threads of sincerity, The Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras Crypt.

Last week, ten students from the Chelsea College of Art put on a responsive and engaging exhibition at The Crypt Gallery underneath St Pancras church. Innovatively using the unique underground space through a range of different media, their work explored the connecting themes of memory, materiality and belief.

On entering the crypt the narrow passages beckon you to explore by way of illuminated imagery. This set a lively and playful tone, immediately inviting the audience to engage with suggestive and alternative perceptions of materiality. The diversity of the work in the exhibition created a feeling of dislocation; from Jenny Evan’s ‘truthful and unseen’ paintings of the human body, to Mike Pollard’s self illuminated, ‘limited life’ creatures

As you walk through the dimly lit passages a wall of ‘unbelievable’ photos almost helped to settle the mind and its process of liberation from our familiar ‘reality’.

Below, Nobuku Kawata, explores the sculptural language of a ‘state of pause’. A suspension of both weight and time, using the physicality of often-found and familiar objects.

Drawn to investigate further, the viewer is led by a path of light to confront a disconcerting image… a reflection of the passages from which they have just escaped?











The exhibition then moved into the dream world of Arisa Nishiyama’s recall of lost memories and images. The lost memories, which Kate Kendall's’s 'The day we met Frederick’ explored through her experiment using different peoples personal perception of a physical reality.

Leaving the atmospheric space of the crypt and greeted by the cold outdoors I was taken back to ‘reality’, one that’s meaning had been provoked, questioned, and left to the imagination.