THE title of the exhibition Reality Check now being held in Newlyn Art Gallery relates to the psychological process for coming to terms with what is actually happening rather than what one believes is happening, writes Frank Ruhrmund.
It is curated by Michael Donnelly and Marion Taylor, both of whom are members of the Newlyn Society of Artists, comprised of works by 17 of their fellow members of the society.
The works that have been selected "all take an uncompromising view of the world; some confrontational, others subtle or subversive, but all are rooted in the desire to make a point".
Taking them in alphabetical order, Richard Ballinger uses 100 empty bill envelopes as the base for his The Divided Race which is concerned with the economic divisions in today's world and the worries that beset most of us.
In Death Matters: Furnishing the Mortuary, Susan Bleakley looks at the morgue in a series of photographs which walks the cultural line drawn "between the order of life and the disorder of death". Susannah Clemence's political protest prints reflect the affect of human behaviour upon the environment; with their focus upon oil, Marie-Clair Hamon's paintings of burning cars and oil refineries Consumed, Spectacle & Oasis could not be more topical; Mark Jenkin mixes reality and fantasy in his audio visual story Aurora's Kiss; Patrick Lowry's Lifts is "a comment on consumerism and the illusory constructed and monetary facade that supports it".
Ian Penna's Entrap & Bio-Bed are not only likely to concern dog lovers but to make all of us think about the problems of waste disposal; Felicity Robertson's paintings of Ordinary People relate to the extraordinary images we now see so regularly on our television screens that they quickly become ordinary; Samantha Sand-Holmes' series of wall mounted sculptures Can't Find A Safe Place To Stand & Mend Me, invites us to "check the reality of our relationship to the world and the people close to us".
In Gone Tomorrow Jesse Leroy Smith uses a combination of portraiture and video projection to look at the sadness and joy associated with growing up; Ken Spooner questions the place of the camera in today's society with Fossil; in his Black Cloth Project Paul Wadsworth examines the reactions of people when faced with a piece of black cloth, reactions that "went way beyond its use as a Burqa"; in his paintings Ramp From Lidl Jason Walker looks at the skateboard activities centred around Wherrytown; Peter Webster invites us to "re-imagine the visual and associative properties of each source image" in his large drawing Screen Saver; in her photographs Belinda Whiting considers the process of erosion which comes with age; with her toy soldiers in Dirty War Emma Saffy Wilson offers a painful reminder of all that has happened, and is still happening, in Afghanistan and in her paintings Girl Boy/Boy Girl Lisa Wright reflects upon "the passing of time and our own mortality".
A thought-provoking exhibition, as vital as it is varied, admission is free, and Reality Check can be seen in Newlyn Art Gallery, 10am-5pm Monday-Saturday, until July 10.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN