British Art News
The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.
by Alex Leith
Teenage Raphael | Clara Klinghoffer at Crossing Borders
It’s 1915, and the painter Bernard Meninsky, life drawing tutor at London’s Central School of Arts + Crafts, has been charged with looking through the portfolio of a fifteen-year-old girl, Clara Klinghoffer. A task which, one would imagine, he was expecting to be humdrum, turned out to be anything but. “Good Lord,” he stated. “That child draws like da Vinci.”
Klinghoffer’s 1923 painting Bananas, of an East End peddler, is included in the exhibition Crossing Borders: Internationalism in Modern British Art, at British Art Fair 2023.
Secular altarpiece | The Gold Metaverse, by David Breuer-Weil at SOLO CONTEMPORARY
A major work by the artist David Breuer-Weil will serve as the centrepiece and the entrance feature of the SOLO CONTEMPORARY section at British Art Fair. The piece, titled The Gold Metaverse, is inspired by the vast 15th-century polyptych The Ghent Altarpiece, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, which dominates the interior of St Bavo’s Cathedral in the medieval Belgian city.
Alternative Eden | James Mortimer at SOLO CONTEMPORARY
If Eve hadn’t gone for that apple, would the Garden of Eden have remained, for evermore, an unspoilt, innocent paradise? James Mortimer’s surrealist, symbolic, uncanny paintings suggest not, describing an alternative Eden, where: ‘Freed from social constraint, people behave unthinkingly with a blissful lack of self-awareness, and once governed by their basest instincts soon find themselves given over to shameless naked abandon: to foolish acts of wanton violence, sexual impropriety and long afternoons of listless indolence’.
Less hairy | Eric Ravilious, at the Fine Art Society
Soon after WW2 broke out in 1939, the watercolourist and commercial illustrator Eric Ravilious applied to become an official war artist, and this application – to his great delight – was accepted in January 1940.
In the spring of 1941, he was commissioned to depict the newly developed control rooms. From this space the Ministry of Home Security organised air raid precautions and collated bomb damage. This painting – fresh to market having been bought from a private collection by the Fine Art Society – is from that series. Fire Control Room will be shown by The Fine Art Society at British Art Fair 2023.
Curse Lifter | Tim Shaw at SOLO CONTEMPORARY
The Belfast-born sculptor Tim Shaw has had a good 2023. From works in the Summer Exhibition at the RA , to his piece, Man on Fire, being unveiled in July of this year outside the Imperial War Museum North, to being chosen by the Fiumano Clase Gallery as the artist they are exhibiting in the second edition of SOLO CONTEMPORARY…
Not to her face | Tracey Emin at The Conran Shop
Tracey Emin has never been shy about putting herself at the centre of her art. In her early career, this reflected a provocative, feisty personality, though it would be short-sighted to dismiss Emin as a mere provocateur. She has, over the years, demonstrated her prodigious talent in many mediums, including installation, sculpture, painting, printing, textiles, photography, film and neon.
Several examples of Emin’s prints will be on display during British Art Fair (and until October 9) on the ground floor of The Conran Shop’s new flagship store in Sloane Square, to mark a partnership with the Fair. The prints have been chosen by the Conran group from the collection of Chelsea gallerist Tanya Baxter.
Throw yourself in! | David Bomberg at Crossing Borders
Before WW1, Slade drop-out David Bomberg made his name as a radical, avant-garde artist, creating complex, geometric compositions, blending elements of cubism and futurism. Without Bomberg we wouldn’t have had Auerbach or Kossoff.
Bomberg’s work, Calle de San Pedro, courtesy of Osborne Samuel Gallery, can be seen at the Crossing Borders exhibition on the second floor of Saatchi Gallery during British Art Fair.
A monster lay drooling | Beyond the Gaze at Saatchi Gallery
I’m pretty sure that when Lisa Ivory lay awake at night as a young child, she was convinced that a monster lay drooling under her bed. Such creatures reappear in all her oil paintings: dark, shaggy beasts of vaguely humanoid form.
You can currently see the artist’s latest series of paintings at Saatchi Gallery, in the show Beyond the Gaze – Reclaiming the Landscape, curated by Zavier Ellis. The exhibition explores landscape painting through a contemporary female gaze.
Touché | Bruce Bernard, by Lucian Freud
Meet, if you dare, the inscrutable glare of Bruce Bernard, a man who didn’t suffer fools gladly, as depicted in 1985 – aged 57 - by his lifelong friend Lucian Freud, about whom the same could be said.
Freud’s etching of Bernard – supplied by Julian Page - is to be shown in Crossing Borders: Internationalism in Modern Art, a stand-alone exhibition at British Art Fair 2023, featuring émigré artists who came to Britain from all over the world during the 20th century.
Threshold of the modern History of the New, at the Fine Art Society
A big welcome to the Fine Art Society, exhibiting for the first time at the British Art Fair this Autumn.
CRITICS’ CIRCLE AWARD RECEPTION
Iwona Blazwick, Matthew Burrows win prestigious Critics’ Circle Awards. On Wednesday October 26, at a reception at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Mayfair, The Critics’ Circle Art & Architecture section, representing many of the country’s top critics in those fields, presented their annual awards in front of an invited audience of 70 guests from the art world.
ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY | CONTEMPORARY ARTIST SHOW
Throughout the duration of British Art Fair, the RSA are showcasing a selection of leading and emerging contemporary Scottish artists.
THE INGRAM COLLECTION
The Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art is one of the UK’s most significant art collections and we are pleased to announce a partnership for our 2022 edition.
WILLIAM JOHNSTONE | RETROSPECTIVE
In his 1967 book The Company I Have Kept, the poet and author Hugh McDairmid called his friend William Johnstone (1897-1981) ‘the bad boy of Scottish art’ and ‘not only the most important but the only important living Scottish artist’.
WATERAID ANNOUNCED AS OFFICIAL CHARITY FOR 2022
British Art Fair announces a partnership with WaterAid which will see a collection of site-specific climate-themed works go under the hammer at this year’s fair to raise awareness of the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable communities’ access to clean water.
WATERAID CHARITY AUCTION
Established artists, emerging artists and celebrities who are not generally considered as artists have been asked to produce work to go ‘under the hammer’ at a charity auction on Thursday 29.
INTERVIEW WITH GAY HUTSON | CO-FOUNDER BRITISH ART FAIR
We sat down with Gay to discuss the 2022 edition of British Art Fair.
SOLO CONTEMPORARY
British Art Fair announces the launch of SOLO CONTEMPORARY, a new space at the 31st edition of the fair dedicated to showing the very best contemporary British art.
INTERVIEW WITH ZAVIER ELLIS
Zavier Ellis talks about Solo Contemporary at The British Air Fair, his own gallery, representing Hugh Mendes, and balancing being an artist with being a gallerist.
HUGH MENDES
One new feature of the British Art Fair 2022 will be the ‘Solo Contemporary’ stands, on the Second floor of the Saatchi, curated by Zavier Ellis, of Charlie Smith Gallery.