CRITIC’S CHOICE BY ANDREW LAMBIRTH ~ 11TH JULY – 5TH SEPTEMBER 2010 ~ CLICK ON THE ARTIST TO VIEW THEIR BIOGRAPHY AND WORK ~ TEXT WRITTEN BY ANDREW LAMBIRTH
ANDREW LAMBIRTH is currently the art critic for The Spectator, and
from 1990 to 2002 was contributing editor of the Royal Academy of
Arts Magazine. He has written many monographs on artists such as
Maggi Hambling and Stephen Chambers. His book on David Inshaw
will be published this year.
VICTORIA ACHACHE (born 1952) loves colour which has a
Mediterranean intensity but an English resonance. Her blocks of
colour build a convincing structure, while her line articulates the forms
which turn her work from abstraction towards figuration. Inspired by
the work of Roger Hilton, as can be seen in her use of oil paint with
exploratory over-drawing, a strategy Hilton pioneered, she makes
something of her own in these vibrant and closely focused still-life
paintings.
STILL LIFE 1 2009-10 OIL ON CANVAS 56 X 61 CM
ADRIAN BERG (born 1929) is one of our most inventive landscape
painters, a master of gardens, at home in Kew, Highdown or Sheffield
Park. Much influenced by the art of the past, Berg regularly makes
transcriptions of a wide range of images, from Mughal painting to
1930s London Transport posters. Berg's interpretation of Eric Ravilious’
night train transforms the pale yellows and greens of the original
to make a new and subtly different painting.
AFTER RAVILIOUS’ NIGHT CROSSING 2007
OIL ON CANVAS 76 X 102 CM
MARCIA BLAKENHAM (born 1946) had no orthodox training in
sculpture or ceramics. Her real education has come about through
contact with three individuals: the painter Cecil Collins, whose radical
life classes she attended, “the artists’ potter” Ann Stokes and the
sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. She describes her friendship with Paolozzi
as “life-changing”, particularly in the way it enabled her to look freshly
at things, without preconceptions – a freedom evident in the works she
makes today.
SNOW STARTED TO FALL 2010
TERRACOTTA AND SLIP 14 X 12 X 20 CM
TYREL BROADBENT (born 1954) trained as an art historian, and
there is often more than a hint of myths and archetypes in his imagery.
This versatile artist, who chose to work outside the mainstream, has
developed several styles, ranging from the detailed and naturalistic to
the fantastic and satirical. In his ceramic work, Broadbent relishes the
decorative possibilities of colour and pattern, using an often oblique
narrative line to waylay the viewer’s interest.
MORESTORYWARSTORY 2010 CERAMIC TILE 14 CM SQ
STEPHEN CHAMBERS (born 1960) These days, Stephen Chambers
is almost as well-known a printmaker as he is a painter. He brings
to the medium a sure sense of design and an inventive approach to
colour. A slow and painstaking painter, printmaking offers a swifter
method of working, a change of pace he finds valuable. He continues
to explore the same kinds of subject matter, but is determined not to
get lost in the seductions of technique.
MEDLAR MEDDLER 2010 SCREENPRINT ED. 50
PAPER SIZE: 57 X 44 CM IMAGE SIZE: 39.5 X 29.5 CM
ROLAND COLLINS (born 1918) The tradition of topographical
painting in watercolour is one of the great glories of British art. Roland
Collins belongs very much in this tradition, and his work should be
viewed in the context of such admired older contemporaries as Eric
Ravilious, Kenneth Rowntree, Edward Bawden and John Piper. His
depictions of the Padstow May Day celebrations are typical of his
enthusiasm for recording the look of buildings and ephemeral effects.
MAY DAY, ST. PETROC PADSTOW 1974
GOUACHE ON PAPER 38.2 X 53.8 CM
NIGEL ELLIS (born 1960) is a sculptor who paints. His concern with
appearance and identity has led him into a long series of paintings
exploring how we make sense of what we see. He has experimented
much with colour reversal – the kind of effect you find in a
photographic negative – and has recently taken to painting the coastal
landscape of Cornwall in this manner. His paintings brilliantly evoke
the edges and surfaces of the rocks.
