Had a great time Friday evening – the launch of Peter Vidal’s Willow Gallery. Black tie, champagne, jazz band, security guards – and some great art! Congratulations to Faye and her team for transforming the old garage. An excellent night, a great venue – and hopefully the start of real change to the Oswestry arts scene.
The place is open 10-5 through the week, and well worth a look. Inside Out stalwart Diana Baur has three large paintings in there, as does Francois Groebler (Inside Out: Pandy Mill, 20×20). Jason Wakefield (Inside Out II; Inside Out: Pandy Mill) has his Brain there, as are several paintings and a print by Christine Bradshaw (Inside Out II). Diana worked hard to get Inside Out and Glyndwr University graduates into the show, and the result is, I think, a much more varied exhibition than they might otherwise have had. Looking forward to seeing what happens next with the whole project. The cafe and the wine place are, I think, supposed to be coming in soon, and of course there’s “Timeless” – the vintage clothing store – upstairs already and Peter’s furniture workshop in the back.
So does this mean that Oswestry now has a flagship art gallery? Possibly. I say possibly only because Oswestry is not actually lacking in art facilities per se – after all, we have the Qube and the Heritage Gallery and the Library, and before the Willow there was the Malthouse. And Oswestry also has the BVA and various other art groups like Inside Out kicking around. So it’s got artists and its got art-places, but what it doesn’t have is any coordination – no joined-up activity. All these elements seem to be very disparate, very disconnected – sometimes actively and intentionally so. What Oswestry really needs is some way of linking all these various elements together into something that is greater than simply the sum of parts. And to do that, what is needed is some sort of flagship to rally behind; can the Willow become that flagship?
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