Drawing the Unspeakable: art exhibition

Not what I associate with L S Lowry

This exhibition was curated by David Dimbleby, broadcaster and outgoing Chair of the Towner board, and his daughter, professional artist Liza Dimbleby. Banners throughout the exhibition contain transcripts of a dialogue between them regarding the images shown. The artists ranged from Gillray (1811) to very atypical drawings by L.S. Lowry and Tracey Emin. The exhibition includes pictures of nudity and violence. 

I visited on Sunday 1st December 2024. The entrance fee is £9 (reduced for concessions) and if you book online you receive a free leaflet about the exhibition (which otherwise costs £1). 

To an ill-educated and rather traditional viewer like myself, many of the drawings appeared to be crudely executed. There was very little that stood out as ‘wow!’. Some of the work was puzzling. I believe that a sine qua non of all art is that it must communicate something to its viewer/ reader/ hearer and that if a painting requires explanatory text to tell you what it means then it has, to some extent, failed. There was a lot I failed to understand (but it was suggested that the need to understand art is something we develop as an adult and that, I inferred, was a bad thing). 

The shadow hanging over the entire exhibition was the Black paintings of Francesco Goya, an explicit influence for some of the work exhibited. 

A challenging experience in every sense of the word.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God