Killing time in Hanley isn't much fun. Our 'city centre' has slowly been stripped of its charm replaced with every idol to mind-numbing shopping that you can think of. On Friday it was cold, windy, rainy and I had time to kill.
I went to Hanley Museum and Art Gallery.
More regularly patronised galleries are very different from the small town gallery. The museum in Hanley hasn't been refurbished in years, it is still that warm brown reminiscent of the 70s. Cord carpet, rich wood fixtures, the smell instantly took me back to my childhood. The museum was peppered with children with their parents, wiling away the last few days before the new term. Who would've believed that in this push-button, CGI, right here-right now culture, that so many little people would so fascinated by the stuffed animals on display, many that looked flea bitten when I was their age. Still there - the fox still frozen over a dustbin, the vacant stare of a badger, the mad march hares condemned forever to box. Years ago my uncled donated a bee's nest. I hope it never changes.
The art gallery had a Henry Moore sketch and quite a few Lowrys (not a fan), but aside from that painters and sculptors I had never heard of - not that that is saying much. Because of that, it was a nice surprise and impromptu education as well as looking quite fresh to me after my recent immersion in modern and conceptual art.
I was particularly taken with a self portrait by Gilbert Spencer, looking off to the side, he seemed lost and slightly worn. Dod Procter's 'Clara' painted in hard light, depicting a large masculine face, pallid and thoughtful. Many of the paintings seemed to have been chosen because they looked like work by more well known artist - William Boyer's 'Short Back and Sides', beautifully composed with a wonderful use of colour, angled so that we are looking at it as if through a mirror, bore a strong resemblance to an Edward Hopper. A work by Roderic O'Conor called 'Interior - Woman Sleeping' had the heavy brush stroke and palette of Cezanne.
Unlike a better resourced gallery in a more metropolitan city, this gallery was virtually empty (not even a gallery work tastefully dressed in black to watch you), with a table welcoming us with books on art and a very comfy chaise longue. I sat quietly reading and eavesdropping on a teenage girl explaining modern art to her mum and cassually chiding the absent naughty people who had the nerve to touch the paintings. Bliss.
