About Here

Susan Meyerhoff Sharples, Jane Hughes, Wendy Williams and Christine O'Reilly Wilson
The Gallery, 41 Stanhope Street, L8 5RE
Mon 20th Sept to Sat 17th Oct 2010

Reviewed by Tom Bottle

I see the white blank board of ‘What is a Name?’ then the U.V. torch when passed close over reveal the names and places of people reluctant to give their names. They are refugees interviewed by artist Sue Meyerhoff Sharples, their names handwritten and disappearing as the next one catches the light. God knows their fear and lonliness and here is me reliving the terrible hesitation of someone on the end of a phone asking MY name. Who am I to get so worried?

A space, small and attractive, a kind of ‘This seems nice’ look and if that‘s all it was I’d be in and out in five minutes. Four women artists saying where they are NOW and how they got there through the environment. A long painting, overlaid colours, red veils with the light behind coming through, a good place, a scarlet river too. It won’t last, the darkening red purples hint at that, but the memory has and the hope it will come again. And I told the fella keeping an eye on the bike I couldn’t get up the stairs I wouldn’t be long.

They draw you in these artists. They leave the space for you to work out what it is on that horizon of mechanical straight line landscapes that is your confused past. This, coming off the silver casts of pavements and floors where people stood and met and talked. You see what you like in these figures of course, isn’t it funny though, that it’s all the people who ever stood there?

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