An upcoming group exhibition in Preston city centre is being designed to make the audience ‘feel something’.
Honor Phillimore-Price is curating Delicate Boned Folk, which will feature illustrations, textiles, florals, and a sound piece.
The exhibition will run at SHOP Preston in Syke Street from Thursday 7 to Saturday 9 August.
Honor, was born and raised in Penwortham, and has lived locally all her life except for three years studying at Saint Martins.
We caught up with Honor to find out more.
Tell me about the exhibition – is there a theme?
There is no real theme, not in the way people often look for one – only a palette, restrained and deliberate, of creams and blacks. A lingering cohesion. What holds it together is not concept but conviction. These are works made by hands that know practice. Artists who stayed with it, who practised without spectacle. There is, refreshingly, no need to explain it further.
What is your goal with the exhibition?
Lately I had been thinking about the way people approach art – why they shrink from it, why they hesitate before the canvas or the sculpture as if it might accuse them of something. Where the encouragement for that approach came from? Insecurity, the performance of certainty? The need to appear sure of what you’re looking at. The fear of being wrong, which is to say, the fear of not knowing.
Art has become a kind of divide. It flatters a particular intelligence, one that speaks in footnotes and manifests as wall text, dense and unwavering. The galleries demand, artists perform. People read the plaque and nod. Or they don’t. Or they scoff. Or they, like I often do, float in a space between comprehension and total detachment, neither inside the piece nor entirely outside of it.
My goal with this show is a small attempt at returning to something like instinct. No posturing, sit down, look, stay awhile. Let the piece tell you something, or don’t. Make up your mind, then change it. Talk to someone. Feel bored, or moved, or irritated. But feel something. That, at least, should still be allowed.
Who inspires you?
My friends, my Grandmothers, my partner. TODAY Gallery is doing some really beautiful stuff; Jess has such a great eye and kind soul.
What are your hopes for the future?
Peace of mind, whatever that means. After that, who can say? To be near the people I love. To make the work and if I’m lucky, to share it. Something true, or close enough.
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