artweeks 2010 at artspool.net 8-16 May

A very impressive first exhibition of the first art competition organised by artspool.net who used last year's participants as the selecting panel. The winning artists, chosen from online documentation only, were then invited to do the 2010 artweeks

My favourite of them all was probably Jemma Watts, I absolutely loved the many different facets of her techniques with her subjects, Binge 1 and 6 (unfortunately not for sale or perhaps it is fortunate because you wouldn't know where to put this in your house, a museum would be better) are made of a mix of photocopy and coloured pencil representing women -or are they just plain monsters you could see on the side of hell of a jugdement scene made by the ancient masters like Bosch? The contrast between the blur of the photocopied background and the precision of the pencil' texture is fantastic. The style? Bacon meets the Berlin underground cabaret world of the late twenties... Just after this, a scene one could see in hell also, death (a bird skeleton dressed up like one of the creatures of the film the village), seating and looking at a collection of family photographs. This is the work of Rebecca Edelmann who continues with this macabre theme with the two striking figurines General Death and Wife. As a contrast perhaps I liked the fun of the kitchen suddenly invaded by practical objects d'art: the fridge doors decorated with huge chickens' drawings by Omar Castaneda. Just before that, one goes back into time in an oil painting while representing the very contemporary portrait of a cyber-woman, a work by Andris Wood. Then there is Chris Weitz's room, full of his obsessions of economics and politics, cars being put into jars, as in childhood, while watching the continuous stream of information for traders on television and finishing with the book Das Kapital resting on a red cushion as a Bible in church. An art provocateur that he describes as "an installation in progress toward 'Capitalism - a retrospective' "
Facing this is a cross made of mirrors in the garden by Mark Scott-Wood.
There are quite a few others art pieces I could speak about. Either in the studios or in the garden. A very varied selection of very good art.