This proved to be a great little show to become involved in - held in a beautiful space in a delightful small town of Piatrasenta, close to Pisa and Lucca,

on the Tuscan coast.

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The gallery used to be a car workshop, so it is big and open, divided into display units with light partitions, as you might find at an art fair. Piatrasenta calls itself "The City of the Artists" because of its long association with the working of Carrara marble from nearby quarries, where Michelangelo and countless other artists of less distinction sourced their supplies. I have rarely encountered so many contemporary galleries in a town this size, or even most towns ten times this size.


Christian, Giorgia, Andrea and the rest of the Garage Bonci team are welcoming, friendly, kind and professional. They go in for "curation lite", but their decisions are rich with intelligence and judgement. I feel privileged to be showing there ... alongside an artist from Tenerife who produces intensely layered images, rich with poetic implication (Emili Bermudez); an American with a wry wit, peeling back a corner of cultural history (Allison Welch); a quietly provocative Irishman who contrasts nature with culture, so that you are not sure which is which (Eamonn Farrell). The four Italian artists in the exhibition feature bold self-confidence and bravura technique (Nicolo Quirico);  a no less bold juxtaposition of art, science, philosophy and politics (Elisa Bresciani); words, both written and spoken, with images of architecture, plus ideas (Giovanni Ricci-Novara); and a hint of the complexity of a marriage between sculpture, performance and photography (Anna Turina).

For me, one of the most fascinating -and encouraging- things about the show is how much it is a child of the internet. It is difficult to imagine a pre-internet show that could bring together such a disparate gathering of strangers with such

speed and success.