CUBEopen Exhibition Nov 2010-Jan 2011

Elizabeth West: 'Red trolley,yellow trolley,blue trolley.'(2009)

Shan Hur : 'Forgotten No 2,'2010.

Lee cambell: ' Red alert.'2010

Julia Munz and Annika Unterburg: 'Mobile architecture Model.'2008.

On entering the exhibition,i wasn't sure what to expect,it had been a fair few months (a year) since i had even ventured into the 'Cube' gallery,yet i was pleasantly surprised.It seems to me that people misunderstand the gallery as architecture obsessed when it is less concerned by this really and many of my best ideas have been conjured through seeing their exhibitions. The photographs above are a collection of installation based works that caught my attention. In particular the HARD HATS. The hard hat work by Munz and Annika used audience participation,humour but also a clear message of taking an architectural models and bringing in the 'conventions of the public realm' to convey the idea of 'possible and impossible future developments.' I also enjoyed the Shan Hur piece, i'm not sure on the artists' gender so please pardon the 'she/he' use.The work consisted of a vase encapsulated in the gallery wall. At first I wanted to know was how the artists had got away with smashing a massive hole in the wall, then i read the artists' statement. She/he explains how since being a child,'through my right eye i have been experiencing a very strange phenomenon,there have always been spots in my visual field.' I love anything like this, odd little individualities that make us all unique. She/He continues to say that the spots always seemed like some kind of map to hidden treasure,hence the vase in the wall. I just think that this work is so random yet completely rational and simple. It has forced me to think about how we all view life differently and colours,textures may look and feel different to a section of society.

Lee cambell and Liz West explored commercialism and used collection of similar objects to convey their point. Cambell uses a mass of 'buy one get one free' stickers. When my eyes fell upon these,i felt a sense of elation and excitement,this is what i feel when i see these stickers. My reaction made me realise the power that commercial industries have over the public. The work seems to grow like a poison out of the wall,whilst Liz Wests' work simply sits in the supermarket, a collection of items of the same colour. Her statement reads,' the work objects are often densely arranged in orders in compact spaces to form intensely coloured installations,video and photographic works displayed in architectural spaces,shops,markets and museums.' In the work displayed in the exhibition, West used the inetense collections of colour to highlight our how colour may look in mass in such a colourful environment as the supermarket were we seem to be attacked by colour and were colour is so highly constructed to affect what we buy.