onionbagblog

To The Minories! …on Saturday morning for the launch of the Pam Dan retrospective. By the time I had been to the Antiques Fair at the Congregational Hall, scrubbed up and bought a pumpkin (blimey) then it was more like mid-afternoon when Sunny Colch came-a-calling.

It seems that @AnnaJCowen and I weren’t the only Wivenhoe refugees that gathered at The Minories gallery to welcome in the opening afternoon of one of the leading and most popular artists from this hyperlocal patch.

From firstsite, along Queen Street and down to the old bus station – everywhere you walked it seemed had been claimed as a little part of Wivenhoe for the afternoon.

In an alternative Universe and I betcha that Wivenhoe is currently being overrun with Colchester locals flocking to the estuary wilds to witness the opening of a pack of Pringles, the traditional culinary dish for all things Camulodunum.

Walking into the Minories through the secret backdoor was like walking into a Suffolk reed bed transported to the edge of the town. Which is probably the effect that Pam was seeking to achieve, with the exhibition celebrating five decades of her capturing the wildlife centred on Snape Maltings.

A graduate of the Colchester School of Art, Pam’s interest and inspiration comes from the very same patch where she first learned her trade. This is often a forgotten landscape within the food chain of English elitist art.

If it was good enough for Constable back in the day then it’s good enough for me to sit down with my sketchbook on a lost summer’s afternoon out along Ferry Marsh. I still always end up playing noughts and crosses against myself, mind; I still manage to lose.

But anyway – what of The Minories?

As a contemporary of Wirth-Miller and Bacon, Pam’s passion is for adding light to landscape scenes, and then presenting them as almost mythical magical gardens. That was my interpretation, anyway.

Exhibiting at The Minories is a collection of Pam’s work covering the period from 1969 onwards. Many of these pieces of work are very kindly on loan from private collections. This is the first time that Pam has seen some of the work for herself for a couple of decades.

And then just as I turned another corner in the art space and walked into seemingly another layer of the transported reed beds, it all got a little delayed; it also all got a little wonky.

The opening afternoon parlour game of Who’s Who in Wivenhoe continued, and then with a squinted gaze across the room, and soon conversation and white wine was being shared with the good Scoop Scarpenter, publisher of the organ of esteemed truth and justice.

What followed was a half hour of constructive dialogue all about the merits of hyperlocal blogging pitched against the lofty heights of proper printed journalism.

Cripes.

Advice was passed down from the proper print to the hyperlocal upstart, but as I argued at the time, a hit and miss blog is a hit and miss blog, and *not* hard news.

Who? What? Where? Why? When?

Bugger that. Just tell us another silly joke, Jase.

The friendly fire dialogue somehow managed to meet in the middle. Hands were shaken (tightly..) numbers were exchanged, pints were promised. All facilitated by the mighty fine Pam Dan exhibition at The Minories.

Phew – rock ‘n roll.

And so with guarded apologies (sort of) to Scoop, the Pam Dan exhibition is rather ace. It’s not the most objective analysis that you will receive but then I’ve never been a blogger that lets his prejudices get lost in the way of the words.

I’ve got a cracking lead all about my Wivenhoe pumpkin to write up later.

Art or arse?

Just ACE.

The Pam Dan exhibition continues until 6 December and the Gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 10.00am to 4.00pm.