Ship to Shore.

Ship to Shore: Art and the Lure of the Sea. 

John Hansard Gallery/Sea City Museum, Southampton.

08/02/14 – 04/05/14 

Catherine Yass, Lighthouse (North), 2011.

Perhaps the most underrated show of the year, contemporary gallery John Hansard and the Sea City Museum present Ship to Shore an exhibition across two venues exploring the lure of the endless sea via various mediums of art. Expect to be astonished by artists who have vividly expressed their engagement with the sea and ocean within the most extraordinary and breath taking way possible using film, photography, sculpture, and more. Ship to Shore allows the contemporary artists such as Isaac Julien, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Tracey Emin and Catherine Yass to blow the classical preconceptions of art out of your mind. The work shown is to the most stunning quality and presented to such high standard every fine detail is to be appreciated within the exhibition. The thoughts provoked regards to the show are a valuable and thrilling experience. Your senses will be stimulated and enhanced as there is no room for disappointment, a show which reaches its maximum potential and finest quality.

Thomas Joshua Cooper

Moonrise Over the End of the World, Furthest West, The Mid North Atlantic Ocean, 2002. 

What sparked most interest for me within the exhibition were the seascape photographs by Thomas Joshua Cooper. Cooper travelled as far north, south, east and west as he could to photograph the furthest points on the globe, these images took an incredible amount of time and effort to produce. However standing in a room viewing all four images on four different walls has an enclosed affect and as each image is aesthetically different due to the immense distance between where they were taken provokes a variety of feelings certain individuals relate to in various ways. During my second visit to the gallery with young people studying for their arts award  we spoke together about how the images made each of us feel. The variety of responses was not what I expected but it made me realise how aspects of these images have powerful emotional effects on an individual wether it be positive or negative is irrelevant as we still all appreciated how stunning the monochrome, philosophical images are. Personally I have a fear of open water out at sea, a fear of being abandoned and left in the open space terrifies me so a few of the images were quite comforting as I could see the edge of the land on them. Although the sea seemed rough it was reassuring that they were in fact taken on land. However one of the images does show open space so there is no comparable emotions about these images being shown together, the narrative is left wide open.

More information about the exhibition at: http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/