THERE can’t be many art exhibitions that start in a swimming pool cubicle.

But that’s kind of where Rose Finn-Kelcey: Power For The People began.

Currently showing at Colchester’s Firstsite art gallery until March, director Sally Shaw first met the late artist in a swimming pool in East London.

“That’s sort of how I first knew her,” she tells me. “We went to the same swimming pool close by where we both lived. Then one day she barged into my cubicle as I was getting changed and before I had a chance to say ‘Er, excuse me, I’m getting changed, will you please leave’ she said ‘So I understand you work for London Underground’.”

Which, at the time, Sally did, most importantly for Rose commissioning artists to make work for the travel company.

“I was there for four years,” Sally smiles, “doing their contemporary art commissioning. It was a wonderful job but of course it did mean quite a lot of artists approaching me for work.”

Not quite like Rose though?

“She was a little odd,” Sally grins, “but also so utterly charming. At the time I was ashamed to say I didn’t know a lot about her work and I told her. I think she was quite offended by that but I asked her to do a small piece for a project I was working on to mark the 100th anniversary of the London Underground logo.”

Rose’s loaf of bread with a hole in it was one of 100 pieces that made-up the final collection.

“The idea that the underground is as much a part of daily life as a loaf of bread,” Sally says, “or at least I think that’s what she was trying to say. She phoned me nearly everyday telling me how she was getting on.

“Soon after I saw another of her works,” she continues, “close by to where I was living at the time. It was on top of St Paul’s Church in Bow Common, which I just loved. It was an emoticon angel made out of shimmer discs and it must have taken her ages to do.”

Rose Finn-Kelcey first came to prominence in the early Seventies as a central figure in Performance and Feminist art.

This new exhibition of her work, which is comprised of more than 30 works charting her 40-plus year career, highlights some of the recurring themes in Rose’s work, in particular empowerment, voice, faith and spirituality, and explores the conceptual strategies she employed to illuminate them.

If the artist, who died in 2014,can be characterised at all, it would be by her unpredictability, each new work routinely defying the expectations created by its predecessor.

It Pays to Pray (1999), originally in four parts and shown outside London’s Millennium Dome, is illustrative of this consisting of vending machines selling prayers viewed on an LED display screen. Each prayer is named after a chocolate bar, bidding users, ‘the hungry souls’, to make their choice and get a quick, spiritual fix, as they might from a chocolate bar.

The show also features two of her performance-based films, one of which Cutout was a precursor performance of Rose’s seminal work, Glory. First performed at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1983, this is the first time the film has been shown. In it, Rose acts as both animator and controller of 100 surrogate performers arranged on a large table. Conceived as a personal response to the Falklands War, the artist takes on the role of puppeteer, commanding various cardboard cut-out generals, dictators, political leaders and weapons with a rake. Mimicking the actions of the battlefield planner or casino croupier, she takes control from those who normally hold the reins of power.

Sally says: “When I went to work at Modern Art Oxford one of the exhibitions that had already been programmed by the former director, who sadly died, was of Rose Finn-Kelcey’s work. He was a great supporter of hers and she was a huge supporter of him. In fact the last time I saw Rose was at his memorial service and I remember us all travelling back together taking sips out of her huge hip flask of brandy and getting totally sloshed. She was pretty ill at the time so the brandy was for that.

“We did the show in Oxford after she died and when I came here to Colchester it was one of my real passions to bring her work to the town as well. In Oxford there was more of an academic framing to her pieces but at Firstsite I wanted to explore her experimentation and the aspect of fun that runs throughout her work.”

Sally also got two contemporary artists, both friends of Rose Finn-Kelcey, to make works in response to Rose’s art.

Peter Liversidge has made a giant flag for the gallery’s entrance with the word ‘HELLO’ stitched in black on a white background, ushering visitors into the show while Simon Moretti is exhibiting a neon work depicting a lightning strike taken from an 18th century Indian painting, an image often used as a symbol of divine intervention.

“We had a complaint once,” Sally tells me, “that our front of house staff didn’t say hello enough, which I must say I didn’t think was true, but now everyone says hello when they see this flag - it’s like Rose has worked her magic on us all.”

Rose Finn-Kelcey: Power for the People is at the Firstsite art gallery in Lewis Gardens, Colchester, until March 4, open daily from 10am to 5pm.

For more information either call the gallery’s front desk on 01206 713700 or go on-line at www.firstsite.uk

http://firstsite.uk/whats-on/rose-finn-kelcey/