It’s not remotely easy to judge what you’re going to see at an open. By nature, it is a mixed bag, of mixed quality, but you’re always bound to find a few outstanding works by outstanding artists who threw something at the gallery hoping it would stick.
This year, the 21st Knowsley Open is exactly that, a mixed bag of work by artists of all ages, at all career stages, and from every corner of the borough.
There are though, a few really outstanding works. Some by artists who have held their own exhibitions in this very gallery in the past, others by artists we’ve not come across, and some by artists we’re very familiar with.
Perhaps most interestingly though is the work by artists quite obviously trying something new.
Thomas Judge, whose work I’m familiar with from previous exhibitions, presented two wildly different works; ‘Chastity’, a renaissance style painting of what feels like a film set; and ‘And The Night Shall Fall’, a multimedia relief work with next to no visual relationship to the other in style, form, function or theme.
Opens are useful in this way. They allow artists to take risks, see how new works land with audiences, and understand them in the context of exhibitions.
But there are also works that feel like they’re missing the rest of their series, shown in isolation as a tease for a wider body of work.
Joanne Sykes’ ‘What’s Left of The Medicine’ definitely felt like one of those. It’s an accomplished and intriguing painting, sitting in a sea of unrelated work, offering what I assume is a first sight of something much more comprehensive. It triggers a desire to see the rest of the work, and get to know the artist.
And then, in a similar vein, you’ve got Harry Garner, whose oil painting workshops are a regular feature at the gallery, presenting his own work here in pride of place – part advert for the course, part glimpse of what a full exhibition of his work would look like on these walls. For what it’s worth, it’d be good… emotive human reference and character-capturing portraiture, looking beyond plain representation.
And other accomplished local artists like Gordon Lavender and Natalie Gilmore, whose illustrative work stands out from the figurative and landscape painting in ways that will tempt new artists from other artforms into engaging more directly with Kirkby Gallery in the future.
So yeah, like every open, this is mixed – possibly more so than usual – but its also clear to see the relationship between this and the gallery it’s sat in. If you’re in the mood for an exploration and you’re willing to browse the exhibition as though it’s a magazine, there really is a lot to discover.
The 21st Knowsley Open Art Exhibition is open at Kirkby Gallery until 12th April 2025
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith