Glenn Marshall, PCO Showbiz editor writes:
I escaped from reality for a couple of hours last week and entered the wonderful world of Steven Appleby at Space Station Sixty Five gallery where I went on a guided tour around the ‘Nothing Is Real’ exhibition. Steven has had many solo shows but this is the biggest to date and covers all aspects over such a long and varied career.
The gallery tour featured the bumper bonus co-host of design guru Malcolm Garrett MBE who Steven was briefly at art college with in Manchester. They have remained good friends as well as creative collaborators and Malcolm has offered much enthusiastic support for Steven’s work from the outset.
The talk was very well attended (I was up in the dress circle)
What follows is a brief sampler of things in the extensive show:
I loved the long shelf that stretched along one interior wall featuring Steven’s studio keepsakes, bits of art and memorabilia (AKA knick-knacks) You could spend an hour in the gallery just perusing this.
The above really resonated.
Steven talked about his transformative super-heroic graphic novel DRAGMAN. Malcolm said he’d always thought it was semi-autobiographical although Steven countered that there were some things taken from life but it was mostly dreamed up. I guess you could call it demi-semi autobiographical?
The book is still widely available from all good book sellers…and the bad one.
The exhibition on its own is fabulous but watch out for special events announced on Steven’s @thelandofstevenappleby Insta feed. The next one is on 28th Feb and themed around the ‘Captain Star’ animation series which was based on the NME strip ‘Rockets Passing Overhead’
Details and tickets here.
The exhibition is running until the end of March but check the gallery for the limited opening times.
Some enthusiastic sketching from the dress circle..
All artwork © Steve Appleby