A round up of the current and upcoming gallery exhibitions around the UK chosen and introduced by Martin Holman for Newlyn School of Art e-newsletter subscribers. All views expressed in these reviews are the author’s and not those of Newlyn School of Art
UK EXHIBITION OUTLOOK FOR JULY TO OCTOBER 2024
STEPHEN FARTHING: STRIKE A POSE - STEPHEN FARTHING AND THE SWAGGER PORTRAIT
KENWOOD HOUSE, HAMPSTEAD LANE, LONDON NW3 7JR
29 June – 3 November 2024
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/strike-a-pose-stephen-farthing-and-the-swagger-portrait/swagger-portraits/
Stephen Farthing, A Complete Achievement (after the portrait of Lord Thomas Howard de Walden (1561-1626), Later 1st Earl of Suffolk by an unknown painter at Kenwood)’, 2023, oil on canvas. © Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Moira Jamrisko
‘I have come to the conclusion that what makes an event or indeed a painting, ‘miraculous,’ is our inability to explain it in any other terms than by saying, ‘this is what I saw’ – Stephen Farthing
Stephen Farthing’s career began when figurative painting was critically out of fashion. Despite a contemporary senior curator at the Tate Gallery pronouncing that painting was dead, as an art student in London in the 1970s Stephen Farthing remained intrigued and inspired by the material and gestural properties of the figural tradition. His first variation on a portrait of a monarch was created in his final year at the Royal College of Art in 1975 – a reworking of Rigaud’s Louis XV. Royal portraiture is rich with attitudes, hierarchies and absurdities of meaning, qualities that Farthing latched on to, reminding us that history keeps being rewritten.
‘Swagger portraits’ have, since the Renaissance, depicted power, charisma and wealth. Farthing takes a more modern view. He undresses the genre as much as he celebrates the display of the trappings of wealth in “a kind of collage of the marble, the carpets, the fabrics, all from different places in the world. The only coherence is in the person who’s collected all this stuff together, they become their own curators.” The swagger comes from the richness of the painting as much as from the splendour of the subject.
Fifty years on, Farthing returns to his characteristic sideways look at historic swagger portraits with a show of his old and new paintings on the theme. They are set among examples of the original genre from the seventeenth century onwards. It is a visual feast but also a celebration of painting and its power to pose a different view of history.
ABIGAIL REYNOLDS: WORKS IN GLASS
NEW ART CENTRE, ROCHE COURT SCULPTURE PARK, ROCHE COURT, EAST WINTERSLOW, SALISBURY SP5 1BG
6 July – 1 September 2024
https://www.sculpture.uk.com/abigail-reynolds-i-works-in-glass
Abigail Reynolds, Tol (2016), powder-coated steel, printed, tinted and textured glass, 189 x 154 x 84 cm
Abigail Reynolds began using glass about six years ago. Since then, she has integrated the material into some ambitious pieces, most publicly at Kresen Kernow in Redruth where Tre, her window in the archive’s new building, was unveiled in 2022.
Drawing on Cornwall’s rich cultural history, Reynolds makes her own glass from sand, found beach glass and seaweed collected near her home in Penwith. Following an age-old Cornish recipe of scouring, grinding and burning the ingredients into coloured roundels, she creates a lens-like opening to view the county through material made from its own natural resources.
The exhibition includes Tol (2016), a screen-like metal structure with coloured glass sections placed at right angles to create a shallow space, altering perception and forming lenses of colour. Tol II (2024) stems from her love of literature, with Reynolds creating imagined views of the Cornish landscape through the eyes of three writers who were also inspired by this place – Barbara Hepworth, Daphne du Maurier and Virginia Woolf. Within its structure are printed panes of glass with images referencing Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927) and du Maurier’s Vanishing Cornwall (1967).
A selection of her paper collages from the series Universal Now, is also featured in the exhibition in which the folding and layering of historic images brings into focus our relation to time.
DONALD RODNEY: VISCERAL CANKER
SPIKE ISLAND, 133 CUMBERLAND ROAD, BRISTOL BS1 6UX
25 May to 8 September 2024
https://www.spikeisland.org.uk/programme/exhibitions/donald-rodney/
Donald Rodney, In Retrospect, installation view at INIVA, London, 2008. Photograph: Thierry Bal
Born in West Bromwhich in 1969, Donald Rodney was a leading figure in Britain’s BLK Art Group of the 1980s and, with his unique sensitivity and voice, became “one of the most innovative and versatile and versatile artists of his generation.”
