Call of the Lost review: Clare Flint and Simon Ruscoe at Exeter Castle

By PRSD, on Sunday, March 1, 2009

There’s a bigness to Clare Flint and Simon Ruscoe’s Call of the Lost exhibition at the Artspaces venue at Exeter Castle: big images; big emotions; big themes.

Clare’s paintings reflect the not small issue of “relationships between people and their environment”.

It’s clear to see the Renaissance influence she’s cited in her work. There’s an element of classic Venus floating on a cloud, supine with a burnt red Venetian sky in the background. Or two figures whose hands could be reaching for each other in Sistine Chapel-esque enlightenment. But on closer examination, they’re slipping out of each other’s grasp. And the would-be Venus Is haughty and defiant, not passive.

There’s a religiosity to the pictures – these emotions, these humanly delights, are hallowed. They’d make superb stained glass windows.

As Clare’s characters fall from grace, Simon’s sculptures struggle not against falling but from being sucked even further down.

The drowning characters poke their heads above the surface and their arms reach out, fingers clawing at air. There’s a frantic mother holding her child above the surface, the baby impassively limp to its doom.

Simon has produced his sculptures with layer upon layer of metal, like a relief map of anguish, and there’s a wildness that is at odds with their robotic appearance. In these times of financial crisis, the struggle of keeping your head above water seems incredibly appropriate. But there’s more going on here.

Clare’s and Simon’s work depicts a human and spiritual struggle. Their characters are soon to be lost in some limbo or purgatory, but it hasn’t happened quite yet. In that way Call to the Lost also offers at least some hope to their trapped characters and also to us.

• Call Of The Lost will run from March 2 to 31, at Exeter Artspaces in Exeter Castle.