188. NIGHT, WESTMINSTER FROM MILLBANK TOWER by PETER SPENS

Oil on board 91 x 121.5cm

At the Cranley Gallery in Cork Street, Peter Spens' exhibition Site Specific is  a dazzling and animated display of cityscapes and landscapes and seascapes. But the sea, the mountains, the rivers and buildings seem not be hanging around as if waiting to be painted. Spens gets the essence of what it's like to be there on that specific night or day. This is equally true of his work on the Jubilee Festival and the Olympics.

In this picture Westminster shares the limelight with the river Thames.It's dazzlingly colourful: the sky echoes the  quivering river reflections, the lights blaze wholeheartedly from those windows and streetlamps. And we're up high - not on the famous Waterloo Eye which you can glimpse (to the right) on the south side of the river where I live, but atop the Millbank tower. The artists describes  'battling high winds and wild weather 380 feet up with a painting board in my arms'. From this vantage point buildings press breathlessly against each other, receding into the distance, giving the work an immediacy which allows a shallow canvas to lead us deep into the city.

Below is Morning, Eigergletscher 2011 , which is another scene it is my good fortune to know well. And a scene which has inspired artists many many times over the centuries. What I like about this painting is that, without detracting in anyway from the sheer sturdiness and  weightiness of the mountains, there's an element of playfulness and joy.  When talking of his work as a painter he maintains 'you must be clumsy in love': artist as risk taker, ebulient, immediate, but without underminng the deep seriousness of the work itself.

Oil on Board 22.5 x 40.5

The exhibition catalogue has an interesting introduction by Olivia Hetreed.  the screenwriter who won awards for her adaptation of Tracey Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her radical new version of Wuthering Heights,  opens shortly.

nytimes.com/.../painter-peter-spens-captures-beach-vo...
 cranleygallery.com/
londonscreenwritersfestival.com/speakers/olivia-hetreed

187. MONUMENTAL STEEL BULL by TERENCE COVENTRY

© 2012 Pangolin London

Pangolin is one of the  few galleries in London dedicated to exhibiting sculpture. Its current exhibition is of sculptors' drawings and works on paper, but outside is a changing exhibition of large scale pieces using the public spaces and canal-side at Kings Place. Here is a bull poised at the edge of of the canal, which you can see in the top left hand corner. It has a weighty physical presence - a bull you would not want to tangle with. That tail is sprightly, but not playful; the horns sprout danger. It's made of steel and my Basher Science Book on the Periodic Table (Adrian Dingle) says that iron is the most important metal ever known to humankind and when mixed with small amounts of carbon to make steel, the sky's the limit. The Pangolin Foundry is Europe's largest sculpture factory.

Pig farmer ploughs a new furrow in sculpture is the heading of a Guardian article on Coventry's work, together with an excellent 10 minute video. You'll find it at
guardian.co.uk/.../farmer-terence-coventry-sculp.

Rooks Copyright 2012 Pangolin

 It tells how after 25 years of farming in Cornwall, Terence Coventry's love of art turned him into a sculptor of bronze and steel. In the video he talks of the animals – pigs, cattle, goats, dogs -  that inspire him. Rooks are a continual source of inspiration as they crowd round farm machinery to snatch worms and grubs, particularly the moment when a living bird becomes weightless.  His sculpture, he says, 'is not of a rook but about a rook'.

If you are lucky enough to be in Cornwall at any time there's free access to a sculpture park where there are usually about 25 of his works on display. It's made up of 3 small meadows near the old Cornish coastal path 10 minutes' walk south of Coverack.

pangolinlondon.com

 kingsplacegallery.co.uk

186. 'LIKE A LAND OF DREAMS, SO VARIOUS...' by HUGO GRENVILLE

MEDICI GALLERY

 

... and now for something completely different...oil on canvas, 42 x 42 ins, a painting, a delectable painting which is neither didactic nor ponderous.

Hugo Grenville has been described as Britain's leading Romantic painter, He gives us less a straghtforward representation of a scene, more a re-invention, something freer, full of light and colour. You need to take your time to wander through this painting. Its full title is 'Like a Land of Dreams, So Various, So Beautiful, So New', a quotation from Matthew Arnold's poem 'Dover Beach'. 