Growing up in 70s Britain, Rodney knew the reality of discrimination – on account of his health as much as his race. He battled sickle-cell anaemia, a disease that resulted in persistent pain and invasive treatments. His sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings and digital media in this retrospective reflect his experience of illness and of the injustices of society. Large-scale oil pastels on x-rays are on display, as well as his wheelchair which stands as his self-portrait. Rodney succumbed to the disease in 1998.
Rodney’s acerbic side is also clear here. In Doublethink (1992), one-hundred cheap sporting and academic trophies are displayed on shelves in purpose-made glazed and mirrored cabinets. The trophies have plaques, like awards usually do, but they make uncomfortable reading: “Black criminality is genetic” reads one; “Black women are sly and scheming” says another. That these disturbing phrases have resonance confirms the power and continuing relevance of Rodney’s purpose for his art – to highlight the prejudices and injustices surrounding racial identity, chronic illness and the inhumanity of Britain’s colonial past.
MARLENE DUMAS: MOURNING MARSYAS
FRITH STREET GALLERY, GOLDEN SQUARE, LONDON
20 SEPTEMBER–16 NOVEMBER 2024
https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/exhibitions/231-marlene-dumas-mourning-marsyas
Marlene Dumas, War, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London. Photo: Peter Cox
‘Artwork is not synonymous to intention. It is peculiar that although almost everybody says artworks don't give answers, they seem to be sure that a good work asks questions. It sounds like the other side of the same coin to me.’ – Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas is best known for her visceral compositions that reflect on the oppression of Apartheid in her native South Africa. Through her haunting portraits she explores found images and references derived from history, popular culture, pornography and personal memory, drawing out searing psychological insights into the cruelty of power.
This show widens her reference points by being inspired by the myth of the satyr Marsyas. He dared to challenge the god Apollo to a musical contest. Defeated, perhaps through trickery by the god, he was punished by being skinned alive. Dumas sees this myth as a parable that has parallels with contemporary politics. Marsyas is the free-spirited artist traduced by the despotic, even whimsical cruelty of power. The paintings in oils and watercolours in this show are created through a mixture of chance and intention, combining fast and focused gesture and an ability to see and accentuate shapes in the randomness of marks. Several canvases began with paint poured directly onto the skin-like canvas, such as Pareidolia (2024) which appears like a disturbing, bloated face with barely distinguishable features.
ED CLARK
TURNER CONTEMPORARY, MARGATE
25 MAY - 1 SEPTEMBER 2024
https://turnercontemporary.org/whats-on/ed-clark/
Ed Clark, Paris Series #2 (1987), acrylic on canvas, 222 × 288 × 4 cm. Manizeh and Danny Rimer Collection © The Estate of Ed Clark. Photograph: Dan Bradica.
The Ed Clark retrospective at Turner Contemporary is well worth seeing. Although late to receive international acclaim, Clark is a figure of great significance in contemporary art, now recognized as a groundbreaking figure within the New York School of Abstraction.
Clark (1926-2019) loved the stuff of paint and moved it around the canvas with energy and force using a 48-inch push broom soaked in pigment – a technique known as ‘the big sweep’. Not stopping there, he also got down on his knees and scrubbed and wiped and washed the pigment into the surface. He wasn’t precious about colour and liked to mix-up his gestures to give them a certain ‘dirtiness’ and texture.
Born in New York and raised in Chicago, Clark graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago before furthering his studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. His experiences in Paris and his move to New York influenced his move towards abstraction. He exhibited his first shaped canvases in New York in 1957.
Clark loved to travel and sought out different light, colours and atmospheres to feed into his art. Evocations of Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, Egypt, China and Japan as well as the US are explored in depth throughout this exhibition of paintings and works on paper. In his Paris series of the 1980s, we see his move from ‘impressionistic’ effects of big, abutting areas of colour for tubular, muscular-seeming structures and wonderfully subtle tonalities on the flat surface. With its monumentality and delicacy, Clark’s work was a truly transatlantic expressionism.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS: STILL LIFE IN BRITAIN
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY, 9 N PALLANT, CHICHESTER PO19 1TJ
11 MAY - 20 OCTOBER 2024
https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/the-shape-of-things-still-life-in-britain/
Gordon Cheung, Still Life With Golden Goblet (After Pieter De Ring, 1640-1660), 2017,
archival inkjet on 380gsm Hahnemühle photo rag paper, Edition of 20, 103 x 88 cm. © The artist. Courtesy the artist and Pallant House Gallery.
