Cnyht Bachelor

a knight not belonging to any particular order

Funded by Arts Council South East. 2005

Limited edition of 10 (approx.10mins)

Copyright jnsculpture

REVUE - 03Gallery, February 16th 2006

OVADA DISAPPOINTMENT by Alys Denby

February, it seems, is the cruellest month, breeding bad exhibitions out of small galleries. What T.S. Eliot did to Chaucer’s tales, the OVADA gallery attempts to do to the Asmolean’s Pilgrimage exhibition; attempts and pitifully disappoints. OVADA, as a response to the Ashmolean’s new exhibition, has called on local artists to produce pieces to respond to the concept of a ‘quest’. The results are questionable.

....Although somewhat dissatisfying in places, the viewer, in their ‘quest’ for a decent work of art will not be entirely disappointed. Justin Neal responds to the brief with erudition, talent and his tongue firmly in his cheek.

A Knight of no Particular Order looks like a nerdy, pre-CGI, dungeons and dragons film about the Arthurian legends. Despite his post-modern irony, his representation of a journey that is essentially futile is far more considered and finished than the ideas of his colleagues in this exhibition.

The flabbiness of concept that OVADA chose to underpin this highly erratic exhibition leads to a range of works that, though broad, show little imagination and scant intellectual rigour.

One might expect more from the academic Mecca that is Oxford.