres long.