Rose Finn-Kelcey wanted to make art that was neither pompous nor condescending. Those are pretty rare ideals in conceptualism, where pomposity and condescension come with the territory, but Finn-Kelcey was a pretty rare artist.
This show in Northampton’s brand new £5m art centre – a very colourful retrofit of the historic municipal offices and town hall annexe, filled with artist studios – is a homecoming. Finn-Kelcey was born here in 1945 and grew up on a nearby farm, but spent the 1970s onwards causing a big old feminist ruckus with all sorts of art pranks, installations, performances, videos and photography in London before her death from motor neurone disease in 2014.
