In Safe Keeping, New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York, until October 22

11:20am Friday 16th September 2011

By Charles Hutchinson

REALIST painter David Hancock has spent the summertime as the New School House Gallery’s artist-in-residence, albeit resident elsewhere in York.

Robert Teed and Paula Jackson’s gallery placed the Manchester artist at York Theatre Royal to document rehearsals for Damian Cruden’s production of Peter Pan.

“The work he produced as a result is extraordinarily vivid and immediate,” says Robert. The Peasholme Green gallery is now exhibiting two distinct bodies of work by David in its autumn exhibition, In Safe Keeping.

The other is a series based on Japanese Manga Vampire Knights characters, as portrayed by the youth subculture Cosplayers.

“For the Peter Pan series, as with the Cosplayers, I was interested in how the actors took on the identities of the characters they portray,” says David.

“The work covers the period from the initial readings to the final dress rehearsal as I depict the mannerisms the actors create to develop an immersive characterisation.

“The portraits present a double identity, and although the actor may not be in costume, within their own subconscious, they have become that character.”

The choice of Peter Pan was pertinent to the exhibition theme of safe keeping, suggests David.

“Mike Kenny’s stage adaptation focuses particularly on the role of motherhood, and Wendy’s emergence into this role as protector to Peter and the Lost Boys,” he says. “The characters of Neverland are obsessed with finding a mother and this is alluded to throughout the play.”

David’s Vampire Knights paintings may seem at odds with a theme of safe keeping because they depict young people dressed in elaborate white or black costumes, baring fangs or flourishing weapons.

Hancock disagrees, however: “The idea of safe keeping is particularly relevant to Vampire Knights as it’s set around The Cross Academy, a boarding school, which has two separate student bodies, the Day Class and the Night Class.

“Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the school guardians, employed to protect the dark secret of the Night Class and keep the Day Class safe from them. The dark secret of the Night Class is that they are all vampires and at twilight, when the paths of the two classes cross, Yuki and Zero are engaged to protect and ensure the safe running of the school.”

In Safe Keeping also blends applied and fine art to explore the boundaries between artistic disciplines. Hence the gallery is presenting work by ceramic artists Andrea Walsh, Hannah James and Jenny Pope against a backdrop of David’s paintings and drawings.

“As with many of our previous exhibitions, there’s a subliminal concern to show the redundancy of the age-old art/craft debate: here the craft of painting is as important as the art of making,” says Robert.

On two plinths sit six tiny, beautiful objects created by Edinburgh artist Andrea Walsh. Closer inspection reveals them to be faceted boxes fashioned from ceramic and glass, some burnished with gold.

“Working with a combination of fine bone china and glass, I seek to celebrate the shared and symbolic qualities of both materials including their clarity, purity and translucency,” says Andrea.

Fellow Edinburgh artist Jenny Pope marries two obsessions in her latest works: beachcombing and bone forms. The resulting ceramic “bones” are surprisingly tactile, almost talismanic objects, some presented with origami boxes constructed from Ordnance Survey maps of the Scottish coastline.

“My focus is bone forms, often collected on beaches and hill walks,” says Jenny. “I find they’re an amazing mixture of original functional orthopaedic structures overlaid with weathered eroded surfaces. I make associations with large-scale rock structures with holes in.

“They have similar calciferous composition, and I’m drawn to the water-flow marks, wind-eroded edges and lichen coverings. Bones are at once beautiful sculptures and also entirely functional, minimalist pieces of machinery.”

Up-and-coming London ceramicist Hannah James is exhibiting simple, hand-thrown porcelain vessels that are “deliberately clustered in semi-darkness, where they sit quietly together”.

“‘My pots have a naïve, pure quality reminiscent of something new born,” she says. “Each piece bares the faint trace of something hand-made; I like to play with the porcelain on the wheel until the rim tears to reveal the delicate but strong qualities of the clay.”

• In Safe Keeping runs until October 22 at the New School House Gallery, The Old School House, Peasholme Green, York.