A solo exhibition “Stirrings” at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery features a vast array of works highlighting the nature within animals and the female silhouette.
Salford-based artist, Rachel Goodyear, 44, an internationally recognised illustrator and animator, has committed herself to exploring human and animal anatomy. While other artists turn sketches into watercolours, Goodyear’s work explores how far a pencil stroke can go.
The exhibition provides a soundscape too with the speakers playing the audio from her new animation “The Hole”. Coughs, animal growls, whispers, a woodpecker’s tapping, and other noises storm their way through the space: a mix-tape gone rogue.
Each noise was new, different, and in its mixture, it creates a confusing yet intriguing experience.
This noise may deter some but in my walk through the corridors, it made the inspection of certain pieces depicting the gentle composition of wild animals and delicate women more immersive.
The animation “The Hole” which can be accessed through its own secluded room at the end of the exhibition, was the highlight. It depicts an infinite fall down a hole, as the point of view continues to go down, small platforms emerge to become the pedestal to animals and women. These figures are the source of the sounds beaming through the exhibition, and they consist of already existing work in the artist’s catalogue.
The Hole’s animation is simple. The platformed figures move from side to side, or in and out of the screen, going both up and down the hole. The entire animation fits Goodyear’s aesthetic, being very bare with the range of brushes and colours, preferring to highlight black and whites with occasional flashes of reds or blues.
Just like the canvases spread across the exhibition, the animation does great work at highlighting the weirdness in the anatomy depicted. Women growing like trees from a pot, red demons jumping wolves, a ballerina spewing faces from her mouth every time her leg is stretched. Goodyear succeeds in making this animation depict its inspiration: a surreal and unceasing monochrome dream.
After the highlight of the animation, the multitude of work depicting the female figure, animal nature, or a combination of both can become repetitive.
Pieces like “Women with butterflies” and “Magpie tangle” stand out with their multiple elements, animals, and colour.
Overall the animation is a wonderful treat of experimentation and surrealism, and the illustrations’ realism and style are admirable.
- The exhibition is on show until next February 26.
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