Wednesday 24 August 2011

After party drinks offer at KIND on the 1st September.

So here they are, the wonderful drinks offer that KIND are doing at the after party on Thursday 1st September. 





2-4-1 cocktails


Half price on wine.


Half price bottles of Carlsberg.


Half price spirits Jack Daniel's, vodka, Malibu,

peach schnapps, Bacardi, and gin

Monday 22 August 2011

After Party

As you all no, The Monks Gallery's next exhibition open on the 1st September at 5pm, but this time we are doing it a little differently.

We are shutting the door at 9pm and heading to KIND, a bar in Lincoln town for the

AFTER PARTY

For all you lovely people that come there are going to be drinks offers galore.

Check out the night at:-
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=266897993323512&notif_t=event_invite

Keep your eyes peeled of what they are going to be.................

Tuesday 16 August 2011

A review of the second show by Laura Mahony.

Following the success of the debut opening, The Monks Gallery launched its second exhibition featuring local and international names, presenting work in the house-come-gallery space.

The private view saw two live art performances by Dale Fearnley and Emma Stark, aswell as live music performed by Luke Crosby.

Approaching the door of the gallery was a scattering of sealed envelopes that had already encountered numerous wet footprints. I soon recognised the pile as Rebecca Glover’s ‘With Hope. ’ The envelopes consequential deterioration illuminate the potential of loosing social acknowledgment. Their placement at the foot of the door immediately causes any potential viewer to turn a blind eye to their presence, without having to go as far as looking inside their contents to disregard them once again.

After being greeted by founders of the gallery, Tom Cretney and Nick Simpson, I explored the two- floor house’s subtly curated exhibition.

The sitting area holds one of London based artist Tessa Farmer’s taxidermy sculptures. Tiny, sinister, skeleton like fairies riding wasps and attacking mice were strung in the window overlooking the street, casting a puppet show on the street below. Seeing Farmer’s work in such close proximity was a treat, the macabre nature of the work juxtaposed by the delicate and detailed model fairies. Built from organic materials they emulate an evolving living matter, taking over the world of insects and wild beats. Looking through the glass screen, I felt I was looking at an article at Pitt Rivers, a Victorian naturalists drawing room centrepiece.

Across the hall is Clare Tubby’s ‘Stretched’. The enormous knitted work covers the ceiling of the bathroom of the gallery, casting eerie lighting through its web like composition. James Hopkins ‘Time Difference’ is hung at the top of the stairs. Three clocks pointing out hours, minutes and seconds meet you sternly, ticking rhythmically. Following the placement of work in the gallery is extremely fluid, the art belongs in its space, suggesting a quirky house rather than a sterile contemporary institute.

Mid-way through the show was a performance by Emma Stark. Listening to the warbles of 1950’s hits in the kitchen, Emma began dunking clothes into huge buckets of icing and breezily hanging them on a clothes line. As each previous garment sagged from the line, splattering icing over the lino, Emma continued. Dressed in stereotypical housewife attire, she works the clothes into her recipe, squeezing and pulling at the moisture they begin to hold. After the performance, they are left to hang there, becoming rigid as the icing sets.

After leaving the warmth of the kitchen I made my way out into the garden to observe Dale Fearnley’s durational performance piece. Under the illusion that the word ‘durational’ implied cold, slow and dreary, I decided I wouldn’t stand in the rain too long to watch it. However, walking down the garden path, Fearnley, dressed as a gnome, jumped out from behind the dustbin and ran to the bottom of the garden and began fishing for rubber ducks. Walking up to him I asked how long he’d been there. He replied “ all evening.” I asked him how long he planned to stay there; “all evening,” he said. Next to him were three ceramic gnomes, all with his face, fishing in a separate pool for stickleback fish. As he began throwing stones at the house and talking to the other gnomes, I couldn’t help but laugh. In regards to his work, he explains he searches for the ‘genuine self,’ drawing parallels between societies classification of ‘normal’ juxtaposed with that of the real. The colourful and bright performance was a fantastic display of lively contemporary art.

As the night wore on, live music played and comfortable conversation flowed, promising a third exciting exhibition to follow.



By


 Laura Mahony

Wednesday 10 August 2011

The review of July's exhibition by David Methold


            A new, exciting project opened in Lincoln last night as The Monks Gallery opened its doors for the very first time. The gallery is hosting ‘6Degrees’; 6 shows over 6 months with 6 artists in each. It hosted its first event last night in what proved to be a hugely popular event.

Artists exhibiting their work in the first show were John Plowman, Andrew Bracey, Alan Armstrong, Ian Manicom and co-directors of the gallery, Nick Simpson and Tom Cretney.

About an hour into the exhibition, Tom sounded very upbeat on the progress of 6Degrees. “We’re pretty busy to be honest. We had a good number of people confirmed for the event and it’s proving even more popular than that at the moment.”

As for how they came up with the idea to have the gallery in their house, Tom explains that it was born out of pure frustration at not being able to obtain a studio space of their own.

“Once we couldn’t get our own studio space we thought why not just use the tools that are available to us already. We’ve done a show in the house before so we knew it could be done, it was just a question of putting it into practice.”

Nick explains that other galleries in Lincoln are very reluctant to open their doors to graduates. “There’s a backlog of artists so there’s a feeling amongst the galleries that they don’t want recent graduates. The aim of ‘6Degrees’ at The Monks Gallery is to show contemporary new art when we want and what better place to do that than your own home.”

This is the first gallery of its type in Lincoln and Nick hopes that it could set a trend for other projects of this kind in the future. “We went down to London to speak to James Hopkins, who exhibiting next month, and he has a similar setup in London so we can only hope that The Monks Gallery is the first of many in Lincoln. We’re also working with artists from Manchester, Nottingham, Doncaster and Sheffield so hopefully we’ll be in a situation where we can curate them and they can curate here.”

The gallery itself is set over the 3 floors of the house with artwork exhibited on each level. In each room of the house there was a TV set with different videos of Andrew Bracey’s piece, UnMasterclass. Andrew explains a little about his piece. “My piece is all about unlearning how to paint. This is basically recognition of seeing lots of painters and the way that they generally didn’t learn the way that I learnt which was by looking at other paintings first hand.”

Another artist at the exhibition was Alan Armstrong who had created Western film-like doors as an entry for one of the rooms. Alan explains that it comes from inspiration from the myth of Billy the Kid. “About 99% of what we know about Billy the Kid is fictional, we don’t really know where or when he was born so my piece just draws on that.”

Alan continued to add that he believes the gallery will only continue to grow stronger in the coming months. “Something like this has been waiting to happen in Lincoln for quite a while now with all the art graduates that are here. I think the concept will grow and grow.”

After each private view, the gallery opening times will be published at the website, monksgallery.blogspot.com.
The next 6Degree exhibition will take place on Thursday 4th August and will present more work from another 6 artists, including James Hopkins and Tessa Farmer.

By David Methold
8th July 2011

Saturday 6 August 2011

The blue Lycra man







The Monks go to the wood's and Richard DeDomenici stays at The Monks Gallery.





 Richard DeDomenici turns The Monks Gallery in to his studio in preparation for charter of the forest.




 cheeky Steven Drew the driver tech man best boy 
 charter of the forest





Nicholas Simpson in Lycra nice!!!!!!!!!  

gilly suit Tom 


Alan Armstrong (smiling)