Nottingham Art Extravaganza

An excellent trip to Nottingham (that of Robin Hood fame) by National Express coach was all the more pleasant when the weather on the return journey is taken into account. Rain and high winds. I just sat back and let the driver have all the stress of the M1 ... excellent and all for 4 quid!

The show we went to see was "British Art Show 7". A Hayward touring exhibition which made you think it would be one of the better shows - wrong! Frankly it was one of the poorest I've seen; you would have thought it was an end-of-year graduate show at best.

We off-set our appointment with two interesting shows we came across. "Four Visions" included work by four artists (Julian Woodcock, Sarah Cavani, Bob Sparman and David Mallard) at the Nottingham Society of Artists Gallery. We spent at least a couple of hours talking to three of the artists and solved all the problems of the modern world - an delightful time with non-arty-farty artist (a bit of a contradiction you may think ...)

Visiting The Exchange Building in the centre of the city took us to the second show: "Nottingham Studio Presents". Four artists again and all very different. Michael Forbes (one of the exhibitors) directed us to a quiet veggie cafe where we sheltered from the rain and had a tasty lunch.

We walked down Memory Lane and visited one of my old colleges which is now Trent University. Nostalgic? No. That was over 40 years ago; another life ... The main building looks the same and the modernisation is fantastic.

An excellent day out and food for thought.