Thursday 8 May 2014

Dandifest reviewed by Marcus Dickey Horley from the Tate `modern

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Marcus Dickey Horley, Tate Modern, has reviewed Dandifest!
Norwich is a city of art and art festivals, a place where there is always something good happening.
This month though saw one of the City's best festivals - Dandy Fest.
This collective of artists are on a mission to make Norwich a better place with their fantastic art. With St Margaret's Art Church as their focal point, their influence seeps out across the city: into Pottergate's The Birdcage and over at St Augustine Street's Yallops Gallery where Karl Somers' vaguely threatening shop window ads unsettle passers-by.
St Margaret's is though the home of the Dandy and our artists have created a sprawling organic and vaguely untidy Art Monster. On passing through the gothic arch of the door you encounter Art Everywhere: all over every single wall, on lines stretching between the walls, up and down the columns and even dangling from the ceiling.
Paintings, sculptures, poems, pansy plants, knitting, ceramics - it's all there and in such enormous quantities. At the centre of the hall stands a Still Life mountain-fountain of lovely objects arranged by Eloise O'Hare, which formed the background for painting activities provided by Vince Laws, Dugald Ferguson and Gena Ivanov, whose own work hangs all around the walls as well.
Surrounding this volcano of tumbling Stuff is work by photographer Ann Nicholls and Dandy Chrissy Sabberton. Wooly art by Kally Davidson and earthy performance by Kayla St Claire. Live art by Hayley Hare - there is almost too much to see in this event-packed-out thirteen day run.
Independent art by people who have the cultural enrichment of society as one of their evident aims is something everyone can get involved in, for their subject matter is us and everyone and their art is about our lives, our dreams and our dressing-up boxes.

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