Outside In: National
27 October 2012 - 3 February 2013
Pallant House Gallery
The Outside In: National exhibition is currently taking pride of place at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester; South East England's home of Modern British art. The exhibition is made up of eighty works by artists fitting the Outside In criteria; those who find it difficult to access the art world due to mental health reasons, disability, social circumstance, or perhaps because their work does not conform to what is generally thought of as 'art'. There were more then 2300 submissions from artists throughout the UK, which were then narrowed down to the final 80.
The resulting display is ground-breaking; it is one of the rare occasions that work created by artists mainly without formal art training has been given centre-stage at an institution as nationally prominent as Pallant House Gallery. The first room is home to Michelle Robert's Musicians and Manuel Lanca Bonifaco's Mermaid; two of the six award winners selected from the final eighty by Roger Cardinal, Bobby Baker and Pallant House Gallery Director, Stefan van Raay. The broody, moody central room showcases works including Terence Wilde's The Bandit; a piece which Wilde describes as a 'finger up to the past', and award winner Nigel Kingsbury's Woman, emerging ethereally from individual pencil strokes. Art Historian Roger Cardinal states that the works within this exhibition are 'expressions of individuality, pledges of intent, claims upon our time'; these they are indeed, but also, they show that creativity is everywhere. Art is not, and should not, solely be the domain of the tutored; creativity is essentially within us all. Outside In: National is not just an exhibition of art of an exemplary standard, it is an exhibition of the innately human, and for that reason, it is impossible for it not to resonate with every one of us.
The resulting display is ground-breaking; it is one of the rare occasions that work created by artists mainly without formal art training has been given centre-stage at an institution as nationally prominent as Pallant House Gallery. The first room is home to Michelle Robert's Musicians and Manuel Lanca Bonifaco's Mermaid; two of the six award winners selected from the final eighty by Roger Cardinal, Bobby Baker and Pallant House Gallery Director, Stefan van Raay. The broody, moody central room showcases works including Terence Wilde's The Bandit; a piece which Wilde describes as a 'finger up to the past', and award winner Nigel Kingsbury's Woman, emerging ethereally from individual pencil strokes. Art Historian Roger Cardinal states that the works within this exhibition are 'expressions of individuality, pledges of intent, claims upon our time'; these they are indeed, but also, they show that creativity is everywhere. Art is not, and should not, solely be the domain of the tutored; creativity is essentially within us all. Outside In: National is not just an exhibition of art of an exemplary standard, it is an exhibition of the innately human, and for that reason, it is impossible for it not to resonate with every one of us.