British Art News
The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.
by Alex Leith
Floating, falling, or dancing? Spirit of Adventure, at West Horsley Place
Is this muscular angel falling, floating, or dancing? Perhaps all three at once. The colourful pink-winged creature is the creation of Amy Beager, and is typical of her romantic, melodramatic, enchanting work, which transforms neo-classical figures into modern-day deities, in dayglo tones. It is titled Bobbidi, referencing The Magic Song from Cinderella, inferring a spell has been cast: rest assured we are not moving in the material world. Beager entered the piece for the Ingram Prize 2022 (for contemporary UK artists), and was chosen as one of the four winners. As a result Bobbidi has been acquired by the Ingram Collection, and is on show at their latest exhibition.
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.
Ubiquitous | David Hockney at the NPG
The National Portrait Gallery’s 2020 exhibition of portraits painted (and otherwise created) by David Hockney closed after just 22 days, due to governmental Covid restrictions. Hockney has since continued to invite sitters to his Normandy studio – including pop singer Harry Styles, pictured above – and 33 of these will be included in a new version of the exhibition, Drawing from Life, to be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in November. Tickets have gone on sale this week…
A very female gaze | Paula Rego at the National Gallery
There’s double reason to go to the National Gallery this week, with one stunning temporary exhibition just opened, and another set to close.
First up, Crivelli’s Garden, the monumental mural created thirty years ago by the late Paula Rego. Rego’s work stretches ten metres across and depicts female characters from the Bible, the Golden Legend (a medieval compilation of the lives of the saints) and other traditional folklore sources, reimagined through Rego’s very female gaze.
A delicious country | John Craxton at Osborne Samuel
‘I can’t tell you how delicious this country is,’ wrote a 23-year-old John Craxton to his friend Elsie ‘EQ’ Nicholson, from Athens, on May 20, 1946. ‘…the lovely hot sun all day & at night tavernas: hot prawns in olive oil & great wine & the soft sweet smell of Greek pine trees. I shall never come home. How can I?’.
A path through all the patterns | Kate Montgomery at Long & Ryle
A strange thing happened at the private view of Long & Ryle’s solo exhibition of the paintings of Kate Montgomery, in Pimlico on Wednesday evening (June 29th). The wine was flowing, and there was a convivial atmosphere, as the Brighton-based artist, up for the evening, held court. But, in any photographs taken of the party, there won’t have been many faces in shot: just lots of backs of heads. I’ve never been to an art opening at which so many people spent so long looking at the art.
Naughty, but nice | Pop artist Deborah Azzopardi
Donald McGill… meet Roy Lichtenstein. Deborah Azzopardi paints sexy, saucy, cartoonish scenes in bright colours on large canvases.
Women pull their tops over their heads; louchely lean their long stiletto-tipped legs out of convertible sports cars, and put their fingers in front of their full lips, as if to whisper ‘Shhhh! Let’s keep this our little secret.’
Seminal Smash | Bridget Riley at the Morgan, NY
On February 9th, 1965, The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, in front of a record live TV audience of 73 million Americans, starting their set with All My Loving, and ending it with She Loves You. Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic.
On the prowl in Oxfordshire | John Lendis at Stratford Gallery
If there’s one place where mankind can claim victory in the struggle to tame and colonise nature, it’s got to be the Cotswolds. Which is probably why the ‘Beast of Burford’ – a black panther supposedly on the prowl in Oxfordshire – has become such a popular local legend. The painter John Lendis has made the Cotswolds his home, after spells abroad and is fond of inhabiting his landscapes of the area with repeated motifs: of foxes, angels and Landrover Defenders.
Gary Lineker looks on in disgust
How long do you need to take in the 1,613 works in this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, co-ordinated by the genial octogenarian water-colourist David Remfry?
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.
‘A volley of fish heads’ British Impressionists at David Messum
One can safely assume that Laura Knight’s Baiting Lines, Staithes (c1900) was not painted on a Sunday.
Bloomsbury Stud | Stephen Tomlin at Philip Mould
In 1923 the author David ‘Bunny’ Garnett introduced Stephen Tomlin to the Bloomsbury group. Tomlin, nicknamed ‘Tommy’, was a 22-year-old sculptor: intelligent, good looking and very, very charming. He was also bisexual and incurably promiscuous, hence the title of this exhibition at Philip Mould’s Pall Mall gallery (borrowed from a recent biography by Michael Bloch and Susan Fox, which has enjoyed a republication to coincide with the show).
Bloomsbury Stud: The Art of Stephen Tomlin, Philip Mould & Company, until August 11.
Richard Hamilton at Tate Britain | Swingeing London
Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson’s rehang of Tate Britain, revealed to the public on May 23, has been much derided in the press. The Guardian called it ‘vacuous, worthy and dull’; the FT suggested a ‘hectoring’ and ‘self-righteous’ tone to the labelling. But there are, to be fair, many positives to come out of it, and one is that the British pop artist Richard Hamilton has been given his own room.
Ceri Richards | Feathers and Furnaces, Jonathan Clark Fine Art
To use the parlance of the time, the Welsh artist Ceri Richards (1903-1971) ‘had a good war’, though it didn’t start off terribly well.
Jonathan Clark Fine Art Gallery represent Richards’ estate, and studies made in situ in the foundry are displayed in their current exhibition, hence the ‘Furnaces’ in its title. The ‘Feathers’ refers to the garments worn by the costermonger Pearly Kings and Queens, who had inspired the artist when he was living in London: wartime sketches of these flamboyant figures, also on show.
Emily Young at Thirsk Sculpture Park | Conversations in stone
Emily Young, ‘Britain’s greatest living land sculptor’ (FT), talks about having a friendship, even a marriage, with every bit of stone she works with, whether that’s Onyx or Speleothem, or Jaisalmer, or Quartzite, or Calacatta, or Lapis or Alabaster.
Female Gaze | Gwen John and Kaye Donachie
Two interconnected shows opened at Pallant House Gallery on May 13, both in their different way concerned with what might be described as ‘the female gaze’.
Image and Anxiety | Keith Vaughan at Osborne Samuel
Osborne Samuel have named their latest exhibition of the work of Keith Vaughan – their fifth since 2007 – Image and Anxiety.
The Mayfair gallery has gathered over 80 works from major private collections, and paintings from their own inventory, including all eight of his lithographs, and the show – which enjoyed a crowded private view on May 10 – is illustrated with two cabinets full of Vaughan’s notebooks, letters, photographs and journals.
CURLICUE MOUNTAINS | MARO GORKY, AT LONG & RYLE
A retrospective of the vibrant paintings of Maro Gorky, to celebrate her 80th birthday, has just opened at Long & Ryle, round the corner on John Islip Street. In the show’s catalogue, Cressida Connolly writes: ‘any room would sing with one of her paintings on the wall.’ Well here are 20 or so of her exuberant creations in a single – rather intimate – gallery space: make that a joyful chorus.
DAVID STOREY | MEMORY MAN
The oil painter David Storey brings forgotten people’s memories to life, and makes them universal.
He trawls car boot sales and flea markets for old family photo albums, and uses selected images - often of individuals or family groups posing rather awkwardly for a loved-one’s holiday snap - as the starting point of his process. He works these images into miniature portraits, using egg tempera and oil on wood, attempting to ‘unlock the poetry from within’.