Tate St Ives: Anna Farley, Your Space

 This display has now come to an end

Anna Farley is an autistic artists who likes to subvert art galleries.  We all know they can be stark and uncomfortable places.  Things are not soft, you can not touch.  There is the sensation that you can not talk too loud.  She has created a little comfortable, playful oasis in the the art gallery that encourages many of the attitudes artists themselves develop.  A playful, experimental spirit.

It might look like a children's play space but I think it's much more than that.  I enjoyed exploring the space myself and I suspect many adults bringing children here, enjoy it just as much as the children they accompany.  

There were comfortable bean bags, a book shelf, tables with different collections of objects to arrange and things to look at.  There was a large window looking down into the room between the ticket office and staircase which houses a Barbara Hepworth sculpture.  Along the window ledge were different wooden framed objects, some contained different colours to look through while others had different shaped mirrors.  

There were also cards for people to make their own artwork and a big noticeboard for people to add their pictures.  There were layers and layers of these cards and it was fascinating to look at them and I will make sure I go and look at them each time I visit.  They made me smile.  My favourites were Lyle Lyle Crocodile by Harrison featuring a crocodile possibly doing karaoke; a creature drawn by Daddy aged 43 and a manga style girl.  This last one was especially great and included an eye, a crying face, a picture of the artist and a no AI sign.  They had annotated it and said they draw much better at home, that they love Ikea and also recommending music.  I enjoyed the music recommendation, Unity by Joost Klein.

Looking online at Anna's pictures, I kind of wish I had explored the beanbags more though.  They were designed to give all sorts of fun ways to experience with them.  If I was there with someone else, I would wrap them in the long noodle....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Box: Journey's with Mai

This exhibition runs until the 14th June 2026 Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of the greats of British painting and will be a name familiar to many.  I had no idea he was born in Plympton, just outside Plymouth though.  He is a major 18th century European painter and the leading portrait artist of the time.  He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Art and its first president. Portrait of Omai is considered his best work and a timeless masterpiece that is one of the best pieces of British art.  In 2022 the portrait was up for sale and in danger of leaving the UK with a hefty expected value of £50 million.  It was place under a 12 month exportation bar.  The National Portrait Gallery started a fund to raise money to buy the portrait and the Getty Museum asked to jointly purchase the painting so that it could be shared between both.  In March 2023, the exportation bar expired with only half of the required amount raised and it was announced that pro...
Read more

KARST: Discord and Harmony, Beryl Cook and Others

This exhibition runs until the 18th April This was my first visit to this lovely little gallery but it will not be my last.  The exhibition was inspired by the work of Beryl Cook and included several of her works.  Other artists had been selected for inclusion based on some sympathetic aspect of their work to Beryl's.  Some of these were obvious but others needed a little more digging I think.  This made for a diverse and thoughtful exhibition with plenty of fun pieces. It's always interesting, visiting a show put together with various artists.  So many artists have a body of work that speaks as a whole as they develop a style, their own language and explore a theme.  Individual pieces do not always make as much sense by themselves, unless you have a knowledge of that artist and their work.  Putting pieces of work together from different artists changes what they have to say and understanding their relevance is an interesting thing to work out. This ex...
Read more

RAMM: Exeter's Fine Arts Gallery, Highlights from the Collection

This exhibition runs until the 9th August 2026. This one room changes regularly to give an insight in to the fine art collection.  This is a pretty impossible task as the collection contains over 7000 pieces including paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, miniatures and sculptures.  The current display includes only around 30 pieces, so highlights is definitely a good term for this display. Looking around the room, the pieces are split in to a few different categories, beginning with portraits.  One portrait is called a Man in a Red Suit and shows a man of colour wearing a red suit.  The artist is unknown and it dates from around 1740 to 1780.  A huge amount of research has been conducted on this painting and yet there are still no clear answers.  It has been credited to Sir Joshua Reynolds and I can see why but it may also be by Allan Ramsay.  Nobody knows who the sitter is either, even though attempts have been made to link to two different free...
Read more