Show at Sir John Cass

I have always loved the smell of art colleges: painty, inky, pencilly, gluey. Not for them the office-like neatness of grey contract carpet and pale beige computer monitors. I love the comforting grubbiness and the sense of ideas in transition.
Maggi's work is timely and apt, based as it is on the doublethink and veiled horror and ugliness if the nuclear industry. Radiation leaks at Windscale? Rechristen it Sellafield and the public will forget the drastic consequences of the invisible menace. In Maggie's largest paintings, the nuclear plant looms out if a fog of... Fog? Smoke?
Blood-like paint dribbles down the canvas, truth squeezed out of the tightly-managed public persona of British Nuclear Fuels (if that is stili it's name).
Elsewhere, postcards of her paintings are backed with disturbing information about the lies if the industry and it's consequences for wildlife and the essential food chain.
I enjoyed the exhibition if the final year work, and then it was concert-time.
The audience was small, select and appreciative; it felt like a house-concert or a Ladyfest because people asked me things in between songs. Th informality was perfect for a teatime gig (and it was lovely to see you Claire!).
Apols for bad spelling but I'm travelling and being auto-corrected into all sorts of interesting spasms of language!