One tenth of a huge private collection focusing on contemporary and emerging art is being exhibited in the 176 project space, an old Methodist church in Chalk Farm. It is the first time even this much of the collection has been on show, over two hundred works out of two thousand collected by Anita Zabludowicz, a founding supporter of The Zoo Art Fair. If you haven’t got to it yet it is a must see, so get down there sharpish.

The quirky, decorative interior, and powerful stone pillar entrance lends a theatrical glamour, a perfect setting for the ‘salon style hang’ chosen by the curator Anna-Catharina Gebbers . A refreshing departure from the concrete white cube which, you could say, is becoming a bit of a ‘Noughties’ phenomenon.

There are some classic pieces and many works by impressive artists that have not yet become the superstars they hopefully will. Plus the odd name dropper - e.g. that photograph of Tracy Emin arranging money to go where, perhaps, it shouldn’t. The great mixture in content, style and curatorial freedom encourages the viewer to find their own random connections and associations between works. The shear scale of pieces allows you to trace trends in the UK and international art scene over last decade. Death, transience and religion seemed  to reoccur in many of the pieces, the depiction of the human skull for instance has become a popular icon, from paintings such as Skull by Tomery Dodge in the back hall, Nathan Mabry’s weird bronze skulls with animal masks, and a white motorbike helmet cut into a skull shape by Mike Nelson, to mention just a few of its uses in thei exhibition. (Perhaps with the late Alexander McQueen’s iconic scarf and old Damien Hirst with his diamond skull - it is have become a growing symbol of the last decade.)

One of the most impressive rooms is the double height space behind the main hall; showing a suspension of DIY tools from ceiling to floor, Five Tools in a Straight Line, Grayham Hudson, and a totally retro 80’s neon/black and white patterned structure, Dollar City, (which would not look of place in the Three Men and a Little Baby’s penthouse even though it was made in 2008) by Gosha Ostretsov. And the more earthy work by Nicole Wermers, Untitled Bench - incorporating purple slate, golden quartzite and mixed glacier with sand and acrylic.

Look out for Colin Chilag and David Quan’s immense pencil drawn comic strip (interspersed with pockets of detailed miniature paintings) debating the existence of God through hypothetical Where’s Wally conundrums.

On until the 9^th of May. Free. Visitor’s tours on Sunday at 3pm, with talks by the artist’s – see website for dates.

www.projectspace176.com

 

Feeling a little adventurous this evening? A hotel in Kensington is the venue for a one night show from the Rented By The Hour project group. Four artists - Olivia Hicks, Beatrice Haines, Anna Curtis and Laura Clarke - have produced work in a ‘psycho-social’ response to the surroundings.

http://rentedbythehour.blogspot.com

Apartment no. 21 of the Clearlake Hotel, 18/20 Prince of Wales Terrace, Kensington, London W8 5PQ.

If you’re around Redchurch Street anytime soon have a look in Kaleid Editions, an artist led bookshop which encorages artists to produce a one off printed book as part of their practice. It also exhibits  on site and has Owen Bullett’s incredible sculptures there at the moment, plus the re-imagined landscape paintings of Louise Bristow.

And while I’m writing just to let you know that there was a wicked set of openings last week down in Redchurch St. But with Art Sleuth’s camera broken there was little that could be done to cover it…try Artwars Project Space right next door to Kaleid Editions for the  group show Hot Boredom (not covered on their website) which still should be going. Thanks to Martin Sexton and co we have a mixed media show with a sense of humour - ingenious what a broom that magically stands upright by itself and a candle can create. An excellent find. Also includes spoof 1970’s film documenting the end of the world in 2020 with aliens landing on Mayan ruins.

N.Chamberlain, Danny Rolph, Mixed media on triplewall, 105 x 100 cm, 2009

Ramsay MacDonald, Danny Rolph, Mixed media on triplewall, 150 x 210 cm, 2009

PMQ 12, Danny Rolph, 2009, Pencil on paper. 28 x 38 cm

Images courtesy the artist, Danny Rolph, and Poppy Sebire Gallery.

Danny Rolph creates striking multi layered collage paintings using a top layer of triplewall - an industrial plastic roofing material made of clear perspex strips - stuck over a base canvas. He paints over and under and on both sides of each layer, often using cuttings from newspapers or consumer items and varying types of paint. Four of his large peices are exhibited at Poppy Sebire’s latest exhibition and some smaller canvas paintings and drawings.

His main works are less about a meaning and more about the act of ‘doing’. He said in an interview (see link) he performs a ‘non deliberate act of painting’ using materials for the sake of themselves, an aesthetic experiment rather than to convey a purposeful message. Although it is an abstract way of ‘doing’ the finished product is almost a contradiction to this in its’ sharp composition and graphic design style outcome. There are consistencies with his work and other contemporary painters such as Fiona Rae and Jamie Gili not least in form and the use of luminous bright colours.

