Exhibitions update: Image and identity

I've recently enjoyed seeing two exhibition about image and identity:

Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!: This summer Grayson Perry, one of the most astute commentators on contemporary society and culture, presents a major exhibition of new work at the Serpentine Galleries. The works touch on many themes including popularity and art, masculinity and the current cultural landscape.

Perry’s abiding interest in his audience informs his choice of universally human subjects. Working in a variety of traditional media such as ceramics, cast iron, bronze, printmaking and tapestry, Perry is best known for his ability to combine delicately crafted objects with scenes of contemporary life. His subject matter is drawn from his own childhood and life as a transvestite, as well as wider social issues ranging from class and politics to sex and religion.

The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, tackles one of Perry’s central concerns: how contemporary art can best address a diverse cross section of society. Perry said: “I am in the communication business and I want to communicate to as wide an audience as possible. Nothing pleases me more than meeting someone at one of my exhibitions from what museum people call ‘a non-traditional background.’ The new works I am making all have ideas about popularity hovering around them. What kind of art do people like? What subjects? Why do people like going to art galleries these days? What is the relationship of traditional art to social media?”

A Channel 4 documentary Grayson Perry: Divided Britain followed Perry as he created a new work for the show: his attempt to capture the thoughts of a divided country a year after the EU referendum. Harnessing social media, Perry invited the British public to contribute ideas, images and phrases to cover the surface of two enormous new pots: one for the Brexiteers and one for the Remainers. He also visited the most pro-Brexit and pro-Remain parts of the country for the programme, which is available to watch on All4. 

Saatchi Gallery and Huawei have teamed up to present From Selfie to Self-Expression. This is the world’s first exhibition exploring the history of the selfie from the old masters to the present day, and celebrates the truly creative potential of a form of expression often derided for its inanity.

The show also highlights the emerging role of the mobile phone as an artistic medium for self-expression by commissioning ten exciting young British photographers to create new works using Huawei’s newest breakthrough dual lens smartphones co-engineered with Leica.

I'll also be going to see Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain at the Ben Uri Gallery from 28 June - 17 September 2017. This exhibition focuses on the contribution made by the largest migrant community to 20th/21st Century British Art, this exhibition highlights the work of Polish artists who have worked and continue to work in Britain. Featured artists include: Jankel Adler, Janina Baranowska, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Stanislaw Frenkiel, Feliks Topolski and Alfred Wolmark, complemented by contemporary practitioners working in London now. All but a handful of the featured works have been created in England – the new homeland - yet many retain symbols of Polish national identity, from Catholicism and the cavalry, to the dark forests and traditional embroidery.

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Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here.

Windows on the world (380)

London, 2015

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Mavis Staples - High Note.

Windows on the world (379)

London, 2015

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Iris Dement - God Walks The Dark Hills.

Paint, faith, and the everyday

In my latest exhibition review for the Church Times I explore common ground between Victorian and Pop Artists in exhibitions at the Guildhall Art Gallery and the Saatchi Gallery: 

'More than half a century of change separates the Victorian age from the beginnings of Pop Art in the 1950s. In the 1950s, after years of austerity, people were increasingly energised by mass communication in new forms, affluence, advertising, and consumerism. Yet, as two thematic exhibitions focusing on Victoriana and Pop Art respectively reveal, fundamental concerns were broadly similar in both eras.'

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Athlete - You Got The Style.

Post Pop: East meets West

Post Pop: East meets West at the Saatchi Gallery 'brings together 250 works by 110 artists from China, the Former Soviet Union, Taiwan, the UK and the USA in a comprehensive survey celebrating Pop Art's legacy. Post Pop: East Meets West examines why of all the twentieth century's art movements, Pop Art has had such a powerful influence over artists from world regions that have had very different and sometimes opposing ideologies.

The exhibition celebrates the art being produced in these four distinct regions since the heyday of Pop, and presents them in relation to each other through the framework of six themes: Habitat; Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media; Art History; Religion and Ideology; Sex and the Body.

Although from fundamentally different cultures and ideological backgrounds, the artists in this exhibition play with imagery from commercial advertising, propaganda posters, pictures of the famous as well as monetary and patriotic motifs in wry and provocative works that unmistakably reference the Pop Art movement which emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Soviet Union region these works draw attention to state control, conformity, ceremony, pomp and the façade of unanimity amongst the people; in America and the UK they serve as a critique of commodity fetishism, the cult of celebrity and our mass-produced, status-driven man-made world; and in Greater China as commentary on the social dislocation created by a new super power's fascination with wealth and luxury following a period of extreme austerity.'

Wallpaper says, 'You'd think a generation of artists raised in the relative absence of religion would have escaped the pull of iconography. But therein lies the conflict in 'Ideology & Religion', perhaps the show's strongest section. If you're not scared straight by 'Die Harder', a screaming steel crucifix spiked with coat hangers by Turner Prize-nominee David Mach, you will be by the 12 shrouded figures worshipping at the altar of carved-wood toast slices by Anatoly Osmolovsky.'

