The Surface Gallery

SURFACE GALLERY

A place to inspire

Described as a gallery with a community emphasis, this building caters for contemporary artists that reflect the aesthetics of the popular culture that everyone in the city adapts in one way or another. We saw skateboarding culture a lot in there! With the many rooms showcasing local artistry, the Gallery also is home to their large street art mural situated at their street’s alleyway, which is painted for the annual Street Art Festival every summer, so don’t miss out on that one!

Pieces of contemporary art are not the only things happening in the building. Graffiti painted everywhere, we felt like being in the street listening to Drake in the background and skaters doing kickflips. With a lot of space to walk around, we could see 360 degrees of most of the pieces shown. We had to review some examples and showcase them here for you to get your own conclusions as the connections between art and skateboarding are many and very closely related.

The Works – Pieces with street style

“Tricycle”

Branded logotypes, solid graphics and heavy lines with very creative layouts are seen in the computer design world every day on advertisements surrounding us, but you would never expect see it as part of some artist’s work trying to decorate the top of a box. This piece appeared to be portraying the complex relationship between the innocence of someone’s childhood and the change by the influence of different elements in society. Drugs and violence, as well as branding and labels; aspects of today’s culture that are explicitly representing this piece directly, using the high contrast of the colour red.

“Fridge Series”

Who hasn’t played with some fridge magnets with the shape of letters when being a child? Maybe you still do it now. Hugh Marwood’s experiments with fridge doors create something a little bit different. With the use of mixed media and acrylics as well as the key lettering, he represents his past living in a neighbourhood which he remembers a vast amount of fridges in the street. Unlike the empty negative space left around the piece, colours and lines pop out with a variety of meanings; combined with a sometimes subtle message, he reproduces some interesting “maybe-collage- maybe-not” kind of work which we love! The fridges are just a surface, like any brick of a building or any cobbled floor you usually see in Nottingham. Some might not agree but we definitely see the similarity between the fridge series and the Graffiti that we saw on our way to the Gallery.

“Boxes”

Ok, so we have some dirty boxes with…letters and…more letters! Big ones, small ones, we have it all here. This piece might be a little bit simplistic for some people but we have seen the potential and the hidden meaning of this piece of art. In this case, we won’t give away what represents because we want you to go and see it for yourself!

But what we can evaluate is the relevance of the letters in 3 colours only, which make the boxes look like branded objects, for example, hoodies or skater boards which are heavily decorated. The shape of every box makes each sentence stand out in its own way, giving each object a sense of individuality. Individuality is a core aspect of the skateboarding culture and art is just about that.

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