An interesting side effect is that a photo of the work looks very different to the real thing, the reduction of detail giving a polished feel. The rawness of the actual works reference that time warn Modern Art underpinning, the use of the banal object, going back to artists like Kurt Schwitters. Here a building material is being used, in part, to create what is essentially a fine art painting. The lines of the triplewall prevent total clarity of the layers and patterns underneath. Although the viewer is being exposed to each layer, they are also being held back from seeing ‘the whole picture’. Printed material from an everyday existence, some or perhaps all personal, are stuck between the layers, partially visible. Flyers from old exhibitions, an old photo of himself, pages from The Power Rangers colouring-in books, newspaper cuttings of transport, bits of vinyl records are combined to create a scrap book effect, an embalmed time capsule. Without a clear message or purpose he has created what is a jumbled woven fabric of art and information, the random paper items and paint forms giving an individual make up, a sort of DNA, for each painting.

Exhibition on till the 20th of February
www.poppysebire.com

Perhaps because of the London Art Fair there are some short term free entry exhibitions to be taken advantage of around London this weekend. 

On Friday the 15th Jan 2010  there is Swan Song - a one night only exhibition curated by Rowena Chiu who was also responsible the brilliant  Concrete and Glass exhibition in the Shoreditch Town Hall basement 2009. (see old post). It’s at St Anne’s House,  W1D 3EF, from 6pm with afterparty. The building is soon to be torn down so it is a real one off.

And having it’s preview tomorrow too is Detox at 16 Hoxton Square, where the Concrete Allotment Projects are putting on a ‘pop up’ group show exploring the facination with detoxification.
From: Thursday to Sunday, 16 January - 6 February, from 12-6pm (Sat 10am-6pm)

A more permanent group show open 21st of January to the 14th of March is Shudder  a group exhibition in The Drawing Rooms, showing powerful and varied animation from eight artists.

A cutting edge attitude to their selection of artists has done Lazarides proud and a testament to this is their excellent group show Grifters exhibiting the Outsider artists at Rathbone Place on till the 16th of Jan.

As an exhibition running alongside street sculptures and paintings put up around London in December, it is a mixture of installation, taxidermy, street art, painting and photography with a witty, fashionable and a distinctly urban feel.

Highlights include Mark Jenkins, The Metro Newspaper’s flavour of the month, who has produced a chilling horror/The Matrix movie style moment in sculpture with eerily real looking bodies mummified in cling-film pods suspended from the ceiling. Invader has created a Dan Flavin space invader light show and Emma Tooth has given the Madonna and Child a Croydon Town make-over.

Door With Tits by Charlie Isoe is a tongue-in-cheek Surrealist installation – a testament to a tortured writer perhaps. Behind a door with fake boobs guarded by a porcelain jaguar with it’s face smashed in, is a chair and desk with typewriter rigged up to a shotgun directly over it - pull the string tied to the trigger in-case of writer’s block.  He seems to be going through a Francis Bacon phase with his dark and moody canvases upstairs.

David Choe is displaying two huge paintings in his typical street art style - combining oil, house paint, spray paint and ink to create a multi layered quilt of pattern and images.

Do not forget to pay attention to the corridors of the two floor exhibition where a large and intricate black and white wall piece has been created by Lucy McLauchlan.

There are many more artists besides, one not to miss!

Covering practically every inch of the rabbit warren like space that is the Shoreditch Town Hall basement, the East End Arts Club put on a varied exhibition displaying a huge array of street art, graphic design led art and work from illustrators.

Including Dan Kirchener’s and Jane Grosvener’s stylised paintings, the manipulated images of Julien Deghy and Kevin Green and Ned Scott’s r wooden wall sculptures, sketches and plans. Also Ting Ting Cheng’s astute modern adaptations of traditional paintings; still life fruit and veg with a difference - a Louis Vitton banana and Nike cucumber - and Posh spice playing the role of Queen Victoria in a regal scene attended by Boris Johnson and Simon Cowell.

In a corner by the bar was spotted Amy Hye Jung Shin’s conceptual forest of stitched faces and doll sculptures that had a certain Ernesto David about them.

Dark winding corridors and pokey rooms were perfect for creating enclosed spaces for artists such as Elod Beregszaszi who has lit up his paper creations in UV light. Just from folding and cutting single pieces of plain A4 without any wastage he has made hundreds of patterns and models (photo to come). Taking advantage of the site too were the Kuntists who had created an Emporium of humorous bad-taste. Telling it how is really is Jordan, Peter Andre, Amy Winehouse, Gary Glitter and Nick Griffin were among the condemned in over-painted photos, cartoon paintings and newspaper front pages.

Look out for the next event at http://www.eastendartsclub.co.uk/

Recently Art Sleuth was invited along to the grand opening of a permanent site specific work for Art on the Underground created for the new Piccadilly line concourse as part of the extension to the King Cross St Pancras Underground station. The excitement built as we walked through the open barriers and travelled down two long and shiny new elevators. Eventually we came to the piece itself.
It was a grey wall - with a semi-circular grey panel arranged on top of it.

