" Sit & Look " : responding to Ross Hamilton Frew’s exhibition
[ Written text in response to Ross Hamilton Frew’s “Sit & Look” exhibition preview (2022) ]
- 36 Lime Street , Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) | July 2022
Entering into the space from the heat and wet of a British summer day , one had begun to hear the approach of tiny shoes on the concrete floor .
Two small children run around the exhibition of Ross H Frew’s “Sit & Look” (2022) ; their exuberant acts of play activate a space that would have normally been kept in a state of stasis , an unspoken state in which the present works were meant to be viewed and considered by various visitors .
Indeed, a number of these exhibited works were developed by Frew alongside his young daughter , who is also notably one of the two children playing at the time of my visit ; whilst the artist may be talking to someone in the gallery , there is always the quick glance back and forth he does to watch what is happening with the children as they run around the products of his artistic nurture .
In the context of the artist’s practice, Frew resides in the intersection between contemporary art and design , his works addressing the “ consumption, sustainability, and materiality […] of waste and found materials ” ; for example, Frew had been developing a series of usable/ functional sculptures by reusing and recycling with a sense of ad-hoc-ism ( which may have developed from work he had developed alongside Oliver Perry for Newbridge’s “For Solidarity” project in 2019 ) , on which people could possibly take a seat and contemplate the exhibition as a whole .
[ For the context of the reader , the writer is far too heavy to even begin to imagine sitting on such works of design , having experienced the dread of sitting upright one moment on a chair and then finding one’s self being on the floor wishing for the very earth beneath them to finish what the now broken chair had started . ]
Whilst one expected the utilitarian colours and surfaces of wood , metal and plastic that one would imagine within the [ writer’s own limited ] osmosis of hard design , one is regaled with bright pastels and striking black-and-whites alongside what I was expecting , my expectations having been proved to have bias .
I look around, I see the children pick up some pieces of cut out wood from a shelf and , after my initial panic , I had started to see that many of the works were at the eye level of these small children ; Indeed, these works were in accordance to Frew’s development of usable / functional sculptures , which became play things to children who did not act entirely to the social contract of how viewers should treat works made by artists
Of course , there were also examples of great care shown by the children towards the works accessible to them, as the artist’s daughter told the other child they should not pull on the rope hung only by a pair of loops on wooden pegs , despite the bright yellow catching the other child’s eye
As I looked up to what was the average eye level of an adult , one could sense a much more conceptual approach made by the artist ; a conversation was happening between pieces of work influenced by the playful exploration between father-and-daughter and the more deft observations made when developing work alone.
Looking at one particular piece , four pieces of cut out wood in abstract shapes affixed to a larger wood panel in a combination of varnished wood , pastel green and pink , one started to think of the brain at first and then starting to think of two minds that were separate yet pulled to each in a state of mutual conversation ; perhaps this piece in particular highlighted the intersections of what it means to be an artist and a parent at the same time.
When thinking of this dynamic of art works made possible by the relationship of artist-parent and their young child , one cannot help but think of Mary Kelly’s seminal work “POST-PARTUM DOCUMENTS 1973-1979” ; However , whilst there is a similarity in the sense of both artist’s being parents and making work with the aid of their respective children , the writer must also take stock of the fact of the binary gender roles and and the circumstances surrounding what it is to be an artist who is a father and an artist who is a mother .
[ Whilst it is possible to write about these similarities and contrasts within a more academic realm of thesis writing , the writer feels wholly unqualified for to remark much more than what had occurred to them as someone who was formally trained in such matters and yet so out of practice for to wade in any deeper on the subject . ]
Talking to the artist as a friend , one could sense an element of ease about as he naturally shifted between our conversation as artists and his role of parental figure having to pretend to be a nice monster playing with the children ; Indeed , it is these fundamental shifts in Frew’s life as artist / researcher / husband / father that have guided Frew’s practice presently and instead of being resistant to the idea of these roles overlapping each other like some notable artist-parents in art history , Frew seemingly synthesises them together with a sense of the ad-hoc-ism that makes up some of his current work.
Links :
- “ Sit & Look | Ross Hamilton Frew “ exhibition details | http://36limestreet.co.uk/exhibition/sit-look-ross-hamilton-frew/
- “ ross h frew “ artist website | https://rhf.cargo.site/Home
- “ Ross H Frew (@ross_h_frew) “ Instagram profile | http://www.instagram.com/ross_h_frew/
- “ 36 Lime Street “ gallery / studio website | http://36limestreet.co.uk
- 36 Lime Street , Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) | July 2022
Entering into the space from the heat and wet of a British summer day , one had begun to hear the approach of tiny shoes on the concrete floor .
