Frieze and Art gallery fest!...
What a few days I've had in London. Gallery visits are always great but really wear me out!
We ventured down to London especially for the Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park. Really lovely setting and a great area in London too.
We, that is a few third year and first year Fine Art degree students arrived on Thursday for a few days of serious art viewing! First of all we wandered around Cork Street, it's great how a street of galleries can exhibit such different work. My favourite pieces from here were...found....literally at the Mayor Gallery
the exhibition was
"Do not remove"
Bruce Conner, George Herms & Robert Mallary
Called "junk" artists for their reclamation of broken everyday detritus Conner, Herms & Mallary reclaimed and reformed their objects' life, combining Surrealist obsession with the found object with a dark sensibility of the Victorian collector.
what unites these three radical Neo-Dadaist junk artists is their poetically artistic transformation of lost objects, lost souls and flyaway thoughts. Collected, reclaimed and reformed and given the chance to speak and be desired again....
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burnt, tired and abandoned, yet my curiosity
about these objects was re-kindled
by the way they were all brought together. |
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delicate lace enhances this piece.... |
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layers upon layers of singed paper not only builds texture
but also my curiosity! |
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I just loved the attention to detail throughout
the whole installation |
At the end of the street we came to Haunch of Venison, Burlington Gardens...
it's a truly beautiful building and was exhibiting Frank Stella's "Collections" including work from 1958 to the present day. His work transcends boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture. He continually reinvents himself. This exhibition brings together in broad thematic groupings two and three D work which explore Stella's involvement with planes, surfaces, space and relief, colour and movement and the limits of representation. The exhibition cleverly draws links between his artistic creations throughout his career.
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K.37 - 2008 Polychrome resin
Combining weight, structure, solidity
and musical fluidity. |
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I loved the fact that his pencil marks are often clearly visible . |
It's interesting to know that Stella rarely primed his canvas, the cloth being an important part of his art - how the paint absorbed the cloth for, in my eyes a richer and fuller effect.
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great use of colours, Light, structure and shadows! |
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Jane getting up close and personal!...it was her idea to go to this exhibition
and I'm really glad we did... it was really inspirational. |
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I was seriously intrigued by his maquettes, very clever |
I noticed there was a lot of Ian Davenport's work in the galleries and the Frieze,
I saw his work for the first time in the Liverpool Tate last year, these paintings are normally quite large....I especially like the bottom of his paintings, how the colours are allowed to bleed into one another.
Frieze Art Fair features over 170 galleries from around the world, providing a unique opportunity to see and buy work by leading artists.
It's in a great location, on the corner of Regents park not far from Marlybone rd....I do love the shops around there!
It's easier to just show you some of the pieces I valued the most...
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Yuko Someya
water colour, lithograph & Chinese inks,
pencil & Japanese paper |
Always really
effective and a big crowd puller!
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Cornelia Parker's 30 pieces of silver 2003 |
I love the way there was sooooo much mixed media on show!
The clever and selective use of found, old, mundane materials given a fresh new and creative twist.
The variety of techniques and methods used to not only evoke new interpretations but also cleverly entwined the old with the new.
It's inspired me to continue using detritus within my work, possibly experimenting and expanding how I portray them within my work.
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Paul Chan Volumes 2011
Oil paint on 28 book covers
I was quite taken by this piece, simple yet effective |
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Michael Raedecker
Scheme 2011
Acrylic and thread on canvas |
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I loved both the choice of colour and the effective sheen
and the hint of shadow highlighted by stitches |
Out of all the pieces I saw at the Frieze I think Raedecker's Scheme was my favourite, just so amazing to see up close, his clever use of craft within his work is just beautiful
To the left:
Peter Blake
Children's games: puzzle compendium
(In homage to Robert Rauschenberg....I've been collecting items similar to these to make an assemblage piece to!!
to the right:
Marc Quinn
Fingerprint painting2
Oil, acrylic & silicon
Marc Quinn:
Zombie Boy (Rick)
Bronze
I loved the hybrid sculpture, but forgot to find out who it was by! ceramic face, fur, prosthetic....
Do Ho Suh
Specimen series:
New York City
Corridor - 1
2011
Polyester fabric
Totally loved these pieces...ephemeral, delicate, complex, quirky...fab!
A topical piece was by Michael Landy - the artist who famously destroyed all of his possessions. He's created a machine that destroys your credit card in return for a one-off, signed piece of art! You choose a colour, the operative then starts a huge Heath Robinson-style machine pieces clank and clang the pen whirls and draws a pattern on some paper (signed by Landy) and you say when you are happy. The operative then takes your credit card and puts it into the machine which shreds & totally destroys it!
mmmmm!
I can't not finish without including some of the dhhhaaarlings I saw over the couple of days away....
hope you've enjoyed reading, back again soonish!