Songs from Under the Pier

Jonny & Sharon Hannah
Exhibition 3rd December to 15th January 2022

SATURDAY 8th January SALE
starts at 11am

Gallery open:
Weds to Friday 12-4.30pm
Saturday 11am-4.30pm
or by appointment

 A walk along any pier is just the ticket, but the pier in Darktown has added treats awaiting... Try your luck on the penny-dreadful falls, defy death on our Darktown dodgems, & take a pop at the shooting gallery, where targets are made up of the current cabinet! But below all this, way underneath the rickety helter-skelter, follow Sharon & Jonny Hannah to where other worlds appear through the salty gloom. Duck your head under the heavy victorian ironwork to where the sea laps the sand, & you'll see the under-underbelly of daily Darktown  life. It's down here that Baby Gramps sings 'the old man of the sea', & where the Queen of Darktown will happily recite her poe-e-tree. There's often a fire to keep the jolly tars on leave snug & warm, as they recount tales of monsters & Mora the Mermaid. You'll find Lost john Riley. Sea shells for sale. Cash-in-hand tattoos. And a haunted house to boot... And to get in the spirit of the season, a temporary stage with the nightly Darktown panto 'Ahoy! Ahoy!', all about the land, sea & sky. See you there, good people.…….

A dazzling display of paintings, prints, drawings, collages & painted found ‘objets’ by Darktown Duo Sharon & Jonny Hannah- has to be seen to be believed…they can be seen here
BOOKS SIGNED BY JONNY HANNAH -we have a range of Jonny’s heavily illustrated books signed by the man himself and available in the online Gallery shop HERE

Sharon Hannah lives in her home town of Southampton with Jonny and their two sons. She studied art in Liverpool and currently works as an art technician continuing her own passion of painting, drawing and printmaking in her spare time. Inspired by objects, memories, love of the sea and poetry she has participated with exhibitions in London, Southampton and Brighton over the last few years.

See Sharon Hannah’s work here in the online shop

Jonny Hannah grew up in Dunfermline & studied illustration Liverpool Art School & then the Royal College of Art. A freelance illustrator ever since, & happily residing in Southampton, & is represented by the Heart Agency in London & New York. An obsessive fan of both popular & unpopular culture, he has been fortunate to be commissioned to draw, paint, & collage his heroes. From ‘Hot Jazz Special’ for Walker Books, to exploring our folk hinterlands with the ‘Curious Customs’ stamps for the Royal Mail. And anyone else who inspires him often end up in an exhibition of one kind or another. His biggest show to date was ‘Main Street’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2015, where he realized a set of pop-up shops from his imaginary ‘Darktown’; a peninsula surrounded by the Sea of Possibilities, bringing much of his monograph ‘Greetings from Darktown’ (Merrell 2014) to life. Jonny is also a keen printmaker & runs the ‘Cakes & Ale Press’, a cottage industry publishing books, prints, posters, tea towels, badges & lovehearts. Mare Vivimus.

See Jonny Hannah’s work for the exhibition in the online shop here

Words play a huge part in the work of both Sharon & Jonny Hannah as illustrators of others work and as writers themselves. Lettering is central to Jonny Hannah’s practice and music lyrics and poetry inform and inspire his visual language appearing in all his images and decorated objects. For this collaboration one wall in Jack House Gallery is literally filled with his drawn transcription of a verse from Sharon Hannah’s poem Abyss forming a backdrop to their artworks.

Abyss by Sharon Hannah

Row by row they bobble up and down
Overlooked by sails and seagulls
With fresh fish to eat below
Like a frozen cube of salty water
To melt beneath the tongue
When the highs are done

Lying on top of the blanket
Feeling the smouldering air
Touching the rough sanded floor
Like the brash skin once so fair.

Roll over, roll away, roll back, just roll
Entwine yourself like the octopus arms
To catch the joys of childlike charms
And when the morning sun twinkles
Liken to the eyes that dart too and fro
On a full breakfast of cockles and winkles
Sail away, sail away.