JADAR

★★★★☆

Curtain Up is a bold exhibition combining the works of 9 multi-disciplinary artists, with the aims of understanding what it means to be a part of an audience. Each piece explores the interactions between the architecture, event, audiences and performers in an attempt to capture the communal buzz felt by passionate audiences. The artists also focus on different events, ranging from theatre and cinema to fashion shows, live music and fairgrounds. Amusingly, the gallery space itself generates its own audience, further toying with the boundaries of viewership.  

As audiences enter the exhibition, they’re first greeted by Simeon Barclay’s A Track with No Name, archival images of a fashion show brought to life in flashy acrylic, vinyl and aluminium, the vibrant colours and glossy aesthetic evoking vogue magazine pages. The piece’s harsh square frame seemingly undercuts the bold palette and abstract design, seemingly imitating the careful curation that goes into creating flashy, rebellious fashion. Barclay’s work also extends into the latter end of the gallery with Look No Hands, this time inspired by the communal identities and experimentation emerging from the British Jazz Dance scene of the ‘70s. It’s a playful display where a sonic score and neon signs pulsate against a backdrop of cropped dance projections.

In the second room, Bridget Smith’s sprawling architectural cyanotype prints demand attention, soothing waves of cinema seats and bobbing curtain pleats creating beckoning audiences closer. Her work simultaneously highlights the sense of anticipation and abandonment evoked by empty entertainment spaces. Similarly, Abigail Reynolds also focuses on architecture, instead using outdated guidebooks to find and collage images of the Minack theatre, oscillating between audiences and eras.

The next space challenges the separation between spectator and performer, Ulla Von Brandenburg’s new commission, Spirits Are Matter, becoming the gallery’s centrepiece. The opened patchwork curtains burst with colour as geometric shapes stretch across the fabrics, inviting audiences to enter the inner-gallery and participate instead of watching from afar.

Behind the curtains, a gallery of painted performances unfolds. Ryan Mosley’s art mixes the traditions and motifs of theatre with absurd and surrealist elements, brightly coloured skulls and omni-present silhouetted onlookers looming in-frame as the spectacle unfolds. Meanwhile, Denzil Forrester creates beautiful explosions of shape and colour that reflect the excitement of 80’s club life. In contrast, Joy Labinjo’s art is more intimate, depicting a united experience between the dancing audience members and the intermingling performer.

The final two-pieces were new film-based commissions. Chris Paul Daniels’ exhibit was a cute miniature theatre showing his film compiling numerous archived clips featuring am-dram societies, theatres, cine-societies, scout shows, Morris dances, and communal projects from across the North-West. Across from this, Rowland Hill’s in-the-round 3-channel video installation allowed audiences to view sights and sounds of Loughborough Fair, as well as each other through amusing carnivalesque peepholes, projections and mirrored images that toy with voyeuristic control. Finally, the exhibit wouldn’t be complete without a cheeky round of applause from an archway of continuously clapping hands!

Overall, Curtain Up is an ambitious and amusingly meta exhibition, combining various styles, mediums, and approaches with differing perspectives of what it means to be a part of an audience or event. There’s a superb variety and an array of imaginative pieces that are sure to impress, but I do wonder how well the more ambiguous works will resonate with unguided audiences.

Curtain Up runs at Lowry (Andrew Law Galleries) until June 21.