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.

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September 19, 2019 1

Enter Through the Headset 4 – various artists

Donning the Virtual Reality headset for the first exhibit in Gazelli Art House’s latest edition of its annual showcase of artists working in VR, I found myself being guided around a cityscape. Everything about the scene was geometric – the grid street pattern, the windows on the skyscrapers and the universal shape of the buildings themselves that hemmed one in, somewhat oppressively so.

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September 10, 2019 0

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.

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September 6, 2019 0

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.

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September 2, 2019 2

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.”

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August 22, 2019 0

Matteo Massagrande – A Grand Tour

From a distance, Matteo Massagrande’s works could be photographs. The rendering of the tiles, the wooden frames of the windows and doors and the exterior seascape and foliage have an extraordinary precision and detail to them. Yet this Italian artist from Padua is anything but a hyper-realist figurative painter. There’s something not quite right about his paintings.

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August 17, 2019 0

We Sing the Body Electric – Gallery 46

In so many aspects of our culture – fashion, film, all forms of art in fact – the human body, particularly the female form, has become sexualised. To many feminists, the idea of the male gaze, for example, where men gain pleasure from looking upon a passive female subject, is symptomatic of male oppression and female objectification.

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August 5, 2019 0

Joshua Hagler – Chimera

Confusion, paradox, contradiction, illusion. These are the kind of abstracts that American artist Joshua Hagler addresses in his new London exhibition, Chimera. The title is a reference to the Greek mythological beast that sported the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. It has come to symbolise something that is hoped for but impossible to achieve.

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July 22, 2019 0

Her Ground: Women Photographing Landscape

Female photographers, particularly those concerned with landscape, get very little gallery time compared to their male counterparts. So it’s refreshing to see Flowers Gallery inviting nine women to exhibit their work together, using examples from larger series. It’s above all a very thoughtful exhibition that works on many levels.

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July 13, 2019 0

Emma Stibbon – Fire and Ice

There’s a certain cinematic quality to much of Emma Stibbon’s work. Her landscape paintings, prints and drawings that have earned her an international reputation, depict environments in a state of turmoil and flux. Erupting volcanoes and retreating glaciers and ice shelves, are meat and drink to her. Her new solo exhibition, Fire and Ice, conveys a sense of drama, not only with what you see in the pictures themselves but also with the way in which they were made. Her subjects show that apparent monumental and permanent geological structures can often turn out to be fragile at the hands of nature and mankind.

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July 4, 2019 0