John Squire, Apertures Exhibition, Square Gallery 19 May - 11 August 2010 NICK FISK
And so I found myself in Bristol. Bristol, the city where I might have gone to University, had I got better A level grades. Bristol, fair play, an attractive city, with plenty of nice architecture, but also many hills, and difficult to get around by car, with a fairly complicated one way system. Bristol, a town of two football clubs, and a poetry scene which puts Cardiff to shame, frankly, despite all of Cardiff’s more recent efforts.
But I was not in Bristol for any of that. John Squire has once again been busy putting together a whole year’s programme of exhibitions. This one was at a place called the Square gallery, which frankly seemed too appropriate an opportunity to miss. You’d think he was becoming a follower of me so apt was the location. Chances of this are quite remote, I grant you. Instead, I keep up my almost pathetically devotional routine of chasing around these exhibition openings. I never actually get invited. In spite of her sympathetic smile, John’s agent is I think probably sick of the sight of me, and so chooses to ignore my calls and emails, and doesn’t send me invites. So I have to track down the owners of these places and blag my way in. Pathetic, I know. I think I might actually give up attending the openings – if I do make it to the exhibitions, I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to get there for another time during the exhibition’s showing.
One thing I definitely was looking forward to was a free drink. Readers of my review of John’s exhibition in London a while back might recall that here, there was enough free booze to sink a cruise ship on a booze cruise. Sadly, on this occasion, I got there a little late and, to my disbelief, the bubbly by this stage was gone, and I was left to sup on apple juice.
The gallery itself was a snazzy bistro type place, with the paintings serving more as a backdrop to, on the first floor, a restaurant and lounge area, and on the lower floor, a quite posh type of bar. Once again, hats off to the positioning of each painting. Each was well lit, so that you could focus on each should you choose to, but at the same time, they easily blended in to the smart surroundings. It did make me thing that for this reason, potential buyers at this exhibition might well have been fellow trendy bar-owners, because they did seem suited to such an environment, although at the same time, they would look good on many a living room wall.
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