On Friday 15th March artist Tommy Mason attended the opening of Side by Side at the Spirit Level gallery at the Royal Festival Hall, London.
Tommy had two related drawings of men and horses selected for this exhibition which presented work by 150 artists from 30 international arts organisations.
“We travelled by train arriving at Euston Station at 3 o’clock. We took a taxi to our hotel, unpacked, relaxed and then went for tea before going to the exhibition opening.
We didn’t meet any of the other artists but there had been an opening earlier that afternoon which they might have attended. The gallery was long and bright and the work well balanced and attractive. During the opening there was a performance by The Rocket Artists (the exhibition curators) and Corali Dance Company.
At the opening we met up with Beth Forde an artist who worked with Project Ability before moving to London a couple of years ago. Afterwards we went for dinner, then back to the hotel for an early night. We left London the next day."
-Tommy Mason, artist
“The gallery was hung with over 200 artworks including installation work, sculpture, video, drawings, paintings and textiles. We recognised several of the artists, and organisations, as over the years we have worked together and they have contributed to our exhibition and events programme.
There is a long tradition of juried exhibitions presenting work by learning disabled artists and Side by Side is one of the more ambitious and attractive that I have seen. A clean gallery, work well presented, good lighting and the work speaking for itself rather than through the artists’ “story ”. But there are artists whose work, because of its quality, appears again and again in these exhibitions and is now the time to challenge the “salon-type” exhibition and should we be curating the work in a new way?”
-Elisabeth Gibson, Executive Artistic Director
