Tarka Kings – Still is Still Moving

The author Cressida Connolly once wrote of Tarka Kings, “Her drawings are so delicate and precise, they have a stillness and an openness that invites the viewer in. So little in contemporary art has that real beauty.” 

Though she wrote those words before Kings had drawn the portrait Lily III (above), the description fits it perfectly. Lily is a girl friend of Kings’s younger son. There’s a great sense of intimacy and delicacy in the drawing to be seen in those youthful eyes. What’s more, she has captured a degree of sadness in Lily’s dreamlike gaze. There’s a reason, Kings told me as we toured her exhibition.  “She’d been in the earthquakes in Nepal and she’s suddenly become much much older than her years, very unexpectedly.” Continue reading “Tarka Kings – Still is Still Moving” →

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Outside – Crossbones Garden

A group of students from the Masters in Fine Arts course at London’s Goldsmith College have come up with an usual sculpture exhibition at a most unusual venue.

In the backstreets of London near Borough Market, a stone’s throw from the site of the old Marshalsea debtor’s prison made famous in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, lies a small patch of derelict land that has been turned into a wild garden. In the short distance one can see the towering buildings of the City, and closer still, the dominating presence of The Shard, London’s tallest skyscraper. The garden’s railings have become a shrine to honour those recently departed. Continue reading “Outside – Crossbones Garden” →

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Alexander James – View from the Shoreline

The image above is an example of how art can be used to highlight an environmental concern that is plaguing eco-systems the world over, in particular in areas vulnerable to the excesses of tourism. Spurred on by the publicity generated from the disturbing footage in Blue Planet 2, consciousness about the danger of plastic pollution has risen substantially recently. Yet, for many it’s been very late in coming. Continue reading “Alexander James – View from the Shoreline” →

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Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar – Oneness Wholeness

There are two things that immediately strike you when viewing Sassan Benham-Bakhtiar’s paintings together in this new exhibition – their large size and the abundance of colour within them.

This young France-based Iranian artist has spent the past seven years on a spiritual journey through meditative and energy-balancing practices to try to achieve a better understanding of himself and others. He has translated these ideas by visually depicting that energy through the vibrancy of colour and through a variety of brush techniques that accentuate it.  Continue reading “Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar – Oneness Wholeness” →

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Sensation – Iranian artists

Iran is something of a dirty word in the west, associated as it is with a repressive theocracy at home and support for groups hostile to western interests abroad. Yet Persian culture has a proud and rich history dating back thousands of years distinguishing itself in architecture, painting, weaving, pottery, calligraphy and sculpture.

The art scene in Iran has exploded in recent years. The capital, Tehran, now boasts more than a hundred galleries whereas five years ago you could count the number on one hand. The Iranian art market is outperforming that of any other Middle-Eastern country. For example, at last years’s 20th Century Art: Middle East auction at Sotheby’s, Iranian artists accounted for more than 60% of the sales. Continue reading “Sensation – Iranian artists” →

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Julian Opie

A group of female runners complete with all the typical paraphernalia – caps, earphones, water bottle, Nike swooshes on their trainers – are caught in mid-flight and their features reduced down to cartoon-like images and colour. It’s classic Julian Opie.  Running Women represents an everyday occurrence, distilled down and given a new dynamic by becoming an amalgamation of different moving figures. Continue reading “Julian Opie” →

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Nancy Fouts, Down the Rabbit Hole

If you like Banksy, then you will love Nancy Fouts. The two artists share that same subversive humour, cleverness and imagination. With Fouts, however, you get a new dimension, literally, as she expresses herself through a variety of styles of sculpture as well as painting. 

In particular, she loves to juxtapose seemingly disconnected objects in order to subvert their function in a playful way. As she puts it, “the real and the surreal go together”. So, a gun is covered in rose thorns to make it impossible to use without hurting oneself, a hummingbird’s long bill acts as a stylus on a record turntable, a rabbit is wearing curlers, a peacock’s fan becomes an Indian chief’s headdress, a lovebird plays with the ring pull of a grenade, a crow wears a ponytail and so on and so forth. As Sir Peter Blake once said, “she makes everyday objects extraordinary”. Continue reading “Nancy Fouts, Down the Rabbit Hole” →

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In My Shoes – Art and the Self since the 1990s

The photo of Sarah Lucas eating a banana from 1990, above, typifies a certain self-confidence, defiance and brashness about the work of the so-called Young Brit Artists of the age which caught the art world’s imagination and made Britannia cool for a while.

Lucas is one of 25 UK-based artists featured in the Arts Council Collection show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s spacious Longside Gallery at the start of a nationwide tour. It’s entitled In My Shoes – Art and the Self since the 1990s and showcases how the age-old idea of self-portraiture has been developed and adapted in recent years. Many of these artists included themselves in their work not only through portraits in various styles but also in performative ways through film and photography. Continue reading “In My Shoes – Art and the Self since the 1990s” →

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