Beauty in the Disregarded

Walking through Earlsdon, Coventry on a sunny summer afternoon over the next three weeks, you may well stumble over this shed, sitting in the courtyard of Earlsdon Primary School. Not, as you might expect, part of the school's summer renovation works. It's an art gallery.

The shed was originally one of three used in Bob and Roberta Smith's exhibition of found objects,at the Mead Gallery in Warwick Arts Centre back in early spring. The sheds were donated to artist collectives to use in their local communities in some way.

Conceived by Martin Green
and Lorsen Camps, the exhibition showcases a range of objects found during their forages, objects that capture a sense of the detritus of your average urban commute, with a dash of beach holiday thrown in. The arrangement here is what makes for the magic: an editorial eye that searches for the numinous in the otherwise mundane.

Primarily the arrangements use a combination of minimalist modulation and colour sequencing to focus the eye. I was particularly taken by the wall of near-white objects, which didn't show too well on my phone-camera in the bright sunlight.

Individual objects appear to blend into the shapes and sequences around them.

I was particularly taken by the array of plastic ice-cream spatulas, possibly beach-gathered or from sunnier times than Coventry's seen lately. Lorsen mentioned that most of the objects were discovered in the past few months, since getting the shed.

I found myself at first ignoring the individual objects - nouns blurring into a sequence of colour, like the parts of an engine. Looking closer, some of the objects become narratives - the straw tied into a knot, or the battered urban footballs, kicked skinless, offering a sprawl of Saturday morning five-a-sides.

Anyway, go see for yourself.