Meet Rebecca Snotflower…

Cathy Simpson reviews the current exhibition at One Café and Gallery – a collection of paintings, found objects and sketches by Rebecca Snotflower.

I don’t think it would be fair to discuss the work of this lovely lady without giving some thought as to her totally unforgettable name.  Some interesting background can be discovered here, and both the moniker and the exhibition play with familiar themes, tie them together and unknot them again to create something totally unique.

Rebecca characterises her work as ‘lowbrow’ and ‘pop surrealism’, but this is a very modest way of describing a collection which is funny, disturbing, raw – and very, very honest.  She has a gift for creating pieces which appear to be thinking about something familiar at first glance – and then you realise that they are anything but…  a highly decorative gilded swept frame will contain fragments of skull and turn it into a modern memento mori, for example, and there is an entirely new twist to the traditional piety of expression of the Virgin Mary in Holy Snot.

The hilarious Unheimlich Manoeuvre already has connotations of abdominal thrusting before you’ve actually seen it… and then look what you get!

She manages to combine a pop art style, diagrams from first aid manuals and a cartoon-like quality in a statement about possession and engulfment in traditional male/female relationships. Humorous, thought-provoking and challenging.

A particularly lovely aspect of this exhibition is the display of sketchbook pages which extends to two walls of the café.  Sketchbooks, in their own way, are as intimate as diary pages – and these do not disappoint. They range from the frankly beautiful, to the witty and the raw.  And always engaging.

I strongly recommend you take yourself along to the café/gallery, equip yourself with at least one of Deb’s fantastic coffees, and relax in what must be the friendliest, most comfortable spaces in the area!

One Café and Gallery
1 London Road
St Leonards-on-Sea
TN37 6AE

Tel:  01424 443801

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