“Force Fed Pickled Onions” An Exhibition by Joe Hesketh
Sugar Store Gallery, The Brewery, Kendal
Reviewed by Chris Young

The title of this exhibition should have prepared me for a full-on experience. Being force fed anything is a horrible idea, but something as concentrated in strength and acidity as pickled onions is, well .. really horrible.

Joe Hesketh’s paintings are strong meat. The fierce colour and heavy layering of acrylic gives them a physicality to be reckoned with.

For me there are strong echoes of work of the Cobra group, a short-lived post second world war association of European painters and writers. Their aim was immediacy of expression and their painting recalled the ‘Art Brut’ of Dubuffet and ‘outsider art’ in its rawness.

In a short statement on the Brewery website Hesketh says her work resists a specific narrative

‘my work is not about spelling out to the viewer a story, it’s more about the image provoking and demanding attention, but only using patterns and symbols for the public to understand. So as to avoid the naked truth!’

The images do indeed demand attention on many levels. The vibrant colour and strong texture vying with unsettling figurative forms.

The larger works in the main room were long and thin (around 2mx1m) often with a single figure within the rectilinear frame. The head inclined at an uncomfortable angle as if squashed into the confined space like Alice in Wonderland after eating the ‘get big’ cake.

The overall atmosphere is claustrophobic, recalling the clumsy awkwardness of adolescence. It reminded me of Ron Mueck’s Ghost, a sculpture which has haunted me since I saw it many years ago at Tate Liverpool. A life-like representation of a 13 year old girl feeling exposed in a regulation swimsuit, her head is averted and downcast to avoid the spectator’s gaze. But she can’t do this because her awkwardness is compounded by Mueck’s characteristic playing about with dimension – she’s 8 feet tall.

In some of Hesketh’s canvases there is an atmosphere of barely contained nightmare; Rubber Gloves descends into a swarm of monstrous heads trying to bite each other. In her hands mundane objects take on a menacing quality; crayons or cricket stumps become deadly weapons in Up on’t Coytes, while in Birthday the candles have grown into incendiary rockets and a tress of hair wraps tightly around the throat of the birthday girl.

My favourite, tucked away down the rather dimly lit corridor off the main exhibition space, was Best Foot Forward. The white figure, like a giant in a phone box - fragile and monumental at the same time, is rendered in thick paint scraped and scratched back to reveal the canvas in places. She’s stepping out ,as the title suggests, putting a brave face on things and just getting on with it. It’s a very poignant and affecting image.

There were 16 paintings in the show, some darkly menacing but there was  a hint of humour there too; the bright yellow Big Bird, Little Bird had a cartoony Pop Art feel and The Lady is a Lamp made me laugh if only for the title.

The Sugar Store isn’t an ideal space to view large paintings, especially those that need you to take a few steps back, but Hesketh’s work made the place buzz with a life force that was impossible to ignore and ultimately uplifting.

Joe Hesketh is based at Higherford Mill, Barrowford.

Force Fed Pickled Onions finished On March 29th but you can see Joe’s work on http://www.joehesketh.co.uk/