Art eclectic

Chris James teaches at Cirencester College. Somehow, he also finds time to paint and sculpt: I met him at the Gardens Gallery yesterday, where he has an exhibition. I liked this colourful take on the Ruskin Mill lake, inspiration for a number of the works in what is a cheerful show. It is more three-dimensional than it looks - a virtual collage.

Chris moaned a little about the scaffolding surrounding the Gallery, which - he surmised - accounted for the small number of visits. Not the problem experienced by The Wilson, so we read in the paper: crowds have flooded in to see round since the reopening three weeks ago. I sat next to the Friends' Chair, Gina Wilson (no relation) last night, who enthused about the transformation.

On my other side was Barbara McNaught, whose art is non-visual: she has just published her second collection of poems, Strings of Pearls.

The art of comedy has also been on public display of late, though Jeremy Paxman's Newsnight interview (viral on YouTube) with Russell Brand was not entirely humorous. Indeed there was a deadly seriousness about Brand's sermon on revolution.

Far indeed from Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII's encyclical, published 50 years ago this year. "His is not a message of revolution," writes Bruce Kent in this week's Tablet. "We exhort our sons to take an active part in public life," wrote that good Pope. Brand, on the other hand, says he has never voted, and has no intention of doing so.

What credit will it reflect on the New Statesman for allowing him in as guest editor I wonder? It's paradoxical that someone so intelligent should wish to be so destructive - of our society. After all, "you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them." I thought Paxman was excellent.

Thomas (b. 1979, so four years Brand's junior) says that he "does seem to be able to articulate a lot of what the youth feel about modern Britain - in that there’s no point being involved in the process. The problem is that he doesn’t present an alternative. There is no alternative. So what next?"

As I see it, the RBs of this world wield immense power through their super ability to articulate. So, when their message is a despairing one, it tends to remove hope from you and me. We can only do right what we can, in the relationships we have. No? Some of the most right will be works of art.

Sheffield Millennium Gallery

"Barking up the right tree" is the title of this eye-catching creature, one of many striking exhibits I saw in Sheffield yesterday. First, I was directed to the Graves Gallery (it closes early): something of everything there in the way of 16th-21st Century pictures and sculpture, a really well-presented collection. Then, I discovered the much newer (as its name implies) Millennium Gallery, which leads off the rather spectacular Winter Garden.

Johnny White's sculpture is made up of pieces donated by the people of Sheffield: it becomes quite animated, depending which button you press, and serves to reflect the huge and varied collection of cutlery, metalwork and silverware permanently on display in one of the rooms.

Another (larger) at present houses "Forces of Nature", a temporary show on the theme of landscape: it stems from Ruskin's association with Sheffield, but apart from a host of wonderful Ruskin drawings, the exhibition includes sculpture, and paintings by Turner, Watts, the Pre-Raphaelites and many contemporary artists. There's a spell-binding video showing the progress of a large roundish block of wood from its initial deposit in a flooded stream out into the open sea over a couple of decades.