Caves

Though minute in size, city gallery Caves is punching well above its weight. In yet another fantastic group show, directors Storm Gold and Kez Hughes have pulled together a clutch of unlikely pairings, resonances and counterpoints here. Most of these works feel their way around each other, hinting at and echoing qualities, connections and inflections. Sean Bailey and Anna White’s works deal in the currency of abstract gesture, texture and formalism, with Bailey’s bright colour flashes of colour and geometry amid wonderfully sludgy acrylics and White’s fluid, stuttered smears of blue, grey and white proving unconventional yet highly rewarding expansions on the act and outcomes of painting. A gorgeous 2004 owl painting by David Noonan is both an accumulation of detail and tone, and a carrier of great beauty and sorrow, while a nearby sculpture by Naomi Eller assumes the form of a kind of prehistoric coral cave echoing the hue of Noonan’s owl. Heather B. Swann’s works take things in a typically ghoulish, absurdist direction, with a large ink drawing and a peculiar sculpture of a small male head, a large finger protruding upward from his mouth. Like so many of Caves’ shows thus far, this collection of works points to art’s more mysterious and lateral continuities rather than some kind of quasi-academic justification. Sometimes, art is just for looking, feeling and letting the mind wander.

Dan Rule