We caught up with Barnie Page, who curated the Summer Exhibition, to discuss his decade-long career in curating contemporary art. Barnie has built an impressive portfolio of independent projects that blend art with everyday life. Now residing in Stroud, he celebrates the immense local talent and the unique artistic community in the Five Valleys.
1. Aleph Contemporary (AC): You’ve been working with contemporary artists and galleries for more than 10 years – can you tell us about your career as a curator, and what inspires you?
Barnie Page (BP): Throughout my career I’ve maintained an independent practice of setting up curatorial projects, organising exhibitions, selling art, and publishing editions and books. I’m particularly interested in alternative exhibition formats and thinking about what happens when art is exhibited outside of a gallery, so many of my favourite projects have played with that friction between art and real life. For instance a year-long postcard exhibition in the window of an off licence in Elephant and Castle alongside local community classified ads; or a website that freely offers jpeg artworks to visitors to download and use as the background image on their smartphones.
2. AC:How did you select the art, and the artists, for the Summer Exhibition?
BP: I moved to Stroud in early 2020 and since then have met so many brilliant artists that I wanted this exhibition to be an opportunity to show their work and celebrate the immense talent that exists here. With an exhibition of this many artists I had to keep to a loose brief: I wanted lots of artworks but didn’t want the gallery to feel busy, so the works needed to be on the small side. I also asked that the artists submit artworks that loosely connect to theme of “summer”, if they were able. There are some works that evoke memories of summer and others that were simply made during the summer months.
3. AC: The pieces are beautifully arranged. Is there a story, or a narrative of some kind, in the hang?
BP: When planning this exhibition I kept thinking about Laurie Lee’s descriptions of summer in Cider with Rosie (famously set in the Slad Valley near Stroud), particularly the book’s very first page that vividly describes such a sensory cacophony. I combined this with my own childhood memories of summers in the West Country (going to bed when it’s still light, hay fever, eating salt and vinegar crisps in beer gardens) and I ended up laying out the exhibition loosely following the changes in light and mood throughout the chronology of a hazily-remembered summer’s day. With there being so many and such varied work I needed to work intuitively and with very little structure, so this allowed me exactly that.
4. AC:The Summer Exhibition features many local artists, and draws on the thriving community of creative practitioners who reside in Stroud and the surrounding areas. Why do you think so many have chosen to make the five valleys their home? What kind of community do artists find here?
BP: The natural beauty of the area is a big draw, there are infinite countryside walks that make it easy to get lost in the green folds of the valleys, but also it doesn’t feel remote because there are so many things happening all the time in the cafés, pubs, venues, art spaces and community spaces (never have I been anywhere where the notice boards are as full as they are here!). The rich and ongoing countercultural lineage is also hugely inspirational and shows that Stroud is a place that welcomes new ideas and alternative viewpoints, making it a fertile ground for artists.
5.AC: What does summer in Stroud mean to you?
BP: Picnics and butterfly watching at Rough Bank. Refreshing paddles in The Heavens. Picking wild plums by the River Frome. Cider at The Woolpack. The happy screams of swifts.
