REVIEW: Stirrings
Rachel Goodyear, solo exhibition "Stirrings" at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery is a vast array of diverse works highlighting the nature within animals and the female sillouhette. However, in its display of perfected pencil sketches and illustrations, the exhibition can become a repetitive black and white tour.
Salford based artist, Rachel Goodyear, 44, is an internationally recognised illustrator and animator, and this recognition is more than deserving. In her 20 years of working in Salford, she has committed to exploring the human and animal anatomy, and while other artists will have their first sketches turned into finalised watercolour canvases, Rachel's work expands how far a pencil stroke can go.
In the first step through the gallery, curiosity and (somehow) fear will guide you into the full exhibition before you even know it. This is thanks to the speakers playing the audio from Rachel's new animation "The Hole", the audio being a mixtape gone rogue. Coughs, animalistic growls, whispers, a woodpeckers' tapping, and other noises will continuously storm their way through the whole white space.
Each noise was new, different, and in its mixture, it creates a confusing yet intriguing experience. In their unexpected composition, one can just expect the next noise to be just as weird and out of place as the previous. In my own watch, I confused a fire alarm as being part of the exhibition - a staff request for evacuation did confirm this was not the case.
This noise may deter some from avoiding the room altogether, but in my walk through the corridors, it made the inspection of certain pieces depicting the gentle composition of wild animals and delicate women the ever more immersive.
The animation "The Hole" which can be accessed through its own secluded room at the end of the exhibition, was the highlight. It depicts an infinite fall down a hole, as the point of view continues to go down, small platforms emerge to become the pedestal to animals and women. These represent the sounds beaming through the exhibition, while being already existing work in Rachel's catalogue.
Its animation is simple, it skips any stretch, squash, or any other techniques, and rather it focuses on making the platformed figures move from side to side, or it sometimes move out of the screen, going both up and down the hole. The entire animation fits Rachel's aesthetic, being very bear with the range of brushes and colours, preferring to highlight black and white, and sometimes using reds or blues for accompanying smaller figures, or some details within the illustrations themselves.
However, just like the canvases sprayed across the exhibition, the animation does great work at highlighting the weirdness and perfect anatomy depicted in these drawings. Women growing like trees from a pot, red demons jumping wolfs, a ballerine spewing faces everytime her leg is stretched by her tutor. Rachel succeeded in making this animation depict its inspiration: a surreal never stopping black and white dream.
However, while the animation might be the highlight, one will probably exit the exhibition after witnessing it. The rest of the gallery offers the same illustrations in white blank canvases, which even if nice to look at, don't offer much thought or diversity. Rachel's work docuses mostly on depicting the female figure, animal nature, or a combination of both. There are many ways to depict this, but through only black and white pencil illustrations, it becomes repetitive after the first five canvases.
Rachel is capable of experimenting with backgrounds and colours, as seen in many of her smaller paper sketches, and in her online portfolio, but the exhibition does not do favours to show this. Its overly use of whites can even hurt the eyes.
This sometimes presented a problem, but it made pieces like "Women with butterflies" and "Magpie tangle" a wonder to look at. These pieces successfully showcased a full use of a canvas, compisioting multiple elements, animals, and colours to take over the blank whiteness behind.
As an exhibition, this one does not the work to showcase the artist's true skill, however, as a free event, it is highly recommended. The animation is a wonderful treat of experimentation and surrealism, and the illustrations are still useful for any inspiring artists, or art enthusiast, who wants to see just how far simple pencil strokes can go.