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Lubaina Himid: Double Life

Venue: Bolton Museum & Art Gallery

*Dates: until 1st December 2001

Rating: 4*

They say that the art of conversation is dead; this unique exhibition of contemporary art at the Bolton Museum and Art Gallery challenges this assumption. The artist, Lubaina Himid, through conversations with her aunt and mother has given a bold and contemporary perspective to their memories of urban life in 1930's Farnworth.

Double Life is an exhibition with nostalgic significance, a series of 12 double paintings which reflect the sensory recollections of a past time. Memories are not factual; if you were to think back to your youth (it hasn't been that long after all!) what is it that you recollect? Colours, textures, patterns, embed themselves in our memories, this is what Himid has tried to capture in her work.

On first viewing the exhibition it is easy to be blase, it's in the Bolton Museum after all, how can it have any cultural significance? It is only upon closer inspection that their real significance is revealed; each double painting is a touching insight into a personal history. One painting focuses in and enlarges an element of the other giving the impression of a zoom lens, we the viewer are being subtly led in and out of a human landscape.

Himid, who has exhibited in the Tate, takes on the role of narrator. The memories that have been shared with her she in turn is sharing with us, transforming and interpreting them in a way which links the past to the present. The paintings are not titled; instead they are accompanied by captions which compliment the image and prompt further interpretation. Himid has also selected images from the Mass Observation archive, held by the Bolton museum & Art Gallery. These photographs provide a setting for the personal histories that Himid expresses in her work

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