So far 2022 has been a bumper year for art & culture in Aberdeen with the return of many large scale events including Spectra, Nuart Aberdeen & the Grays School of Art Degree show and there's still more to come with Citymoves building up to Dance Live in October and the addition of Rise Up a new initiative from We Are Here Scotland which recently took place across APA venues. Of course a highlight for many has been the return of the annual Aberdeen Artists Society Exhibition hosted at Aberdeen Art Gallery.
The show is curated by Aberdeen Artists Society who seek submissions from their members and artists which are then put before a judging panel. The show is always hugely popular and provides a great platform for local artists to get their work shown in the Gallery. Of course the judging process does lead to many artists being left out, so much so that I had planned to do a rejects show in 2016 for all the friends and artists who weren't successful. With the 2022 exhibition coming to a close maybe now is the time for the rejects to rise up! But I know first hand how difficult it can be to curate large scale shows, its no mean feat and I do take my hat off to the AAS team. It's also important to focus on the art and to not get too caught up in the local art politics as I find myself increasingly doing.
I'm glad though to see a return to in person events after the last 2 years of digital woes. It's been inspiring to see organisations rally around the digital medium but for me it doesn't beat the in person experience of viewing art in a space. And this years exhibition proved to be a feast for the eyes, almost overwhelmingly so! A large landscape by Shelagh Swanson lead you into wonderful abstracts before being confronted by the dreaded Corona thanks to work by Fife based artist Reinhard Behrens and large digital works by the illusive John Paul Baptiste. As the gallery opens out it becomes clear just how much work is on show with every surface filled with paintings, assemblage pieces, collages and more. Familiar faces begin to appear like the unmistakeable work of Mark McCracken, who's piece 'Annie' took first prize, well deserved too.
Across the room I found new work from Ade Adesina housed in a custom circular frame. There's such a jump from seeing such pieces in production with Ade being a great sharer of his process on instagram but the scale and magnitude of the iPhone screen doesn't do him justice. Indeed the proliferation of the insta artist who's work carries little weight but looks great on a screen has I think added to the devaluation of culture where original, challenging, well executed work is superseded by lowest common denominator aesthetics and marketing guru trends. That's not to say the digital tools at our disposal are bad but sometimes it's good to see things in the real world and to experience them in a room with other people.
And Aberdeen Artists Society certainly provided a lot to experience. I was delighted to see work by Tracey Johnston, V2k and Olivia Turner while the show threw up a host of new names and artists to admire. Jonathan Sainsburys work depicting small native birds with the tag line 'We Are All Individuals' made me chuckle along with work by David Mach of child infront of a burning building rendered like an Enid Blyton cover. I was drawn into a piece by Peter Moller titled 'Incident' with its flourish of red and pink and giant play button for good measure. This made me think about the digital landscape that's emerged over my lifetime and the idea of kids trying to swipe across book pages, unaware of anything other than iPads and phone screens. I feel lucky to have been alive long enough to appreciate the analogue world as it was.
Of course its always a pleasure to see the work of this years prize judge Joe Fan, who did a good job along with Ade, Rachel Maclean and Martin Stevenson picking out this years prize winners. Another notable prize winner is Neal MacDonald, an artist I haven't seen for a long time but had the pleasure of photographing at the Peacock print studio way back when I first started the blog in 2008. Being very much trapped in an analogue prison of his own making, the only way to see what Neal is up to is when he puts work into shows. Thankfully our paths crossed in 2021 while he worked on a community piece for CLANs Light The North project and he forced me to check out 'Toxic Eye' by Choir Boy which has been on repeat ever since. His work has changed a lot since my last encounter, gone are the ambient bird album covers and in their place I found colourful psychedelic visions of pipe smoking guru's and fascinating miniature portraits which jump between the sublime and the disturbed. I liked them a lot!
Whatever kind of art you're into I'm sure there will be something for you to enjoy. As with instagram you might want to quickly file through the upper gallery, flicking past those images that don't hold your attention but I'd advise giving yourself some time to relax and take it all in, grab a seat for a minute and loop back round again for another look. The digital world doesn't often invite us back for a second look but that's what makes this exhibition and Aberdeen Art Gallery special, it always welcomes you back and some things get better on the 2nd or 3rd viewing. There's only a few more days so be quick!
