Gorgeous, Gorgeous and Gorgeous

People tend to look at me rather oddly when I'm in museums or galleries.

Whilst others are meandering, or making use of the leather, button-studded seating provided for long-distance perusal of all things arty, I'm as close as I can get to the painting without tripping the security wires.

There's something about being able to see the brush strokes, or blobs of oil paint from the same distance as the person who created it. I should clarify I love to see the 'big picture' too, but up close and personal gives a whole different perspective that so many people seem to miss.

Saturday before last, thanks to a tip off from the lovely Garden Monkey, Small Boy and I went on a jaunt to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. We'd never been before. A classic case of not making use of the fabulous things that are right (well, almost) on our doorstep.

Housed in a rather delightful building that used to be the Oozells Street School, the inside has been transformed into a modern, highly functional building with most of the internal fixings being formed from glass (external glass lift, opaque glass staircase...). Unfortunately the virtually transparent means of climbing the building lead to a bout of vertigo from Small Boy, but I think he's relatively untraumatised.

We went to see 'Snow, water and flowers' by Tim Maguire.

In a nutshell, he's taken images (photographic and video), broken them down, transferred them to transparent film, coloured them in and built them back up again. Oh, and one other thing, they are HUGE.

My personal favourite was 'Refractions', which was based on video footage of the canal just behind the Ikon. It gave the impression of oil on the water, with some being calming ripples, whilst others were decidedly more agitated and, in my opinion, more beautiful.

Tim Maguire. Refraction, 2007. Digital pigment ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist

'Falling Snow' was fascinating and did exactly what it said on the tin. It was like looking at a snowy night against the light from one of those old, old lamp posts, with eyes a bit watery from a cold wind. The closer you got (lucky for me there's no security wiring so I got close) you could actually see the process, how it had been broken down and reconstructed. Fascinating indeed.

Tim Maguire. Snow III, 2007 Digital pigment ink on paper. Installation view, Ikon Gallery 2008. Courtesy: Ikon Gallery

At the time, Small Boy said he felt like he was on a space ship. I put it down to the after effects of the glass stairs trauma, and it wasn't until Ikon kindly emailed me the pictures for this post that I twigged what he meant - they're like windows looking into outer space.

Tim Maguire. Snow, I, II and III Digital pigment ink on paper. Installation view, Ikon Gallery 2008. Courtesy: Ikon Gallery

'Poppies' was the piece that originally drew us to the Ikon. Lit as flowers should be by a deluge of natural light from almost floor to ceiling windows through which the sun gave us as much February warmth as it could muster, these were my idea of up-close-heaven. Whereas the other pieces appeared quite crisp, as did this from a distance, up close you could see how and where each colour had been applied. I was officially in love. Best of all, if you squinted and used some imagination you became a lady-bug, sitting in the grass just looking up at the real thing.

Tim Maguire. Poppies, 2007. Digital pigment print on paper. Installation view, Ikon Gallery 2008. Courtesy: Ikon Gallery

And Small Boy's reaction? "Yes, Mummy, it's very pretty. Now will you carry me back down the stairs please?"

Many thanks to Ikon for their assistance and providing images