14 December 2021
Venture Arts artist Louise Hewitt is passionate about visiting museums and galleries, gaining inspiration for her own art and poetry.
In her regular blog Louise reviews an exhibition she has attended, sharing her thoughts and ideas and explaining how it influenced her own practise. For this, her fifth blog, Louise visited Venture Arts' own exhibition, 'Completely A Hustling Place', on display currently at Manchester Central Library. Over to Louise… For this blog I visited Venture Arts' own exhibition, 'Completely A Hustling Place', which is on at Manchester Central Library in St Peter’s Square. It is a beautiful and unique building, full of wonderful and amazing architectural feelings. There's plenty of wide open spaces and the disabled access at this building was excellent. 'Completely A Hustling Place' is about showing the creative work of seventy talented artists from Venture Arts, a charity that works with neurodivergent and learning disabled artists in Manchester. Their work is unique, with beautiful creativity from different media such as paint, pencil drawings, ceramics, textiles, photography, video and more.
I was invited to visit the exhibition as a piece of my own artwork, called 'Bananas' is featured (pictured above), which I am really pleased and proud about. I thought the exhibition was rather intriguing. It was wonderful to see the amount of talent that we have around us.
The work that inspired me the most within the exhibition is a piece of artwork that looked like a giant panda (pictured below), amazingly drawn by a talented young gentleman called Andrew Johnstone. The giant panda looked so real, as if it could leap right out of the picture frame and make you jump. The amount of detail is truly remarkable. Of all the great creatures of the wild world, I have two favourites, tigers and giant pandas. Excellent work Andrew, well done you. It made me think about one day bringing my favourite animals to life in my own artwork through clay.
Another piece of artwork that I felt connected to was a ceramic piece called 'Words', by Michael Beard. It was the fact that he used the colours black and white, it reminded me of Andrew Johnstone's work and the giant panda. I have always liked black and white. I like the way the black stands out against the white background. It also looks amazing behind the glass space it was placed in, it really stands out. Excellent work Michael and well done.
I think people should visit this exhibition as it gives you a chance to see and observe the talent that is out there. Manchester Central Library is a unique building and well worth a visit. Should you feel you need a little fresh air there is a lovely seating area in St Peter’s Square, where you can go to sit down and relax.
As a neurodivergent artist, I thought the exhibition looked incredible and was beautifully laid out. One downside is that it could have done with some audio sound for people who are blind and some captions or sign language for people who are deaf. The other downside to this exhibition was that it felt overcrowded in some parts and a little overwhelming. But apart from that it was perfect and I throughly enjoyed it.
Thank you Louise. If you want to visit 'Completely A Hustling Place' for yourself you have until 31st December 2021.
