Cornerhouse café-bar, Fri 12 October – Tue 13th November 2012

Artists don’t tumble from moulds in institutions, the innate spark is not taught but fanned to life beneath catalogue-bought duvet sets and candlewick throws. Sprawled across the floor or hunched over a hand-me-down desk, doodles become sketches, words become poems, wild imaginings scurry for shelter at the back of the wardrobe; soft, pink and glistening, yet to form a hard shell to deflect the criticism that awaits.

Top Bunk! is a Cornerhouse Projects exhibition that seeks to capture the spark of enthusiasm before it bends to fit the restrictive moulds that await; from academia to peer review and the cost of living. No subject is unsuited, no method discouraged. A range of responses include wistful juvenilia, rampaging robots, melancholia, psychedelic daydreams, teen-fan adulation, the allure of adulthood and beginning of sexual fruition.

Timed to coincide with Year 2 of our successful Sketch-O-Matic residency (Fri 12 – Sun 21 Oct), the artists are drawn from previous participants and new recruits. Just as this highlights the exchange of coin for the creative act, placing the sitter in the position of both artist and muse, so Top Bunk! has been purposely designed to offer affordable* limited prints. None are guaranteed to increase in value, but you will be supporting local talent.

If our worlds began in our bedroom and have now bled to encompass our homes, then our domiciles call out for totems, talismans and triggers: visual stimuli that extend beyond album choices, fashion picks and furnishings. The wish is that the pictures on display say something unique about both who drew them and who subsequently chooses them, just as we once plastered our dens, gang-huts and boudoirs without thought for the opinion of others.

*around £50 – £100

Curated by Bren O’Callaghan and Gemma Parker