The Natural World at First Sight

The First Sight Gallery is up the High Street, on and on again, beyond the Electric Palace.  It shows local artists, the display is always changing with different styles and new artists discovered. For Christmas, new work is being shown, and HOT reporter, Lauris Morgan-Griffiths, went to do a bit of early Christmas shopping.

It’s a small but approachable gallery. The exhibition at first sight has an eclectic mix of ceramics, painting, photography, found objects, bird sculptures – even furniture.  So what appealed? Art being so subjective, my meat might be another man’s poison.

I’ve always liked bird sculptures from first seeing the elegance of Guy Taplin’s swans, curlews, ducks.  And here are different birds, a very different artist. Using recycled wood, Robert White carves the essence of a bird, it looks like a cormorant, a curlew but maybe not quite. Something slightly other. It leaves that for him to know and you to interpret – part artist, part bird, part you.

Hung on the wall are Helen Hunt’s beautifully painted moths trying to hide and merge in with the gold embossed and marbled Victorian book covers. But they are too beautiful to disappear. As are their names, romantic and evocative – Jersey Tips, Red Underwing. Grey Dagger, Peppered Moth. And even the Spurge Bug ‘walking up’ a book cover has a certain charm.

Helen assures me that no books were damaged in the name of art.  ‘I trawl the Secondhand Bookshops to find books. None of them are in pristine condition – and I would not use them if they were. They often have broken spines, pages falling out or have only one cover left. I like the fact that they show signs of decay and  that they have a history. I feel that their age gives them a ‘moth-eaten’ quality which I feel suits my moths.’

And then there are Alvaro Petritoli intriguing paintings.  He also evokes the natural world.  He has a second row beach hut down in Bulverhythe, where he can catch glimpses of the sea between the huts. whether that is the reason for  his grid style paintings, small pieces of paper make up a seascape of creatures –jelly fish, seahorses, the branches of a magnificent tree, a spiky plant surrounded by migrating birds. Petritoli uses paper laminating, film developing techniques, wax treatment, acrylics, oils and watercolours.

The effects are mesmerising. Colours are odd, sun burned or watery,  some image bleached out to a negative.

Atmospheric and symbolic, images emerge from his subconscious. “In spite of the reoccurring references to nature, all my pictures are a representation of an inner landscape rather than a description of a place or a natural event.” Viewers are invited to find their paths through their own experiences and interpretations.

Ambiguity is an important quality in Alvaro’s visual language. So, flocks of birds in the winter light with thorns on the foreground might represent, freedom, sadness, bleakness and beauty; lighthouses can be a warning of danger, a safe place against the elements as well as mysterious and amphibious buildings at the edge between land, sea and sky.

The juxtaposition of the series of miniatures urge the viewer to look in to find their own meanings.

I have to confess an interest in Denise Franklin’s work since I own a few of her paintngs. Her new paintings are of Rock a Nore, a place she hasn’t really looked at for years, since she first arrived in Hastings. She works first outside, quickly drawing out the essence of a place and then works on it later in her studio. She captures the Rock a Nore gaggle of sea gulls, the line of the shore wandering off towards the cliffs, the groins and the muddly atmosphere of the place.

Sarah Palmer’s landscapes are the object with features drawn on the clay with found and ceramic objects on top – a lamb; a boat, flotsam; a gull standing defiant, beak open the cackle lost and silenced in the clay. William Waldie, the gallery owner, enhances his  landscape, seascape photographs  to amplify nature’s moods, colours  and his reactions to the landscape.  And Gary Redmond with his found objects put together as boats, lighthouses, marine paraphernalia.

An exhibition of life around the coast, all interpreted differently, all intriguing.

Of course, none of things might be there by the time some people visit.  The display will be changing – as the paintings and objects sell they will be taken off the wall and something new found in its place. Not all the art is expensive. There are some little gems by Alvaro Petritoli, the unframed natural world waiting to be snapped up.

First Sight Gallery, 34 High Street, Hastings.
Open Wed–Sunday 10am–5pm. Exhibition runs until 31 January.

You can see more of Alvaro Petritoli’s work on his website.

Also in: Visual Arts

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