With seven artists to showcase in what is a relatively limited space, one might initially be forgiven for wondering why the new Jerwood Space exhibition, The Miniature Worlds Show, doesn't look rather more cluttered. I was certainly expecting a cabinet of curiosities in gallery proportions. What Jerwood have delivered is something far more carefully coordinated than a box of curios - rather, this is an engagingly realised consideration of the work of seven notably detail-heavy artists.
The show stars Andrea Gregson, Liz Dawson, Paul Collinson, Adam Humphries, Tessa Farmer, Michael Whittle and Laura Youngson Coll, and runs the gamut of media, from otherworldly polystyrene installations of warped proportions (Humphries) to film animation (Farmer and Youngson Coll).
Amongst the key works of the show are Collinson's painting Get Orrf My Land (a sinister rendering of toy models posed to depict a shadowy figure standing by a car amidst a wasteland), Gregson's Wonderland (a purposefully shoddy oblong wooden box containing layer upon layer of exquisitely crafted, silhouette-generating figures and shapes), and Farmer's utterly amazing Parade of the Captive Hedgehog (a bizarre, hugely detailed work encompassing taxidermy, real hair, eggshells and fairies).
This is a show that at the most peripheral level enchants, charms and crosses pupils, but concurrently toys with one's sense of proportion and twangs that taught thread of the human psyche which both reveres and seeks to protect the delicate and vulnerable of this world.
Tom Phongsathorn
Jerwood Space
171 Union Street, London, SE1 0LN
11 August - 9 September 2006
Open: 10.00 - 17.00, Mon - Sat
Admission: Free
Artist talks: Mon 21 August 18.30 - 20.00, Mon 04 September 18.30 - 20.00
Work by Adam Humphries.
Work by Tessa Farmer.
Work by Paul Collinson.
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