TREVOSE (2) 2009 OIL ON PANEL 22.9 X 30.5 CM
JASON GATHORNE-HARDY (born 1968) is a draughtsman tied to a
particular stretch of East Anglia – to the Alde Valley in Suffolk which
leads down to Snape and its famous Maltings. He draws the farm
animals and the wild birds of this area, and particularly the blackheaded
gulls that abound there. In singing, precise lines he draws them
out in the field and back in his studio, re-creating the way they move
effortlessly on the wind.
BLACK-HEADED GULL ON THE WING – SNAPE MARSHES
2010 GRAPHITE ON PAPER 31 X 41 CM
MAGGI HAMBLING (born 1945) When she was a child, Maggi
Hambling walked into the sea to talk to it. For the last eight years the
sea has been her principal subject, although she remains best-known
for her paintings of people. Hambling likes to explore her subjects
thoroughly, and she not only paints the sea in oils, but makes bronze
sculptures and etchings of it, and now studies in acrylic which evoke
the timeless rhythm of the waves.
LAUGHING WAVE 2009
ACRYLIC ON PAPER 30.5 X 38.1 CM
JOHN HUBBARD (born 1931) Hailing originally from Connecticut,
John Hubbard settled in England in 1961, after a usefully international
training in America, Japan and Rome. That continental drift still
distinguishes his work which has always had an un-English Abstract
Expressionist sweep to it, though Hubbard’s principal subject has been
landscape. His watercolours of trees relate to a recent series of
impressive charcoal drawings shown at Kew, and make a bridge
between his graphic work and his paintings.
GROUP OF TREES 6 2004
WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER 31.6 X 35.4 CM
DAVID INSHAW (born 1943) Bonfires hold a special place in the
paintings of David Inshaw, symbolizing the awakening of sexual desire,
anger and adversity, besides being beautiful things to paint.By contrast,
the village cricket match, another subject to preoccupy him, is a
reassuring symbol of order. Inshaw’s cricket paintings are famous, but
his cricket etchings cover a wider territory, from the match tea to the
landscape visible from the batting crease. English as a wet summer.
BONFIRE ON A GRASSY SLOPE 2009
OIL ON CANVAS 19.8 X 19.8 CM
TORY LAWRENCE (born 1940) Although Tory Lawrence came
relatively late to painting (in 1982), her work has recently begun to
attain a new authority and assurance. Primarily a landscape painter,
though she also makes effective portraits of farm animals and people,
every year she spends part of the summer painting in Cornwall. She
builds up her images with strong touches of oil to achieve lively textures
and a powerful sense of the physicality of what she’s painting.
EVENING NEAR ROSCARROCK, NORTH CORNWALL
2010 OIL ON BOARD 22.9 X 30.5 CM
COLIN SELF (born 1941) is often categorized as a Pop artist and
consigned to that particular chapter of art history. In fact, he evolved
his own brand of Pop art – less a celebration of consumerist society
than a critique of it. Always a lucid and original draughtsman, Self went
on to extend his territory through watercolour landscapes, collages and
a long series of etchings which have explored the power politics and
mores of contemporary society.
THE BEE KEEPER (MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD) 2008
ETCHING ED. 50 IMAGE: 23 X 15.5 CM
PAPER: 33 X 24.5 CM
JO WELSH (born 1965) was a printmaker long before she embarked
on the series of witty surrealist tableaux for which she is best known.
In Anatomy of Melancholy she returns to etching with great panache,
wilfully subjecting the human form to distortion and hybridisation,
with all the fairy-tale poignancy of a Paula Rego narrative, but without
the logic. Welsh trawls the collective unconscious for telling juxta -
positions, re-cycling the improbable, the discarded and the forgotten.
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 2010 ETCHING ED 15
IMAGE: 41 X 31 CM PAPER: 56 X 38 CM