124th Annual Exhibition of the Pastel Society

diverse artists with diverse styles and diverse colours and diverse subject matter are all hung together – which confuses the eye (my main note about the exhibition)

• With really good shows that are well designed and have good artwork which is well hung, I almost always have a very good visual memory of the whole show and what was where. I have a very good visuo-spatial memory and can recall sometimes those memories weeks, months and sometimes years later.
• With this exhibition, I found I had difficulty remembering what any of the artwork was on some of the walls the next day – with the exception of some.

• A somewhat flat – and sometimes depressing – exhibition compared to the previous PS exhibitions I’ve visited and reviewed (I go back to 2006 – you can find a list at the end and you can also see the photos I took of those exhibitions in my reviews!)
• Fewer large works and more medium / smaller works (e.g. no large works by Mathew Draper) Maybe not surprising given the current market (I watched the same thing happen in many exhibitions at these galleries in 2008 and 2009) This makes it harder to create focus and rhythm in the hang on the walls.
• It lacks “wowzer” (meaning “come and look at me – right now!“) artworks anchoring some of the main walls.
• Lacking colour: Looking back at my photos, there seems to be an awful lot of greyish / muted / monochromish artworks.
• Somebody influential on the panel seems to like very dark / greyish works.
• Or did nobody submit works with lots of colour? The one thing I know is there’s a lot of people who like colourful artwork.
• I like monochrome and simple palettes – however there is a limit to how much muted work I can view.
• See the catalogue cover above and the Pastel Society Catalogue Award winner below plus some of the views of the exhibition

End wall in the East Gallery – little spots of color and a lot of muted / monochromish

Pastel Society Catalogue Award: First Prize – I found it very dark and somewhat dismal

• The West and East Galleries look visually cluttered due to tables and chairs everywhere! (excluding the cafe end which seemed more tightly packed than normal!) It reminded me of how parochial exhibitions can sometimes look rather than professional / commercial exhibitions where the whole “look” of the exhibition is carefully designed. (As had happened the previous week with the SBA Exhibition).
• Some of the artworks appeared to be hung without any obvious rationale – although this was not the case for all walls. Artworks looked much better when:
• similar themes eg landscapes are hung together
• four artworks on similar subject matter by the same artist are hung together
• Most of the open artwork seemed to be relegated to the North Gallery.
• I really thought we’d got past this notion of members in the West and East and everybody else in the North.
• Interestingly some of the best and most interesting new work can be found in the North Gallery – and I definitely recommend people take a look at it!

View of part of the North Galleries

By way of comparison,

I also noted that red spots were sparse. There were much fewer sales than I’d normally expect at this stage of an exhibition. Most of the other FBA exhibitions seem to have become fairly successful at generating sales beforehand via marketing the online exhibition and then following through with invites to previous buyers to attend the Private View – or even a Buyers Preview. I had also noted that social media marketing prior to the exhibition was also low key to almost non-existent compared to the efforts made by some of the other art societies.

• I subsequently learned one was for sales – which seemed very odd as sales have always taken place at the front desk and besides nobody was sitting there for most of the time I was visiting
• The other was about Portfolio review – but this was not obvious and again – no takers.

Why on earth the space on the Mezzanine (where the shop used to be) wasn’t used I do not know. Then both tables and their purpose could be made obvious to everybody as they came into the Gallery – and without complicating access or obscuring the view of the art for everybody else.

• It completely killed any aesthetic views of the exhibition.
• Actually trying to standback from a wall to take in what was there was actually quite difficult because of all the display stands and tables and chairs which were in the way. It was as if a really messy studio had been imported into the middle of an exhibition. IT DID NOT IMPRESS – quite the reverse. Moreover it was unmanned for quite a lot of the time…..
• There are other places within the Mall Galleries where this very useful activity can be more usefully installed.

A view of the East Gallery which I don’t often take – but the only view where there were no tables and stacked chairs