The story of Icarus, the boy who ignored his father’s advice and flew too close to the sun, so melting the wax on his wings and causing his literal downfall, is the allegory at the centre of London-born artist Davina Jackson’s new solo exhibition, Close to the Sun.
Continue reading “Davina Jackson – Close to the Sun”William Monk – A Fool Through the Cloud
“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream”, says artist William Monk recalling the words of John Lennon from the 1960s. The line serves almost as a piece of advice heralding his new exhibition, A Fool Through the Cloud, at London’s Pace Gallery.
Continue reading “William Monk – A Fool Through the Cloud”Rebecca Appleby – Inner Order
Rebecca Appleby is more than a ceramicist. She is an all-round artist who uses ceramics as her canvas. Her abstract pieces are sculptures informed by art, architecture and industrial archaeology. Her work over the past two decades has centred on an exploration of the contemporary urban landscape and its relationship with nature. Now she has a mostly new body of work, Inner Order, just opened at London’s Contemporary Ceramics Centre.
Continue reading “Rebecca Appleby – Inner Order”Samantha Louise Emery – IKONA Mirrored Interior
Multimedia contemporary artist Samantha Louise Emery has created a series of 10 portraits celebrating the women who have inspired her throughout her life. Entitled IKONA Mirrored Interior, they are currently on show (and on sale) at London’s Mediaworks.
Continue reading “Samantha Louise Emery – IKONA Mirrored Interior”Ken Currie – Red Ground
Ken Currie is renowned for his disturbing pictures of human figures around which violence of a sort looms. He first came to prominence as one of the New Glasgow Boys of the 1980s and is well known for his public murals commissioned for the People’s Palace in Glasgow as well as his Three Oncologists artwork in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery collection.
Continue reading “Ken Currie – Red Ground”Bernard Jacobson – Prints I Published
On your left as you go down the stairs of the Bernard Jacobson Gallery are a series of miniature prints whose makers are a roll-call of some of the greatest talents of the British art scene of the 1960s and beyond – Richard Hamilton, Patrick Caulfield, Ivor Abrahams, William Tillyer, Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Robyn Denny, Richard Smith as well as the American Ed Ruscha. And you haven’t yet reached the more than 100 works in the main gallery!
Continue reading “Bernard Jacobson – Prints I Published”John Kirby – All Passion Spent
Some years ago, a friend of John Kirby developed a brain tumour which made him both depressed for his friend and depressed for himself. It was around Christmas time and the pair pulled a cracker which contained the regulation paper hat. “I looked totally miserable wearing this pink or yellow hat. It’s a kind of move towards enjoyment without getting anywhere near it,” he tells me.
Continue reading “John Kirby – All Passion Spent”James Mortimer – Land of Mortimer
At first glance, the world depicted in Land of Mortimer is a peaceful mythological idyll in which naked or semi-clad figures, in seemingly perpetual recreation, share their surroundings in harmony with animals and nature. They appear to be in what Jean-Jacques Rousseau described as “the indolence of our primitive state”. Furthermore, the skies are all blue, the trees are in leaf, ducks swim, deers frolic and sheep graze.
Continue reading “James Mortimer – Land of Mortimer”eL Seed – Tabula Rasa
With an array of paint spray cans, French-Tunisian artist eL Seed, has adorned many a building wall the world over with his personal brand of graffiti art. His works carry a message – not confrontational as with a lot of this street genre – but more of reconciliation.
Continue reading “eL Seed – Tabula Rasa”Alice Browne – Found
Alice Browne is a young artist who recently graduated with an MA in Fine Art from London’s Royal College of Art after which she has featured in group and solo shows in the UK and as far afield as Norway and the US. Primarily an abstract painter, she creates in her works obscure, imaginative spaces that she dots with floating objects that play with perspective and often intrigue with potent symbolism.
Continue reading “Alice Browne – Found”