ART REVIEWS
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”
The woman arches her back in a perfectly-balanced athletic pose, her body graceful and lithe. Her hair falls free and touches the ground, rooted to the earth like the tree that brings equilibrium to the picture. There’s another balance too. The flecks on the body, remnants of residue of the lino-block from which the image was taken, gives it a strength echoed by the tree’s trunk. And all within the brightly coloured and collaged setting of a fable where reality and imagination meld together.
Continue reading “Eileen Cooper – Short Stories”
As part of a double-header, The Flowers Gallery in Hoxton is staging in its upper space Tom Lovelace’s first solo exhibition here for four years. While the Ken Currie show downstairs comprises straightforward narrative paintings with albeit dark subtexts, Lovelace’s work could not be more different.
Continue reading “Tom Lovelace – Interval”
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”
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”
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”
Multi-prize-winning Austrian ceramicist Thomas Bohle has acquired a reputation as one of Europe’s most gifted potters. His beautifully crafted bowls and vessels have been exhibited the world over in exhibitions, museums and private collections.
Continue reading “Thomas Bohle – New Work”
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”
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”