Still life is a genre that spans art history. It is found everywhere from ancient Egyptian tombs – decorated with paintings of objects from daily life – to works of modern art where it has provided opportunities to experiment with new techniques, forms, and styles. This first major exhibition to explore British still life is a thorough and informative survey of a variety of approaches, primarily in painting, focusing on work produced since the early 20th century.
On display are a selection of works by modern and contemporary artists in Britain including Hurvin Anderson, Vanessa Bell, Edward Burra, Patrick Caulfield, Lucian Freud, Gluck, Duncan Grant, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Jann Haworth, David Hockney, Lee Miller, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, William Nicholson, Eric Ravilious, Anwar Jalal Shemza, William Scott, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, Edmund de Waal, Rachel Whiteread and Clare Woods.
PHOEBE CUMMINGS: I HEAR MYSELF WITH MY THROAT
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY, 9 N PALLANT, CHICHESTER PO19 1TJ
11 MAY - 20 OCTOBER 2024
https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/phoebe-cummings-i-hear-myself-with-my-throat/
Phoebe Cummings, Everything, installation view Pallant House Gallery, 2024. Photograph: Pallant House Gallery
Phoebe Cummings is a British artist worth knowing about. Alongside ‘The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain’ exhibition, she has created a site-specific installation in the gallery’s 18th-century townhouse, made on the spot with raw clay. Her inspirations are flowers and plants although the bouquets, wreaths, floral fountains she creates have no known botanical source. Everything is a hybrid – a hybrid of the still-life genre, of botany and the practice of modelling in clay. It relates to how nature is manipulated by mankind in art, decoration and the home. Her work is uncoloured and not fired; instead, the material dries in place. Bits drop off during its display and pieces gather on the floor and other surfaces, as if the piece is decaying, much in the manner of real flowers. There is an element of memento mori in all this, of the vanity of beauty. But it is also about making, expectation and impermanence in creativity. At the end of her exhibitions, Cummings breaks up the installation and may recycle the material. Wonderful.
RICHARD FORSTER: OST..!
INGLEBY GALLERY, 33 BARONY STREET, EDINBURGH EH3 6NX
14 SEPTEMBER - 2 NOVEMBER 2024
https://www.inglebygallery.com/exhibitions/7207-richard-forster-ost../overview/
Richard Forster, Die sandmannchen, DDR (Border crossing, Berlin), 2020 - 2023, pencil and acrylic on card, 41 x 29 cm. © The artist. Courtesy Ingleby and the artist.
Richard Forster creates meticulous black-and-white drawings in graphite, acrylic and watercolour derived from photocopies of photographs he collects or takes himself. Photocopies exaggerate contrasts of tone and texture; Forster focuses on these properties to create what he calls “photocopy-realistic” images.
Large-scale or small in size, his work is often presented in series. This approach emphasises their documentary nature: time, process and a sense of place are his subjects more than obvious depictions.
As well as projecting a compulsive attention to detail, he objectifies memory and nostalgia, such as in his drawings of high-rise housing blocks reminiscent of those he grew up in, or abandoned engineering architecture resonant with an industrial past that defined the working class. Drawing as a channel for memory and its associated feelings is codified, as it were, in the work in this show, which uses images from Cold War Berlin. For decades since the Wall came down, the DDR has generated the unlikely longing of Ostalgie.
ENRIQUE BRINKMANN AT 85: PAINTINGS
GALLERY ROSENFELD, 37 RATHBONE ST, LONDON W1T 1NZ
24 JULY - 20 SEPTEMBER 2024
https://galleryrosenfeld.com/exhibitions/76-enrique-brinkmann-at-85-paintings/overview/
Enrique Brinkmann, Desbarajuste (2012), oil on steel mesh, 120 x 105 cm. © The Artist
Enrique Brinkmann is hardly known in this country but has a strong reputation in his native Spain. He was born in Malaga in1938, apparently in the same building where Pablo Picasso had been born 50 years earlier. His public career began in the late 1950s as a figurative painter during the Franco regime. He lived in Germany and France in the 1960s before returning to Spain. A self-taught painter and writer, his adoption of abstraction led to a fascination with Japanese minimalism and to his interest in ancient artefacts containing the earliest evidence of written language. Brinkmann is a master of materiality, substance, space and surface – using, for instance, a mesh ‘support’ that enables him to project a painting into the room and to work front and back, as if pushing matter forward towards the viewer. Elsewhere he applies paint directly onto the canvas with a spatula. A good example of intriguing painting unconcerned with allusion or narrative.
© Martin Holman 2024