Patricia Manos highlights, 'Moscow-based Irina Korina’s Chapel (2013), a structure of what looks like stained glass emerging from behind a thicket and a corrugated metal fence, and which deals with the idea of Socialist utopia as dol’gostroi, a construction project abandoned for lack of funds. Chapel is luminous and puzzling, with a touch of the seductive sadness that draws people to ruin-porn in the first place. It also shows a persistent optimism about the revolutionary potential of beauty, something that makes ‘Habitat’ probably the most conceptually cohesive part of the whole exhibition ...'

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Rhiannon Giddens and Lalenja Giddens Harrington - I Know I've Been Changed.

Windows on the world (256)

London, 2013

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Paramore - Escape Route.

Windows on the world (254)

London, 2013

 

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Brenton Brown - Everlasting God.

Windows on the world (253)

London, 2013

 

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Galactic Cowboys - Fear Not.



Windows on the world (252)

London, 2013

 

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Pink Floyd - See Emily Play.



Subsumed into the strata of time

I've enjoyed visits to the Saatchi Gallery ('Breaking the ice: Moscow Art 1960-80s' and 'Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union: New art from Russia') and Tate Modern ('A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance'). The highlights for me were the work of Jānis Avotiņš and Dmitry Plavinski:

With their ghostly, alienated faces and figures reminiscent of Soviet-era photography, Jānis Avotiņš thinly painted canvases draw us into a fragile, elliptic world haunted by collective memory. Often using a minimalistic, monochromatic aesthetic reminiscent of fellow Latvian artist Vija Celmins, Avotiņš’ virtuosic imprimatura washes and technique blur and erase the specificity of his subjects, imbuing his images with an air of mystery, rather than nostalgia.

Dmitry Plavinski describes the artistic movement he developed as ‘structural symbolism’ where an integral view of the world disintegrates into a sequence of symbolic forms, subsumed into the strata of time – the past, present and future. In 1964 he produced a graphical book of grasses painted from life after which he finally moved across to figural painting, as well as texture painting, and his works increasingly included religious motifs. In the middle of the 1960’s the artist created large canvases entitled ‘Gospel of John’, ‘Novgorod Wall’ and ‘The Ancient Book’ which used plastic and ligatures of scripts from ancient Slavic texts. Plavinsky said, 'Creation by human thought and hand is sooner or later absorbed by the eternal poetry of nature ... For me, it is not the birth of a civilisation which is of greatest interest but its death and the moment its successor is born …’

I was also fortunate to visit St John the Evangelist Waterloo in time to hear part of their lunchtime concert by the X Ray Quartet while viewing artworks such as a 'Nativity' and 'Crucifixion' by Hans Feibusch, plus the 'Blue King, Crowned' sculpture. The church clearly contains more contemporary art than it was possible to see while the concert was under way and also houses the Southbank Mosaics Studio and Gallery.

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King Creosote and Jon Hopkins - Bubble.

London Pride Festival of Art and Design

Six decades of art and design in London are celebrated at the London Pride Festival of Art and Design. Visitors to The London Pride Festival have the pleasure of viewing some of the most amazing artwork and creations from the following exhibitors:

Design Museum - design icons and works celebrating 60 years of British design. This exhibition is located in a Marquee on the front lawn of the Valentines Mansion and includes items from The London Design Museum supplied by Sir Terence Conran. Also located in this marquee are exhibits from Valentines Mansion studio artists.
Saatchi Gallery - iconic Mini by Damien Hirst. The Saatchi Gallery has loaned the Iconic Mini from Damien Hirst. This is located on the circular lawn at the back of Valentines Mansion.
The Queen's Beasts by Tom Hiscocks are dramatic sculptures of up to two metres high and are re-imaginings of the original Queen's beast which were created for the coronation. They include the Griffin of Edward II, the Unicorn, the Bull and the Horse of Hanover. This exhibition is also on the circular lawn at the back of Valentines Mansion.
London Metropolitan University - future design. The London Metropolitan University is located in a marquee in the Walled Garden next to the Gardeners Cottage Cafe. Their exhibits will include 3D printing.
Royal College of Art - architectural models and displays. The Royal College of Art will be providing models from their world class leading school of Architecture. This exhibition is located with The Design Museum marquee.
Tate Gallery- works of art from modern British artists. Artwork from the following artists is on display at the Ground Floor, Valentines Mansion; Francis Bacon, Sarah Lucas, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Bridget Riley, Chris Ofili, Richard Long, Rachel Whiteread and Howard Hodgkin.
Central St Martins School of Art and Design - British talent old and new. Artwork from the following artists is on display in The Design Museum marquee; Jan Rose, Amy Pliszka, David Bennett, Jack Holt, Oleg Mitrofanov and Lydia Wong. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Noah And The Whale - Life Is Life.