The figure in the centre of the frame first catches the eye. She looks familiar, referencing earlier well known paintings, maybe some scupltures too. But there's so much more here to explore: the texture of that pretty carved pink and white chair for a start. And the round polished tables - one so near you could almost reach out and touch it - reflecting bountiful flowers and fruit. And why not walk outside? It's tempting because there seems to be the flimsiest divide between the room and the landscape. Before we know it we are present under a wide and beautiful sky. 

 "Jug Of Flowers, Winter Light"

oil on canvas 36 x 34in
''(My paintings),' writes the artist,' are for me celebrations of life. They are about light and colour and the things that make one want to get up in the morning...There is enough social realism around these days but I don’t think that’s where my skill lies. I think it is a very legitimate reason for painting, certainly for someone like Lucien Freud...but it’s not me...I have made a very conscious decision to separate my work from the time in which we live'.

medicigallery.co.uk
hugogrenville.com

185. THE UNNAMED WORD by PEDRO CABRITA REIS

TATE MODERN

There are some  unflattering comments on the internet from visitors to Tate Modern, who have accidentally come across Reis's sculptures. Does this really look as though a bunch of workmen have just gone off for a ciggie and a burger?

Am I prepared to wait and see?  Not for the workmen to come back, but to give the artist the benefit of the doubt.

Is the work melancholy, or is there a twist of the unexpected? Reis says he sees his work as an extension of his painting. He says he defines space in a gallery using industrial materials such as steel bars, window frames, fluorescent strip lighting, electric cable and glass bars instead of brush strokes Is it fanciful that to see those hollow tubes - stuffed with slim luminous cables which flutter with silver and gold and pink light-  as glowing like the wings of a Renaissance angel? Do those shapes and that lighting suggest a funfair? Probably that's going too far.. And his work is arresting. What looks provisional, even abandoned- - and is given ambiguous titles -  alludes to the 'homelessness' of every human being and could be set alongside the paradoxes of life which theologians and poets and dramatists invite us to consider.
 pedrocabritareis.com
tate.org.uk

184. THE CRYSTAL QUILT by SUZANNE LACY

       The Tanks in Action
Tate Modern until October 28 

For 15 weeks we can wander inside The Tanks, a vast raw industrial space, all stark lighting and polished concrete floors. The Tanks sit beneath what will be a 10-storey extension to Tate Modern topped by a terrace overlooking St Pauls Cathedral, being built because the present building attracts nearly 5 million visitors a year, double the number it was designed for.

 Meanwhile we have The Tanks In Action, a festival of 'non-marketable' art works such as live performances, installations, film works, talks and symposia. It’s said that economic austerity and inflated art market prices have produced a backlash in their favour.

The Crystal Quilt 1985-7 is an art work which intervenes in social and political questions. It focuses on older women and the way they are portrayed. It culminated in a performance on Mothers Day 1987 in Minneapolis, where 430 women over 60 became a 'quilt', emblematic of work which has for centuries united women of different ages, classes and races. They sat 4 to a table in a patterned arrangement on a large rug, changing the position of their hands every ten minutes to echo the shapes of different quilt blocks. Some of their personal memories and reflections were woven into a soundtrack.  What the audience sees now is a lively, fast and quixotic video, a documentary, quilt, photographs and sound piece.
The work raises the question as to whether art can change society. And if it does is it still art? Something like this is being discussed post- Olympics, when tens of millions of viewers shared new and challenging images of what it means to be a member of the human race.

Lacy, 66, wants to create a new work in the performance space to celebrate the stories of older women in Britain, whose issues may be very different, such as access to digital media and concern about the climate/environment. Why not a ‘Granny Flash Mob’, usually associated with youth and spontaneity? Email action.lacy@tate.org.uk if you would like to take part.

tate.org.uk

Alex Rotas has an exhibition at Murray Edwards College Cambridge (used to be New Hall) showing photographs of women athletes in their 60s, 70s and 80s still competing in international competitions. She remarks that the women showed their age but still looked outstandingly alive and vibrant.

murrayedwards.com.ac.uk

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2012/07/suzanne_lacy_interview is an interesting interview with the artist by Caitlin Hayward-Tapp

At the entrance to The Tanks are sticky labels with questions like: How Can Art Change Society? and What is the Role of the Audience? Unpeel them and stick your answers on the wall.

