caroline rothwell, peter stichbury, david townsend
The exhibition title, Measure of Strangeness, when considered in the context of its source, 'There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion' (from Francis Bacon's essay 'On Beauty' 1597), is suggestive of beauty's subversion, which in this show was played out as its slip sexuality. Presented as an exhibition of emerging artists, the title took on connotations of pubescence, the coming of age, perhaps, which heightens the provocation of this 'beauty'. Yet, with no binding text the works by the three artists sat as separate acts, and it was only as an after effect that each, in its own different way, seemed to be exploring beauty imbued with the sinister- or rather the perfect finish and its doppelganger, decay. Read in this context the orchid drawings of Caroline Rothwell, which were reproduced on the exhibition flier, seemed representative of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, and the various stages of fertilisation, youthful flourishing, and sexual maturity.
In a spatial sense Rothwell's wall drawings were also the introduction to the exhibition, governing the large entrance space, and triggering the audience's initial response. Formulated as an installation they covered the entire scale of the wall area, and were accompanied by inset boxes containing bone-coloured porcelain casts of organic, testicular, and stamen-like shapes, moulded and melted together. The scale of the flowers permitted a bodily relationship with the viewer, which was accentuated by the veins of the botanical structure, a play on the Greek orkhis meaning testicle. The femininity of the motif was not necessarily undermined by this, but was sexualised through its scale and corporeal association. The drawings were in fact conceived in tape stretched over the shapes