Anna Gammans’ first exhibition What Dogs Can’t See showcased an impressionist inspired collection based around the vibrancy of busy world cities and their iconic scenes. From London’s Big Ben to Sydney’s Opera House, splashes of eye-catching colours provided an interesting mix of conflicting focal points and clashes which made visitors take a step back and consider different views of familiar scenes.
Night Time in Times Square
Gammans told Vision that her concept was based around creating a busy and vibrant environment, aided by fast paced background music, enhancing the aspect of colour in her pieces. On discussing the creation of the name of the exhibition, she said that “Colour is a really massive part of my work” and wanted to put this across in a simple and fun way by highlighting the fact that dogs are colour-blind, seeing the world in a very different way to how we viewed her work.
The arrangement and subject of the paintings do have their short fallings. Iconic views of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Taj Mahal were beautifully executed in their style yet seemed to lack some lustre as they are such typically appreciated subjects of artists and tourists. Adding the element of impressionist art and colour style did however provide deeper meaning to the set of paintings of London in black and white with bright red focal points of typically British themes – red buses, umbrellas and phone boxes. In much of her work, she presents fantastically co-ordinated chaotic layers of clashing colours, yet the monochrome based pieces with multiple focal points seemed as though they didn’t mesh with the rest of the colourful and warm paintings.
The exhibit displayed fantastic work from a promising new artist with great potential who hopefully will provide some signage at her next exhibit detailing the content and inspiration of each painting.
Photos: Jack Western.
Cover image: Norman Rea Gallery.