In fact it was such a similar colour grey to the rest of the station and situated exactly where you might find a wall that if there had not been a crowd of people around it you could have been mistaken in thinking that it was the work of an over-zealous architect using up the few remaining grey panels with a bit of flair. Or perhaps more likely you could walk past it, being cut up by a slow moving tourist cursing the tube you just missed without giving it a second glance. The most excellently named Knut Henrik Henriksen has created an artwork which according to the leaflet is “incognito, yet elegantly obvious”. It will be less elegant in a few years when the heartless general public have stuck bits on chewing gum down the sides of it.

The leaflet also has an example of a previous work by Knut Henrik Henriksen. The aptly named Architectural Doubts is a partition in a hall making one room into two. Surely this is what you would employ a builder to do if you wished to divide a room? You too would be having ‘architectural doubts’ if it was divided by a wall of what looks like laminate flooring. With no door. A case of The Emperors’ New Clothes or work by a genius?

If you are going to see any show out there right now then this is it. Knowing that the artists are offenders gives this exhibition both a unique and hard-hitting edge, but the quality of work shown and the spectrum of ambience from witty to meditative to exceedingly dark makes Art by Offenders is a real success.

The eclectic mix of 140 exhibits picked from 6000 entries, as you would expect, has thrown up some incredibly talented artists including the winner ‘Michael’ in the Five pieces showing the scope of his ability and style. Also Joe Barnard’s Elephant painted collage and John Clowes conceptual square formations and the sketches by Anon (see photo Rat Race)

One of the most emotionally driven paintings of the exhibition has to be Yours Sincerely, the Tabloid Press. Depicting a point of view you wouldn’t normally consider; the treatment of a young man and his family by the press once convicted in what obviously was a high profile case. The sky is black and thunderous and ‘ticks and leeches’ is written on the bloody red wall.  Depicting a stomach-turning moment the evil cartoon figures resembling Otto Dix like characters crowd around the young man, sneering and drooling business cards, microphones and cameras shoved towards him.

Then there’s the humorous work Bug Life, by Patrick John Raggs who collected and framed insects that happen to have made their way into his cell. There is ‘Santa’ – Who came for Xmas and ‘Sid’ – who liked porridge.

The Last Duff is a monumental piece by Steve Langford and Steve Chamberlain, enormous in size this surrealist and symbolic scene remade from Da Vinci’s Last Supper is a fight between god and the devil, the condemned man in the electric chair while the families look on and prison life goes on around him.

Some has a solid message. Like being wrongly convicted, such as the sculpture The Three Wise Judge Masters by Peter Thomas depicting three judges, hands over eyes, ears and mouth respectively. The desperation for freedom; Noel Parker’s One Off a beautifully painted portrait of a man with arms out stretched near the shoreline of a beach. Or just pure anger and desperation like Recession, three black and blood red abstract paintings by Danny Morgan. However escapism plays a big part in the exhibition too, prisoners with imagination.

The poignant thing about this exhibition is that like most (good) art it reaches into the minds of the artists, but in this case it could be someone who is doing time for a serious crime. You get mixed feelings and you wade into a grey area that throws up questions. Should you eliminate the history of the artist from the work in front of you? How would you feel if the work on show was by a criminal who had harmed you in some way? Yet Art by Offenders and the scheme behind it run by the Koestler Trust which was founded in 1962 by writer Aurthur Kostler, a political detainee himself, is one of the best examples of art therapy you could possibly get, and has produced an exceptional exhibition.

All the paintings are for sale at very reasonable prices, from around £50 to £200.

Free and open till 8pm every night at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre. Till the 6th of December 2009.

A windy and rainy night kept openings on Vyner Street rather quiet this Thursday. In the latest instalment in a series of dual Solo exhibitions at Fred Gallery, Martin Brown and Guy Richards Smit had a room each to display their current projects.

Martin Brown is showing a series of beautiful little paintings, a sort of modern day version of Dutch 17^th century domestic images with perhaps a hint of Victorian portraiture in their too. They are highly detailed, capturing faces brilliantly and some so small they are the sizes of a normal photograph print. Having moved from Australia in 2003 perhaps it is his keen eye as more of an outsider to London culture that has given him such a great insight. Snapshots of individuals, perhaps his friends, a group of fairly young Shoreditch types and landscape scenes of local spots such as the canal near Vyner Street and ‘Catch’ the bar on Kingsland road produce a gentle representations a modern (East London) life.

Alternatively Richards Smit’s work is far from realistic or in anyway tasteful. In fact it is totally the opposite. His main project centring on bizarre videos in the name ‘black comedy’ which although mildly amusing could also be filed under misogynistic soft porn with the artist making pouty young women take their clothes off while he oogles and doctors performing some peculiar examinations on young Asian ladies.  You are free to make up your own mind.  Paintings and drawings taken from the videos are also shown and a humming sound track accompanies the odd display. At the entrance to the room is a video and drawings dramatising army troops ‘hot body robbin’ - stealing jewellery off the chard remains of a dead bodies. But any real message (if there is meant to be one) is subtracted by the rather pointless main body of work.

It has to be said that one artist offsets the other which is probably the point of sticking the two together but with mixed results from Richards Smit’s work. Worth going along to see Brown’s little discerning masterpieces though….