To make the most out of the Old Fire Station’s latest art exhibition, take a moment to pause, says SARAH MAYHEW CRADDOCK

IT’S OFTEN said that some things in life must be seen to be believed, and good things come to those who wait. If that’s true, then INTERVAL, an exhibition by London artist Ashley Rich currently on display at the gallery in the Old Fire Station, in Gloucester Green, is both of those things.

Stand-alone images and installation shots don’t do this work justice – nor does the Tasmanian Devil-style spin around the gallery space. For while the clean lines and clever architectural interventions of Rich’s work possess immediate impact, this exhibition requires quiet time and concentration to be fully appreciated.

More broadly, it speaks to the strong curatorial voice that is emerging from the gallery at the Old Fire Station, one that sings the praises of visual simplicity, of artists that dare to strip concepts back and celebrate the use of unadorned industrial materials.

Never has this voice been quite so loud and clear as in INTERVAL. Through repetition, the exhibition shows a selection of Rich’s new works, which span painting, sculpture, and print. All of those techniques come together to form an installation that highlights the ways in which the abstract informs architectural structures.

Key to this is Rich’s appreciation of imperfections in his materials. For while he uses many of the same substances as a tradesman, he subtly manipulates them to create an entirely different surface, and so evoke a new appreciation of the material and how it has been handled.

Close inspection of some of the cast wall-mounted sculptures reveals myriad minute intricacies; bubbles, bleeds and dimples in the plaster that show how the artist’s touch has imprinted on the material. Rich makes no attempt to get rid of those imperfections.

Instead, he choses to highlight them to show the substance as an artistic medium. Untitled 7 expands that preoccupation to include the gallery itself. The work is a steel intervention with one of its pillars that pulls the visitor’s gaze skyward to other works. Those pieces, hung high on the gallery walls, serve as a reminder that this entire exhibition has been created and curated in direct response to the architectural features of the Old Fire Station’s atrium-like space.

The concrete series featured in the exhibition takes you back down to earth. The structures seem at first to resemble an excavation of an ancient Greek settlement, yet upon closer inspection these works are a far cry from what might be found on an architectural dig. Here Rich is again reinventing raw and man-made materials by highlighting their different qualities, and so cementing, if you will, the fact that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

This is a brave exhibition, addressing so many different perspectives that it is not easy to access them all immediately. To understand INTERVAL fully, any visitor must whole-heartedly devote time to this exhibition, taking care to study the surfaces of the works and inspect the intricate details that slowly reveal themselves.

Those that do give the exhibition the time it deserves will reap the reward of those quiet moments of contemplation that can only come from such intellectually-stimulating art. INTERVAL is yet another excellent exhibition curated by the Old Fire Station. This gallery already has a fine tradition of presenting the work of an artist to watch, and works of art that are really worth taking a look at.

The exhibition runs until Saturday, July 5 at the Gallery at the Old Fire Station, George Street, Oxford.  Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm.
Admission is free. See oldfirestation.org.uk