183. TROPHY by CONRAD SHAWCROSS

The moment you see The Trophy you are glad it is inside a glass case. It's a complex kinetic sculpture, bearing a passing resemblance to the pictures of the machine which was recently sent on a jaunt up to Mars to discover signs of life. This alarming robot is the goddess Diana who, in Titian's Diana and Acteon,  is distressed and vulnerable, having been spied upon by the unfortunate Acteon while bathing with her nymphs. In a later painting, The Death of Acteon, she exacts a terrible revenge: he is transformed into a stag, then torn to pieces by his own hounds. Here he is represented by a bare antler carved out of wood.

The light at the end of a probe is unnerving: it spirals and judders and swoops. At times 'Diana' seems to be preening and caressing herself, beguiling, almost flirtatious.Then the probe swings out towards Acteon, now  teasing and playful. But the mood changes. It becomes menacing and monstrous. Acteon cannot flinch or move. Then another switch - she seems content, as if conducting an impartial post mortem on her miserable victim.

I'm aware that attributing human motives to non humans is something I've tried to avoid all my life. But, as the person I was with said, 'robots are to art this year what 3D printing was to art in 2011'. You have to see to believe.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a shadowy room which feels a bit like a corridor. It's hard to stay there with these three momentous Titians - Diana and Callisto, Diana and Acteon and The Death of Acteon. They need time and a good light but time is nibbled away by curiosity as to how three living artists have responded in the adjoining rooms. As well as Shawcross's Trophy, Chris Offilli's beautiful paintings in breathtaking colours transpose the classical world to Trinidad; and Mark Wallinger invites us to invade the goddess Diana's private space once again by peeping (one-eyed like the probe) into her bathroom.

Metamorphosis is a remarkable exhibition. A bit of a fairground. To celebrate the bringing together of these three Titian paintings, (two of which have been recently acquired), the help of not only artists but choreographers, composers, musicians, designers and poets has been called upon. We are invited to listen to poetry as well as inspect costumes, installations, set designs, paintings.

On the way out is the small gallery cinema showing clips from the ballets and a number of poets reading their specially commissioned work. (Patience Agabi, Christopher Reid, Seamus Heaney and Sinead Morrissey are the poets who get my vote). You can buy a beautifully illustrated book of the poems together with an essay on Ovid, Titian and English Poetry, and images of all three  Titian paintings. 

Metamorphosis: poems inspired by Titian, published by The National Gallery, only £8.

You can also get a stunning image of Trophy, of the Titian paintings, and much much more if you follow the links on     nationalgallery.org.uk

182. BRADLEY WIGGINS GOLD by RICHARD WENTWORTH

Photographer: Richard Wentworth/guardian.co.uk

Thanks to the Guardian series Olympics on Art  for this picture

Richard Wentworth gave up making sculpture for a while in the 1970s, thinking it had become 'as dry as broken biscuits'. Fortunately he changed his mind. This is the man who reminds us that an object has a beginning a middle and an end . You select it, use it - and walk away. Closure. But a work of art is unfathomable and you can interact with it forever. He takes the hundrum, the quotidian,and makes us think again. At a Tate study day he casually observed ' a plate is the only object where you get your own and the minute you have finished with it, it becomes someone else's' You can see a couple of examples of his witty and refreshing sculptures in Blog 77.

Recently he was on a camping holiday  - a habit of 30 years - and he took this photograph. My experience is that camping draws you into an intimate world where warmth and water, toilet blocks and torches become as life-enhancing as birdsong and sunsets and dew on the grass... Meanwhile world events happen on another planet. 

He was invited by friends to watch some Olympics. 'Catching sight of television in bars is the kind of glimpsing I enjoy – images, languages and 'events' all arbitrarily associated with time and displacement...The latch on this door will remind me of the warm domestic afternoon in early August 2012 when our friends invited us to watch London as a site of Olympic spectacle. An odd thing if you know the city well, but much stranger if you are camping a long way away.'

The photo is a tease. You want to rest your eye on the star, the scarlet-clad genius known as Bradley Wiggins, a man in a million, who may vanish from sight in a few precious seconds. But the  latch and the overbearing nails are closer and more familiar. I watched the Olympic opening ceremony at a party with friends and family. The amazing spectacle was accompanied by a domestic soundtrack of explosive remarks, laughter, whooshes of appreciation, scraps of music identified by the cognoscenti, apologies for tears...I cannot think of one without the other.

Photographer: Richard Wentworth/guardian.co.uk

richardwentworth.com    for a large selection of images of his work