This afternoon I took the boys to Nottingham Contemporary to see their new exhibition ‘The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things’. This is a curated collection of art and objects by artist Mark Leckey. Its a bright and generally playful place with a diverse range of museum objects and historic and contemporary art works. The scene stealer is a colossal inflatable Felix the Cat, its head in the rafters. One of the last rooms is mainly dark but populated by illuminated sculptures, creepy audio and light projections. I was very taken by the combination of a Nicola Hicks bull/Minotaur head, the Cern Abbas giant and Blake’s ‘Ghost of a Flea‘.
I definitely recommend a visit and look forward to going again without my little friends to herd around. But, saying that they are mainly tolerable and the Contemporary does provide interaction for children in their family space. For this show they give the children the opportunity to draw pictures based on the things they have seen in the gallery space and then chose objects to place with their drawings to create their own curated display. Whilst BabyJ seemed happy to put his head in net bags, both DBoy & GBoy did some drawings and we made our own display. Below are some pictures of our endeavours which illustrate the the Story of the Sun Cat & the Minotaur.
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