Lindsey Mendick review – Brookside’s buried body is a ceramic letdown
over 2 years in The guardian
The Weston Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture ParkThis show, inspired by the soap’s notorious murder plotline, looks like it was a lot of fun to put together – but sadly there’s little here for the viewerAnyone who has seen Lindsey Mendick’s glistening, obscene ceramics knows she has talent to burn. Unfortunately, in her most ambitious show to date, she does just that and takes a torch to her abilities, wasting them in a misguided installation that makes no sense, has no point and leaves you standing frustrated and numb on the outside of what looks to have been a very enjoyable creative process.Although surrounded by sheep and statues amid Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s rolling dales, this is an indoor exhibition in a squarish, windowless gallery, which Mendick has filled with a big hollow frame of beams, planks and joists that suggests a half-finished suburban housing estate. It is meant to suggest the Merseyside close where the Channel 4 soap Brookside was set, running from 1982 until its cancellation in 2003. Mendick peppers her deconstructed “Brookside Close” with memories of this old show’s golden moments, including a sofa fabric printed with Anna Friel snogging Nicola Stephenson. Continue reading...