At a Glance

At a Glance sounds promising. The catchy title in itself seems to promise glimpses of the overlooked in the everyday. Sadly, however, this recent show at the Henderson Gallery lives up to its title in all the wrong ways, offering transient sentiments that leave no lasting impression.

Photographer Sam Luntley’s work is the first to greet the spectator—with a monstrous blurry chicken halfway up the stairs. Happily, the rest of his work manages to display a little more subtlety, the polite groups of polaroids delicately playing with the exhibition space. These show Luntley’s eye for capturing light and detail, expressed neatly in the 'Coach Sides' series. The larger prints, however, lose their charm as they descend into cliché and express far too much confidence in the power of the out-of-focus look. 'Things are what they are' in particular irritates with its depiction of a rose slotted in the chains of a gate, just a little too blurry to offer the inquisitive viewer any reward whatsoever.

If Luntley’s problem is a heavy reliance on soft focus, painter Nuala Herron’s flaw is the exact opposite. Claiming to consider domesticity in the urban environment, and often filming her subjects before painting in an attempt to capture something special by chance, Herron appears to be unable to select her focus. In covering the entire surface with the same thick application of paint, working each detail up to the same level of importance, every part vies for attention leaving the viewer with something of a headache. In the case of cluttered works like 'Morocco' this completely overwhelms any potential composition, leading us to question what, if anything, Herron is intending us to look at. While there are the occasional insightful moments, there is little to merit a second viewing. At a Glance certainly stands for those everyday, neglected details—and the reason it’s sometimes best to overlook them.