Robyn Denny was one of the UK’s most influential painters of the post-war era. He was a leading name in the so-called New Generation of artists who graduated from the Royal College of Art in the 1950s and helped bring British art into the mainstream. With his friend Richard Smith, he was an instigator of the groundbreaking ‘Situation’ exhibition at the RBA Galleries in 1960, a landmark for British abstract art. He represented Britain at the 1966 Venice Biennale and became the youngest artist ever (at the time) to be awarded a retrospective at the Tate in 1973.
Continue reading “Robyn Denny – Works on Paper”Derek Boshier – Might and Snow/Fragments: Contemporary Still Life
In his last email to Derek Boshier before he died, David Bowie complimented the artist saying that his work “cascades down the decades”. Boshier had drawn the covers for Bowie’s Lodger and Let’s Dance covers. For Boshier’s career began as a pioneer of British pop art back in the 1960s. Now 82, he’s as active as ever, as his new show Night and Snow/Fragments: Contemporary Still Life amply demonstrates.
Continue reading “Derek Boshier – Might and Snow/Fragments: Contemporary Still Life”Watch This Space – Lazinc Gallery
When you walk into a gallery, particularly one in Mayfair, you don’t expect to see such a hive of activity with paint being dripped, sets hammered, installations constructed, in other words a gallery being used as a working studio. For this is what is happening to the Lazinc Gallery for the coming weeks where some 25 contemporary urban artists from around the world will be transforming the place and offering the chance for visitors to watch the process of art in the making.
Continue reading “Watch This Space – Lazinc Gallery”Corey Whyte – Enter the Golden Quarter
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that my local garden centre was already stocking up for Christmas. Watching Santa’s grotto ready to be assembled in mid-September shouldn’t surprise me as it happens every year at this time, but somehow it did. Retailers term the run-up to Christmas and other holidays as The Golden Quarter. Sculptor Corey Whyte has appropriated the title for his first solo exhibition which looks at the way society operates within a culture of commodification and how society itself has become commodified.
Continue reading “Corey Whyte – Enter the Golden Quarter”Sara Shamma – Modern Slavery
When Syrian artist Sara Shamma heard eyewitness reports of Yazidi women and girls being paraded on a platform by their Isis kidnappers in a modern slave market on the Iraqi/Syrian border before hundreds of glowering men, and then sold to the highest bidder, she was naturally shocked. Their prices, she discovered, were even advertised on the internet – the youngest being the most expensive.
Continue reading “Sara Shamma – Modern Slavery”Nicole Wassall – Precious Mettle
For her new exhibition entitled Precious Mettle at London’s Fiumano Clase Gallery, British artist Nicole Wassall has created a series of works that serve both as aesthetic pieces in their own right and as metaphors for underlying themes prevalent in our society today. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Wassall has managed to pull off the trick of using highly complex processes to create artworks that appear simple yet are anything but simplistic.
Continue reading “Nicole Wassall – Precious Mettle”Frost, Heron, Lanyon Scott: Four Giants of British Modernism
Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and William Scott were groundbreaking British post-war artists who were inspired by the Cornish landscape. These major figures are featured in a new exhibition at Beaux Arts London entitled Giants of British Modernism. The four, together with many others such as Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Bernard Leach, were pioneers of British abstract art and were associated with the St Ives School.
The fishing village of St Ives attracted artists for its spectacular scenery and the clarity of its light. Patricia Singh, co-director of Beaux Arts, ran the Will’s Lane Gallery in St Ives in the 1970s and knew three of the four artists well. Peter Lanyon had died in a glider crash in 1964. The exhibition features 5-6 works from each painter. In the following interview she was able to give me a personal insight into the artists’ works and the creativity behind them.
Continue reading “Frost, Heron, Lanyon Scott: Four Giants of British Modernism”Peter Mammes – Presumed Alive
Symbols of war and oppression together with unsettling images of Victorian medical procedures are among the curious mixes that the young South African artist Peter Mammes has peppered his paintings and drawings in his first UK solo exhibition, Presumed Alive.
Continue reading “Peter Mammes – Presumed Alive”Suzanne Moxhay – Conservatory
The world of Suzanne Moxhay is one of decrepit interiors where plants seem to grow out of the floorboards, where ceilings have collapsed, fireplaces cracked, walls broken and where the wallpaper dissolves into fading images of old romantic landscapes.
Continue reading “Suzanne Moxhay – Conservatory”Margaret Curtis – Surface
“I like the clay to speak for itself”, says ceramicist Margaret Curtis, speaking to me at the launch of her new exhibition, Surface, at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre in London. Her pieces, whether they be large vases and cylinders or small bottles and cups, have one thing in common – their imperfection. “I make them in the round, sort of precise, then I start pushing them and poking them and distorting them and let the movement of the clay give a lot of feeling.”
Continue reading “Margaret Curtis – Surface”