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I went in to the opening of the Janet Morrow exhibition at Surface Gallery tonight. It was the first opening I’ve been to at SG and I went as a viewer rather than as a volunteer since I needed to get away early. I was impressed with how many people turned out for the opening event. The place was packed.

I didn’t think to take my proper camera so the following shots were only on my Nikon P5100. Apologies for the limited quality. I’ll remember the D90 next time. Though several people seemed to have ‘real’ cameras so better shots should appear later.

I’m also trying out a new Mac-based blog editor (MarsEdit), so hope this works. These are pretty much in order that I took them. I’m dreadful at remembering names so will largely not even attempt to name the people I know.

These show Janet herself and her husband in conversation. I spoke to Janet before the show got going and when I left. I have to say she is one of the nicest people I have met.

More pics.

I’m still finding my way into the volunteering with SG but hope I can contribute more to the next exhibition. They really have a great gallery. I’ll be in the gallery Friday and Saturday so hope I get time to consider Janet’s works better.

I had my induction session today at Surface Gallery where I have started as a volunteer. The office accommodation is rudimentary, to say the least, but more than made up for by the friendliness of the other volunteers and the diverse and top quality nature of the exhibitions.

I’ve seen three exhibitions there: The Nature of Landscape, Fluorescent Sheep and XV (SG was one of about 20 locations around Nottingham hosting this excellent graduate show: I spent the whole of this morning looking around some of the other main locations). This was after my previous painting tutor, Val Turton, who has a studio above SG, told me about the place. When I heard they were looking for volunteers, I knew this would be one good use of my retirement time.

The bit of work I took on today, after the induction session (thanks, Iain and Leila), was to start posting notice of the upcoming exhibition to various sites. After an hour, I’d only managed to add three such postings: not as easy as it sounded as every site requires different information, in different formats and of different lengths. (Maybe I could get my former colleagues in the VOEvent community to help out ).

This next event is ‘Janet Morrow – “A Community of Non-Normative Beings”‘:

2010 Surface Open Show winner and Texas based artist Janet Morrow returns to Surface Gallery this June for her long awaited solo exhibition. A Community of Non-normative Beings is a body of work examining themes of deafness, disability and otherness and what it means to occupy a non-normative body in a culture where normality is narrowly defined.

Tomorrow, there is the first session looking at the entries for the coming Open Show. Sounds fun.