Review: Maddi Nicholson: Going Home form Here, Tullie House Art Gallery, Carlisle

by Alan Sykes, The Journal

MADDI Nicholson is an artist who never fails to surprise.

This has been her first solo show in her home town of Carlisle, so it was good to see her name on the AA signs to Tullie House aptly reading “Maddi Nicholson: Going Home From Here”.

A significant part of the gallery is taken up by an inflated, just short of life-sized, terraced Victorian brick house from Barrow (pictured), which has recently been demolished.

Maddi has spent part of the last year resurrecting it by having it blown up in incongruous locations across Cumbria.

The house is from the story of the three little pigs, where the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down all except the house made out of bricks. Nowadays, of course, the little piggy who invested in bricks and mortar could find himself confronting the big bad wolf of negative equity, with a sub-prime mortgage.

Around the house are giant billboard poster-sized pictures of some of the places it had previously come to rest.

Nearby is another inflatable, this time a raft peopled by heavily-armed monkey-like figures. This is a homage to Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre.

Her Raft of the Medusa is odd and funny, but sinister once one remembers the cannibalism that took place on the original raft.

Going Home From Here provokes many interesting thoughts about capitalism, the credit crunch and inner-city decay.

She deliberately isn’t providing easy answers, but rather making the viewer think about what’s on view.