To the Studio
Al Daw, Sarah Cooney, Daniella Norton
27 March – 2 May 2022
This exhibition is a rare pleasure to be able to invite other artists to exhibit since the distant days of Now and Again. It is an opportunity to gather two artists whose work I really admire, to act as an artist rather than curator this time, to act intuitively in bringing these seemingly disparate practices together at DODO. It has given me the opportunity to have conversations around the subject of painting, and ask the questions that I have in my head when I am scrolling through digital images. Some of the aspects that interest me most in these artists work is the sense of rhythm, a sense of duration in time spent putting paint down on the canvas (which differs greatly between these two), and suggestion of form. As I discuss with Sarah in the accompanying email correspondence , I became interested in the preparation to paint being a type of performative act albeit without an audience. I wanted to explore this idea with Al and Sarah, to compare notes with them as a form of research for myself and as an opportunity to continue the Now and Again ethos of growing my network, and hopefully contributing to the vibrancy of our artistic community. Daniella Norton
The new programme of exhibitions at Gallery DODO invites 6 artists, who have previously set-up and run temporary exhibition spaces in Brighton or the surrounding area, to each curate/co-curate a show. Over the coming months there are planned exhibitions by Elin Karlsson and Andy Venner (Jakob Kroon Gallery), Daniel Pryde-Jarman (Grey Area), and James William Murray and Martin Seeds (Niagara Falls Projects). But firstly, to begin the programme, is Brighton based painter Daniella Norton. Daniella ran the aptly named Now and Again Gallery occasionally from her flat (2013-15), before deciding to devote more time to her practice.
In April 2013, three months before the opening of its inaugural exhibition, the Now and Again Gallery announced its imminent arrival with a highly ironic, and somewhat self-deprecating, blog post of a cutting from the Guardian’s exhibition listing ‘pick of the week’. Operating only now and again, without funding and using a domestic flat in Brighton as its location, it would perhaps be an understatement to say that the gallery was always going to exist under the radar of the more popular venues and their publics.
Motivation to expend time and energy on such an endeavour with so little, or no immediately obvious, recompense is not unusual in artist-run galleries. However, the source of that motivation can vary greatly, and for Daniella Norton it came from a desire to remain connected with fellow artists after becoming a single parent with one night ‘off’ each week to engage in those dialogues that are essential for artists to nourish their practice: “If I couldn’t go out to the artist community then I was going to bring it to me”.
The Now and Again Gallery hosted 4 exhibitions between 2013-15: Maps, an exhibition of paintings and drawing by Tessa Payne; Situation Room, Cultural Rusks from the Huw Bartlett Collection, by Huw Bartlett who organised the impressively relentless Work Programme exhibitions at CAC (Community Arts Centre); An American in Paris, co-curated with Mark Sheerin, which was an open call for drawing and flash fiction responding to the tradition of ‘au premier coup’; and Miraculous Urgency, a second open call co-curated with Kate Davey, focusing on the aesthetic result of a cathartic act. Gallery DODO
Gallery DODO 