Curated by Lydia Catterall

Introduction by Lydia Catterall

I'd caught a train to my nearest city, which in itself felt like some kind of cultural baptism. Flooded with 'how do you do this?' feelings, I dutifully followed the arrows on the gallery floor and found myself alone with twenty portraits. The walls were the darkest possible shade of blue, each image framed in heavy, ornate gold. The edges of the room felt sharp, while the cheeks of the subjects felt pillowy soft. My belly dropped. Before I took a single step closer, I tingled. Fizzed. Hummed. What was going on?

This wasn't my first time in an art gallery, but it's my earliest memory of visiting one alone. The recollection has become somewhat mythic, no doubt shifted like sand under waves, but nevertheless it's an origin story. A place I can point to when I talk about my love for art.

There are many aspects of an artwork, the processes that make it and the history that contextualises it, that one can, and should, roll around and delight in. There are specificities that it's delicious to get nerdy about, perhaps even enjoy the thrill of critiquing: form, colour, materiality. The art world will have us believe that we should know these things intimately, if we're to exist here. We should have the skills to tame them; opinions on them too. I could say more about why this is only somewhat true. There are endless reasons to be glad that humans have always made things - God, I am glad that humans make things. The specificities of an object, the unreality of a scene, and what that offers a viewer, the gathering of a sum more than its parts. Don't get me wrong, I could lyricise on that very particular shade of blue all day long and have the loveliest time, but it's not the root of why I'm here.

I want to return to our bodies; specifically our guts. Our wise, sensitive and cantankerous bellies. I want to sidestep reason and rationality. To notice the part that leaps, soars or plummets when encountering an artwork. The resonance that skips merrily by all cognition and sends a thronging note around the cavern of your ribcage. The part that says 'I know you'.

It may be a flicker that grows. Perhaps it's an immediate punch. Whatever it's made of, words don't work as a way of sharing it and all that escapes is 'Ooph.'

I am here for the Ooph.

Yes, there is context. There is story and process and choice after choice that  as created this thing that didn't exist before, exactly the way it is. What a joy to engage with the specificities of all that, if you choose. But sometimes we know, before we know, that something affects us. It doesn't have to be love at first sight. not all things that are good for us feel like kittens and glitter. Perhaps a question is wordlessly answered, a need unknowingly met, and you just know you're glad this thing exists and that you get to exist in the same space and time.

The artworks I've gathered here sit in this magical and mundane space, for me. I am altered by them, in ways you can't see. I encountered them and something leapt. Perhaps they don't do it for you, and that's alright. Go find a handful that do. My ask is that we don't lose sight of what we love in art. For me, it's a capacity to surprise, delight, arrest, thicken and challenge the things we think we know, and the ways we know them. A string added to your bow. A 'just yeah'. I'm glad these artists made these things.

Read more about each of these artists in the Artist Gallery and connect with your fellow Axis Members in the Community