Review: Hatch: it's about time, Embrace Arts

Hatch is back and in pastures new, Embrace Arts at the RA Centre in Leicester, with its usual mix of the unusual. The eclectic performers created a fantastic night and, whilst my time there was brief, I saw some work which really excited me.

Kristy Guest’s almost painfully sad Welcome All Time Travellers! has real scope, a great soundtrack and will be one to watch when the event travels up the A46 to Nottingham in November.

Hetain Patel’s straddling of the conceptual, visual art world and the self-deprecating stand-up humour he delivers with a telling authenticity is a real highlight; his anecdotes are skilfully and insightfully chosen to illustrate his investigations into self, identity and belonging in a uniquely humorous way. Since seeing his previous work, Ten, he has become an artist I'm increasingly interested in and this was only reinforced by his performance here.

Chris Dobrowolski rambling performance lecture captivated its audience way beyond its time slot. In Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape Chris showed his inventive approach to art and transport whilst regaling us with stories of his growing up, choppy super-8 footage of previous projects and one of the oddest musical contraptions ever seen.

The night was rounded off by the chaotic Oyster Eyes and, as I said in Edinburgh, their own brand of sketch comedy having a bastard love-child with performance art behind the main-streams back will be a slow burning success. The compare, DJ Alan Starr, Puppet Boy and Dr Shoo-bay-go are characters which have a demonic, dead-pan knack of being able to make you laugh.

Hatch: it’s about time is in Nottingham on 10^th November. See www.hatchnottingham.co.uk for details.

Image courtesy of Oyster Eyes.