The Tyranny of Grammar was a group exhibition exploring the work and legacy of the Northamptonshire vernacular poet John Clare. Part of this exhibition was ‘The Salon of the Vernacular’, which featured contemporary painting and works on paper by twenty two artists selected by John Strutton. As well as artworks in the gallery, there were events and talks, including a talk on Clare and the land by Professor John Goodridge, and a reading from the Author Alan Moore.

For the artists in the Salon, landscape or place is returned to through the “detours” of myth, folklore, science fiction and personal narrative. The graphic is filtered through long lost allegiances and devotion to cultural icons of youthful protest and adoration. The figure is always particular and full of visual and stylistic idiosyncrasies, while acts of nostalgia are as much about revenge as they are sentiment. Even towering authorities such as modernism are recalled through compositions that owe as much to hand-painted shop signs as to considered geometric abstraction.

The term “Salon” could not be more at odds with many of the values one associates with the vernacular, with its allusions to the academy and elite endorsement. The clustered and random connections conjured in this collection are more akin to the makeshift memorial or ex voto wall where each individual offering and heavily accented voice becomes part of a larger and less than melodic chorus invoking the late great Malcolm McLaren mantra to “live yesterday tomorrow!”
Artists involved in the project were, Phillip Allen, Nathan Barlex, Lydia Corry, Graham Crowley, Stephen Dunne, Rhiannon Edwards, David Fletcher, Sara Gilies, Peter Harris, James Harrison, Lucy Harrison, Zoe Hodgson, Bibi Katholm, Ansel Krut, Simon Mathers, Chris Orr, David Rayson, George Shaw, John Strutton, Neal Tait, Milly Thompson, and Sam Windett.