Well, I had to get this art blog started somehow, and I had to get into writing about art again somehow, so here goes.
I spent a few days in London from 29th January to 1st February (why am I only just writing about it now? Yeah, don't ask) and it was almost entirely centred around art gallery visits. I'm normally here once or twice per year, and I covered a lot of ground this time - the Katy Moran exhibition at the Parasol unit (it's reachable from Angel tube station if I remember rightly), Sarah Sze at Victoria Miro (basically next door - I wouldn't have known about it if a gallery guide hadn't directed me there...), Howard Hodgkin at the Gagosian and Louise Bourgeois at the Tate - and that was just the Friday...
On Saturday I squeezed in Isabelle Cornaro at South London Gallery and the Peter Paul Rubens show at the Royal Academy (which I'd never visited before in the flesh, you'll be astonished to hear). There were various other artists represented at that exhibition as part of a 'Rubens' legacy' room or something to that effect - Renoir, Cezanne and Auerbach among them.
In-between all of that, I made a few purchases - one book on erotica, another the catalogue that accompanied the Moran show and a few other art materials. I also spent too much time in the LPs section of Urban Outfitters down Oxford Street, noticing a super-duper-ultra-remastered (and also super-duper pricey) LP of Michael Jackson's Thriller on sale while wondering whether I'll ever get that vinyl turntable purchased...
The Moran and Hodgkin shows were the ones that I was most eager to see. I'd seen Moran's exhibition nearer to home, at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) back in 2008, so there was a sense of getting reacquainted with some old friends, but the new show did also extend up to what has been a decade of her practice since her 2005 graduation from the RCA.
She does appeal to the 'thing' I have for extremely painterly artists that skirt between the figurative and abstraction in various interesting ways, and it's all of those 'rustic' and idiosyncratic touches - like the bubbles on the surface of the dried acrylic - that I love getting up close to most. There's a sense of deliberation about what she does - she's obviously not just doing random abstractly painterly stuff, which is even clearer in her newer output that I hadn't yet seen, where there are elements of collage and experimentation with alternative materials and the 'frame' of the painting that are really quite intricate. Maybe I don't respond to these newer pieces quite so much, but I'm a fan of the fact that she's doing them.
I'd bought the catalogue for the mima show and I bought the (limited to 500 copies) publication for this one, with the latter's photographs being much bigger - as is so important for appreciating an artist like Moran. I won't say the price, but I got my money's worth from it...
As for the Hodgkin show... well, I found the venue easily enough from Oxford Street, although I missed the door a good few times while some bystander made what must have seemed like doomed attempts to get me pointed in front of the right panel of glass. These new paintings were all a bit underwhelming really, not necessarily in and of themselves, but more as it was only a modest display space and there were so few of them.
That said, I'm looking at the Gasgosian website now about this show - Indian Waves - and there were apparently 30 gouaches, so I'm now wondering whether there were several more rooms that I didn't realise existed. Maybe I should have walked around the building and I'd have found where the catalogues were being sold, as I wouldn't have minded a copy? Bleh!
Anyway, thanks for reading my first substantial piece of art writing for years! The blog's all very informal and note-like to begin with as I get back into art blogging, but now it's up to me to keep the darned thing regularly updated as I take you through the arty events that I visit, accompanied by reflections on my own practice... which I hope to introduce you in the richest detail in the weeks and months to come!
I spent a few days in London from 29th January to 1st February (why am I only just writing about it now? Yeah, don't ask) and it was almost entirely centred around art gallery visits. I'm normally here once or twice per year, and I covered a lot of ground this time - the Katy Moran exhibition at the Parasol unit (it's reachable from Angel tube station if I remember rightly), Sarah Sze at Victoria Miro (basically next door - I wouldn't have known about it if a gallery guide hadn't directed me there...), Howard Hodgkin at the Gagosian and Louise Bourgeois at the Tate - and that was just the Friday...
On Saturday I squeezed in Isabelle Cornaro at South London Gallery and the Peter Paul Rubens show at the Royal Academy (which I'd never visited before in the flesh, you'll be astonished to hear). There were various other artists represented at that exhibition as part of a 'Rubens' legacy' room or something to that effect - Renoir, Cezanne and Auerbach among them.
In-between all of that, I made a few purchases - one book on erotica, another the catalogue that accompanied the Moran show and a few other art materials. I also spent too much time in the LPs section of Urban Outfitters down Oxford Street, noticing a super-duper-ultra-remastered (and also super-duper pricey) LP of Michael Jackson's Thriller on sale while wondering whether I'll ever get that vinyl turntable purchased...
The Moran and Hodgkin shows were the ones that I was most eager to see. I'd seen Moran's exhibition nearer to home, at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) back in 2008, so there was a sense of getting reacquainted with some old friends, but the new show did also extend up to what has been a decade of her practice since her 2005 graduation from the RCA.
She does appeal to the 'thing' I have for extremely painterly artists that skirt between the figurative and abstraction in various interesting ways, and it's all of those 'rustic' and idiosyncratic touches - like the bubbles on the surface of the dried acrylic - that I love getting up close to most. There's a sense of deliberation about what she does - she's obviously not just doing random abstractly painterly stuff, which is even clearer in her newer output that I hadn't yet seen, where there are elements of collage and experimentation with alternative materials and the 'frame' of the painting that are really quite intricate. Maybe I don't respond to these newer pieces quite so much, but I'm a fan of the fact that she's doing them.
I'd bought the catalogue for the mima show and I bought the (limited to 500 copies) publication for this one, with the latter's photographs being much bigger - as is so important for appreciating an artist like Moran. I won't say the price, but I got my money's worth from it...
As for the Hodgkin show... well, I found the venue easily enough from Oxford Street, although I missed the door a good few times while some bystander made what must have seemed like doomed attempts to get me pointed in front of the right panel of glass. These new paintings were all a bit underwhelming really, not necessarily in and of themselves, but more as it was only a modest display space and there were so few of them.
That said, I'm looking at the Gasgosian website now about this show - Indian Waves - and there were apparently 30 gouaches, so I'm now wondering whether there were several more rooms that I didn't realise existed. Maybe I should have walked around the building and I'd have found where the catalogues were being sold, as I wouldn't have minded a copy? Bleh!
Anyway, thanks for reading my first substantial piece of art writing for years! The blog's all very informal and note-like to begin with as I get back into art blogging, but now it's up to me to keep the darned thing regularly updated as I take you through the arty events that I visit, accompanied by reflections on my own practice... which I hope to introduce you in the richest detail in the weeks and months to come!
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