British Art News
The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.
by Alex Leith
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…
Anything went | Fashionable anti-fashion at Charleston’s new gallery
The economist John Maynard Keynes sits in the garden of Charleston Farmhouse in the summer of 1917, painted by his host, friend and former lover Duncan Grant. The painting is in the collection of the Charleston Trust, and is in the inaugural exhibition in their new gallery in Lewes, East Sussex, which opened with a sumptuous private view this week.
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.
Behind those cave-like curtains | Gwen John’s La Petite Négresse, at Christopher Kingzett
The current retrospective of the work of Gwen John, at Pallant House Gallery until October 8, attempts to dispel the widespread notion that John was something of a recluse. There’s no doubting the sublime, beguiling quality of the work but a whole room of austere limited-palette nun portraits hardly tells a convincing story of Gwen John living the high life in Montmartre. However, a different side to the reclusive artists work is revealed through love letters and gifts to the subject of her fixation- a Russian-Jewish emigrée named Vera Oumançoff…
Mezzo e Mezzo | Charles Hodge Mackie at the Fine Art Society
The Scottish artist Charles Hodge Mackie RSA RSW, the founding president of the Scottish Society of Artists, had a fruitful love affair with Venice, and made several extended visits to the ‘La Serenissima’ between 1908 and 1914, creating many works which significantly enhanced his reputation. You can admire his work at the Fine Art Society’s latest exhibition, titled Twentieth Century, at their London gallery.
Neither Eve nor Mary | Judith and Holofernes, by Marcelle Hanselaar
This rather gruesome etching is part of a series of works by the London-based Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar, titled Apocrypha. Hanselaar’s etching is titled Vindication: Judith and Holofernes, and it depicts a scene from one such tale, the Book of Judith…
Painting for company | St Ives primitivist Alfred Wallis
The ‘discovery’ of the naïve Cornish painter Alfred Wallis is a well-known tale, but the story of his sad demise, in 1942, is less commonly related. Wallis didn’t start painting until he was 70…
Gifted with synaesthesia | Margaret Mellis at Redfern
Happy birthday to the Redfern Gallery, who are celebrating their 100th anniversary with two consecutive centenary exhibitions of paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. The first is currently on show in their Cork Street space, where the gallery has been based since 1936 (having moved from Redfern House in Old Bond Street, hence the name).
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.
Bloomsbury-on-Mediterrané | FCB Cadell in Cassis
FCB Cadell (pronounced to rhyme with ‘Paddle’) is often referred to as the ‘most Scottish’ of the four Scottish colourists, as much of his work depicted the interior of his sumptuous studio at Ainslie Place in the Georgian New Town of Edinburgh, or the landscape of the Inner Hebridean island of Iona, where he used to spend every summer. He often sported a kilt, in the Campbell tartan, albeit set off with a yellow waistcoat…
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…
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.
Ping-pong king | Henry Moore anniversary
Happy 125th birthday Henry Moore, sculptor, draftsman… and accomplished ping-pong player.
Moore was born on July 30 1898, in Castleford, Yorkshire. His father worked at the local pit, but was determined his seven children should pursue different careers, and Moore decided to become a sculptor at the age of 11. Art was not his only passion, however. He was also a table-tennis enthusiast…
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 surrealist snap | Eileen Agar at Austin/Desmond
1936 was quite a year for Eileen Agar. In the spring she was visited in her studio by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, who, to her surprise, declared her a surrealist and selected two paintings and five objects for inclusion in the International Surrealist Exhibition they were organising at the New Burlington Galleries in Mayfair, running from June 11 to July 4.
Pop went the Easel | Derek Boshier at Whitford Fine Art
“I’m very interested in the whole set-up of the American influence in this country,” states the 24-year-old Derek Boshier, rather earnestly, in Ken Russell’s seminal BBC documentary Pop Goes the Easel, made and broadcast in 1962. “In the infiltration of the American way of life. It’s through advertising… that this infiltration has come through”.