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Posts Tagged ‘kay saatchi’

The Inferno in the Frieze

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

As Frieze mania draws to a close, the capital is playing host to a number of enthralling and original surrounding exhibitions and events this weekend.

The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Waterloo Station have been taken over by the Lazarides Gallery, who have installed a mind blowing exhibition called ‘Hell’s Half Acre’. The space has been transformed into a large-scale evocation of Dante’s literary masterpiece Inferno in which a group of young, cutting-edge artists have produced a multi-sensory interpretation of hell, a strange consort of voodoo dolls, taxidermy, suspended bodies and barking staffies. For something a little lighter, seek out Conor Harrington’s fleet of suspended model ships and their shadows, as well a Jonathan Yeo nude in 3D. Until 17th October.

Catch the ‘Anticipation Show’ in Selfridges’ Ultra-lounge. It has fast become a celebrated, annual showcase of the hottest artists of the moment, and is curated by Kay Saatchi and Catriona Warren.  Photographers Noemie Goudal and Robin Friend make stunning contributions with their antithetical takes on the natural landscape.  And painter Robert Dowling is no doubt a star in the making material with his clean, monochromatic wall pieces. With arresting video installations and jaw dropping sculptural work from Blue Curry on show too, get yourself down there for a glimpse of the future. Until 10th November.

For a star studded affair with big names and big pieces, check out ‘The House of the Nobleman’. A special exhibition curated by ‘All Visual Arts’ Wolfe von Lenkiewicz and Victoria Golembiovskaya, you’ll see heralded gems from the likes of Edouard Manet and Picasso jostle alongside iconic Yves Klein and Ron Arad design pieces. The makers and shakers of Modern and Contemporary art await your perusal. Rarely will see you such a heavyweight list of artists all showing under one roof. Until 20th October at Boswall House, 2 Cornwall Terrace, Regent’s Park, NW1. By appointment only.

www.cornwallterrace.co.uk/boswallhouse.

All Visual Arts have masterminded another knock-out show in the form of ‘Vanitas: The Transience of Earthly Pleasures’ – a group exhibition exploring the Northern European, seventeenth century painting tradition and all its mortal motifs and meanings. A haunting mix of works by contemporary artists and original Dutch masters, the curators have cleverly used the sumptuous setting in all its faded grandeur of the former Sierra Leone embassy to extraordinary effect. Until 17th October at 33 Portland Place, W1B 1QE.

www.allvisualarts.org.

After the success of last year’s Art Barter, ‘Mini Barter’ is kicking off today, and runs through tomorrow evening. Based on the same principle of exchanging art for goods other than money – be it Tuscan villas, piano lessons or bareback riding on the beach – whatever you can offer might well be just their thing. So when you tire of notional spending at Frieze and too many £ signs, head to Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery, pick a piece and have a punt. This year’s artists include Mat Collishaw, Polly Morgan and dynamic duo Tim and Sue Webster.

www.artbarter.co.uk.

Briony’s Inspiration

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Briony_Anderson_main

Briony Anderson is the new darling of British art. Her first solo exhibition – twenty or so oil paintings exploring the ‘act of observation versus the act of looking’ – held in London last month, proved an art collectors dream. The big cats, including Kay Saatchi and Indian collector Satish Modi, turned up, looked, looked again, and must have felt the same surge of excitement as those who first saw Damien Hirst’s iconic dot paintings.

The paintings themselves were inspired by portraiture commissioned in the 18th and 19th centuries. The central figures have been omitted, and what we are offered is a complete re-rendering… a new idea, poetry for prose.

Let me remember what it is that I really saw…

Beneath the hanging lanterns, a large canvas is alive with tension – loose, expressive brushwork in which many different moods battle against each other, a tendering that surprises me. It speaks, I think at first, about the calm within the conflict, the peace in the storm. I stand there for a while. I think about the artist and what she meant by this mountainous fantasy, ‘From which he observes but does not participate’, and I make the active decision to hang about and get more champagne.

I have often been cynical of modernist art. Like an obscure poem, these paintings so often sing about the meaning in non-meaning, the beauty in nothingness, but explain nothing by it. This time, the observer is forced to find meaning, since the artist definitely means something by it… something that I was just beginning to grasp.

Meanings aside, Briony’s work strikes me as redolent of a unique inner life, the landscape exploited to express a melody that is all her own. I did not get a chance to meet her, but I imagined her as a girl with a capricious look in the eye, a passionate laugh… a cosmic dreamer perhaps.

It is no wonder the paintings sold so well, or that the salt of the art world spilled out onto the balcony, champagne in hand, musing on what they had just seen, returning to that favourite piece where Kay Saatchi had stood, and scratched her head in surprise. There is indeed a rhythmic, fluid beauty to her work that pleases the eye. ‘Distant Viewpoint, 2010’, reminds of Van Gogh’s ‘Crows above Cornfield’; a little later on in the day perhaps, when the storm has fallen and the birds are swarming towards the artist in every direction – a roaring beauty within the dark greys, and blues and whites – all expressing something within themselves: madness, hope, a window to eternity.

Briony’s work is an expression of the human spirit in colour. Bold, triumphant, beautiful – it makes nature less real only to steal from it something that is truly effecting.

For more on Briony, please Click Here.

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