Star date: 22nd April 2019

CAKES, CANDLES, ROCKET SHIPS AND PSYCHE SCENARIOS

Matt Bell – Marking Time
until Sunday 12th May
Neo Gallery, Market Place, Bolton

Top Salford artist, Matt Bell, has an exhibition of time whirling paintings in the Neo Gallery at Bolton Market Place. If you ever wondered what happened to the wonder of childhood this is the show for you, as the psyche gets mashed to another dimension.

Full review and interview here...

At Bolton Market Place, on the ground floor down a little side aisle, is the latest incarnation of the Neo Gallery, which moves around empty shop units at the mall. Here, a respectable distance from the designer shops and jewellery stalls, is an exhibition of paintings that sidesteps consumerism and exposes the jugular of the psyche.

And here is the swirling, whirling timeline of life, laid out in walls full of canvases where the artist whizzes uncomfortably down the fast lane, charting wonky personal worlds that aren't so much impressionistic or expressionistic as explosionistic.

The key to Matt Bell's art is the very first painting by the entrance (main photo), where the viewer can make out a birthday cake with candles, some rocket ships and maybe a couple of houses and an apple or two within a world that is already beginning to twist.

From here, things go totally manic as the paintings get more and more obscure, dizzy and abstract. The idealistic childhood rocket ships are on fire and heading for crash landings, the birthday cake flares up with its candles, and the landscapes and helter skelters go wild in flaming paint, with titles like Maelstrom, Cacophony, Storm III and Inside Out.

'Disturbing' doesn't begin to describe the dark poetry of emotions superbly, technically depicted in these personal time capsules...

The artist, Matt Bell, however, seems quite a mild mannered chap... "I think they're quite peaceful" he says perusing his work "but people think they're quite troubled; too much to have on your wall."

Matt, who was head of media at Salford University for around 13 years and lives in Irlams O' Th' Height, says that the images are intuitive "markers in time that I remember and symbols of time passing...I don't know what's happened in my psyche."

While the paintings are a snapshot of the artist's turbulence, they will resonate with anyone who at some point has lived in an inner blazing multi-coloured waterfall of intense mania. Just me then?

Make no mistake, this is art with a capital 'Aaaaaarght'...

Matt Bell – Marking Time
until Sunday 12th May (Thursday-Sunday 11am-5pm)
Neo Gallery
Market Place
(Ground Floor by the side of Pandora)
Bolton BL1 2AL

For further details see the NeoGallery Facebook page - click here

Review by Stephen Kingston