Two small children run around the exhibition of Ross H Frew’s “Sit & Look” (2022) ; their exuberant acts of play activate a space that would have normally been kept in a state of stasis , an unspoken state in which the present works were meant to be viewed and considered by various visitors .
Indeed, a number of these exhibited works were developed by Frew alongside his young daughter , who is also notably one of the two children playing at the time of my visit ; whilst the artist may be talking to someone in the gallery , there is always the quick glance back and forth he does to watch what is happening with the children as they run around the products of his artistic nurture .
In the context of the artist’s practice, Frew resides in the intersection between contemporary art and design , his works addressing the “ consumption, sustainability, and materiality […] of waste and found materials ” ; for example, Frew had been developing a series of usable/ functional sculptures by reusing and recycling with a sense of ad-hoc-ism ( which may have developed from work he had developed alongside Oliver Perry for Newbridge’s “For Solidarity” project in 2019 ) , on which people could possibly take a seat and contemplate the exhibition as a whole .
[ For the context of the reader , the writer is far too heavy to even begin to imagine sitting on such works of design , having experienced the dread of sitting upright one moment on a chair and then finding one’s self being on the floor wishing for the very earth beneath them to finish what the now broken chair had started . ]
Whilst one expected the utilitarian colours and surfaces of wood , metal and plastic that one would imagine within the [ writer’s own limited ] osmosis of hard design , one is regaled with bright pastels and striking black-and-whites alongside what I was expecting , my expectations having been proved to have bias .
I look around, I see the children pick up some pieces of cut out wood from a shelf and , after my initial panic , I had started to see that many of the works were at the eye level of these small children ; Indeed, these works were in accordance to Frew’s development of usable / functional sculptures , which became play things to children who did not act entirely to the social contract of how viewers should treat works made by artists
Of course , there were also examples of great care shown by the children towards the works accessible to them, as the artist’s daughter told the other child they should not pull on the rope hung only by a pair of loops on wooden pegs , despite the bright yellow catching the other child’s eye
As I looked up to what was the average eye level of an adult , one could sense a much more conceptual approach made by the artist ; a conversation was happening between pieces of work influenced by the playful exploration between father-and-daughter and the more deft observations made when developing work alone.
Looking at one particular piece , four pieces of cut out wood in abstract shapes affixed to a larger wood panel in a combination of varnished wood , pastel green and pink , one started to think of the brain at first and then starting to think of two minds that were separate yet pulled to each in a state of mutual conversation ; perhaps this piece in particular highlighted the intersections of what it means to be an artist and a parent at the same time.
When thinking of this dynamic of art works made possible by the relationship of artist-parent and their young child , one cannot help but think of Mary Kelly’s seminal work “POST-PARTUM DOCUMENTS 1973-1979” ; However , whilst there is a similarity in the sense of both artist’s being parents and making work with the aid of their respective children , the writer must also take stock of the fact of the binary gender roles and and the circumstances surrounding what it is to be an artist who is a father and an artist who is a mother .
[ Whilst it is possible to write about these similarities and contrasts within a more academic realm of thesis writing , the writer feels wholly unqualified for to remark much more than what had occurred to them as someone who was formally trained in such matters and yet so out of practice for to wade in any deeper on the subject . ]
Talking to the artist as a friend , one could sense an element of ease about as he naturally shifted between our conversation as artists and his role of parental figure having to pretend to be a nice monster playing with the children ; Indeed , it is these fundamental shifts in Frew’s life as artist / researcher / husband / father that have guided Frew’s practice presently and instead of being resistant to the idea of these roles overlapping each other like some notable artist-parents in art history , Frew seemingly synthesises them together with a sense of the ad-hoc-ism that makes up some of his current work.
Links :
- “ Sit & Look | Ross Hamilton Frew “ exhibition details | http://36limestreet.co.uk/exhibition/sit-look-ross-hamilton-frew/
- “ ross h frew “ artist website | https://rhf.cargo.site/Home
- “ Ross H Frew (@ross_h_frew) “ Instagram profile | http://www.instagram.com/ross_h_frew/
- “ 36 Lime Street “ gallery / studio website | http://36limestreet.co.uk