Betwixt at the Hospital

by Tiziana Maggio

I was recently invited to a private view of the Baldwin Gallery’s ‘Betwixt’ and once again I was impressed by the bold curatorial choice of the fantastic Hospital Club.

With this very elegant temporary exhibition, photographic works by two Canadians artists, Meryl McMaster and David Ellingsen, are mesmerising the Club’s members as they drink & dine.

The young Canadian Meryl, despite her cute shyness during the Q&A, shows a great maturity of visual challenge. The allure of the colour and motion in her works really steal the limelight. David’s works, whilst promising, suffer rather from the ‘not-another-skull’ feeling, due to the over-exposed Damien Hirst variant that has bewitched diamond lovers and caused art consultant nightmares since 2007.

Go: if you like to be challenged by oneiric images in beautiful spaces and if you want to start using words like ‘betwixt’ and ‘anthropocene’ in your 2018 vocabulary.

Don’t go: if you think that skulls ‘shouldn’t be objectified’ or that ‘photography should primarily document real life’… (Yes, I am quoting you my friend, who ditched me on the day of the private view!)