Walk into most cafes and you will find people eating, drinking and talking. Walk into Caffe Nero, on the first floor of Blackwell’s High Street bookshop, and you will notice that many of the customers are reading or scribbling away in notebooks. This café has long been a place to meet, discuss ideas and work alone, yet not alone. Many people find the place stimulates work – novels, musicals, scripts, essays, theorems and sermons are forged here among the clatter and chatter and the shelves of books.
London-based artist Sarah Jarvis has been inspired by the creative activity in this café, while exploring the changing way that we work today. Her latest exhibition, which hangs on Caffé Nero’s walls until the end of this month, is a series of scenes that take place here daily.
She uses her oil paints sparingly to give an attractive soft edged look to her works, which are painted, mainly, in muted tones.
Conversation (pictured) depicts a lone man clearly engaged in animated conversation – we do not see his companion – but we know he or she is there. What we do see however are two woman in the background, both holding papers and locked in conversation too.
Contemplation gives us another lone man, hand on face. It would be easy to imagine he had stopped scribbling his notes for a moment to contemplate his next sentence in the company of others.
The woman typing is entitled Dictator; she’s alone too, energetically typing as if her life depended on it.
Concentration, inspired by the small room alongside the main café area, shows us a woman in a turquoise shirt locked into a world of her own as she places words on paper. She is indeed concentrating on the work she has brought to Caffé Nero to polish or finish before the morning is done.
By taking time to view this excellent collection of pictures, you can join all those who do more than just drink coffee in this bustling little café.
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