Paper Trails at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery.

If I rated exhibition openings by the hospitality offered then reception for Paper Trails: Treasures on Paper at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery yesterday evening would be a worthy four stars out of five.

It scored so highly mainly owing to the generous proportions of the wine glasses. I don’t know about you but I hate having to traipse backward and forwards to the wine table and pester the hard working waiting staff for yet another piddling refill all because the wine glasses are barely bigger than an egg cup. It’s embarrassing. And apparently it’s considered a huge social blunder to whip a man sized goblet from out of your bag and request a decent glug of red . . . who knew?

I hadn’t been to the university gallery for ages so was pleased when I got emailed an invite from a Culture Vulture editor – the one nobody outside the inner circle knows about, but trust me, you don’t say no to S***h! – informing me I was her second choice, but would I go “tonite?” She said there would be wine, which is why she’d thought of me. And she implied she knew I’d not be likely to have a better offer.

I was flattered.

I managed to turn up just in time to miss most of the introductory speech thanking everyone for the hard work involved in putting on an exhibition like this. I did, however, gather that the event was something to do with celebrating the digitisation of the gallery’s collection. There was a lengthy quote on the wall from a book by Nicholas Carr, called “The Shallows,” which castigates the whole culture created by the digital revolution as “a culture of forgetfulness.” Personally, I think there’s a lot to be said for Carr’s thesis and I was a little confused by the odd juxtaposition.

I read Carr’s book a while ago alongside another with a similar argument, “Distracted; the Erosion of Attention an the Coming of the Dark Age,” by Maggie Jackson, which I found myself recalling as I tried to make my way around the gallery and concentrate on the work on the walls. The work is stunning. I spotted the Picasso – it’s a small piece, a study for Guernica, and I found it quite shockingly quiet, I would never have suspected the bombast and rage and sheer scale of the finished piece from looking at this drawing. And there’s some wonderful work from artists who I didn’t recognise. Trouble was it’s not a very big space and there were a lot of enthusiastic attendees. I kept feeling I was getting in sometime’s way. And I found it hard to focus on the exhibition when the (loud) conversations swirling around me – Cordelia’s skiing holiday, Timothy’s latest promotion to partner, father’s stock options – were not exactly conducive to art appreciation.

After about ten minutes of frustration I decided to go back to the wine table where it was a bit quieter and the conversation was a bit more on my level (hi Gill if you’re reading this!) The exhibition is on till 28th July and I’m definitely going back. Does anyone fancy joining me and writing a proper blog post?

Wine’s on me . . . a big glass even.

Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery
Parkinson Court
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane Leeds LS2 9JT

Tel: 0113 343 2777 (Tue-Fri)

Email: e.m.stainforth@leeds.ac.uk