191. RAIN ROOM by RANDOM INTERNATIONAL

16 - Rain Room Installation image © Felix Clay
Rain Room, Random International 2012.
Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery

THE CURVE, BARBICAN 

until March 3rd

Dio you remember fairy tales where you could step over mountains in your seven-league boots and swallow a lake too, if they happened to be in your way? But did anyone think of dry rain?

Here we have it at the Barbican. Except that it is anything but dry. Rain falls from the ceiling in silver shreds, it crashes onto the grating below your feet, bounces up as silver spheres like ball bearings, then settles under the grating in a dark pool.

But you, the person walking through the rain, are DRY.

11 - Rain Room Installation image
© Felix Clay Rain Room, Random International
2012. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery

Rain Room is a 100 square metre field of falling water into which you are invited to plunge.  First you hear the sound of the water, then feel the moisture in the air on your cheek. You step into the rain field, aware that overhead censors will pick up your presence and quietly steal away the rain from above your head.You may chose to become a performer on an unexpected stage, or to be still,  to reflect and to contemplate in this curiously intimate atmosphere,

 Legend has it that King Canute, tired of the vainglorious flattery of his courtiers, proved to them his fallibility by trying in vain to stop the incoming tide. He drew his throne up to the sea's edge, commanded it to be still - and his feet got very wet. Now we are all King Canutes, and successful ones at that.

The work invites us to explore what role science, technology and human ingenuity might play in stabilising our environment by rehearsing the possibilities of human adaptation. On four Sundays (18 Nov, 2 Dec, 20 Jan and 24 Feb) there will be a new short dance intervention (Wayne McGregor with a score by Max Richter) created in response to the Rain Room. Admission is free on a first-come, first served basis. You may also like to catch the Superhuman exhibition exploring human enhancement which happens to be on at the Wellcome Collection in Marylebone Road until Octeber 16th.
P S Jonathan Jones has a longer review in the Guardian's weekly Art Review (5.10.12)

www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery
www.randomdance.org/wayne_mcgregor

www.wellcomecollection.org

190. PILLOW by TANYA WOOD

Pillow 64 X 83.5CM

JERWOOD SPACE

‘To live is to leave traces’ 
 Walter Benjamin 1935

I can only invite you to imagine this beautiful, delicate pencil-on-paper drawing, which has been shortlisted for the 2012 Jerwood Drawing Prize. It's a work whose accomplishment is  astonishing, partly, perhaps, because pencil and paper is such a democratic form of making art, open to all ages and not requiring expensive tools or a great deal of space. And yet how anyone can transform flat paper into someting so subtle and gently nuanced is past my understanding.

As I stand in the gallery and look, I want to touch this pillow, confident that I'll be rewarded with a soft, gentle fabric. And I wonder who has been there to leave behind those gentle undulations? Perhaps it's been left undisturbed because the imprint carries memories of that person.  It might even still be warm from the heat of someone's body. It's not 'a' pillow, it is this pillow, here and now, unlike any other, with its own pattern of ups and downs.

When I contacted Tanya she sent me this:
 For me drawing is like touching, sculpting with a pencil. .I aim to evoke our senses, memories and feelings of vulnerability and security. This drawing is as it is, mistakes and all, no eraser, one mark, one life, however it turns out...(it) concerns the fragility and preciousness of life explored through the close study of surface disrupted by human actions. I have invested time in the meticulous, life-size rendering of these traces of existence, precisely documenting unrepeatable creases and folds, elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary.

 Tanya has had a work shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition which opens on October 12th. Her work will be on display at the Jerwood Gallery at Hastings in December

www.tanyawood.co.uk/

jerwoodvisualarts.org

thenationalopenartcompetition.com
jerwoodgallery.org

189. LONDONS TOPDOG by RAY RICHARDSON

LondonsTopdog 56 x 61 cm

 BEAUX ARTS GALLERY, CORK STREET

This is no ordinary dog. It's one of the Bull Terriers which make a menacing appearance from time to time in Richardson's paintings. Topdog is resting its fleshy flanks against the smooth skin of an armchair and we can only speculate how it got its name. Perhaps we'd rather not know. Dogs are supposed to be Man's Best Friend but when I catch sight of a Bull Terrier in a city street in real life, I'm wary: relieved that it's on the end of a stout chain - or even muzzled - and sad if its owner cruelly yanks the chain or administers a random beating.

Poundland 20 x 122cm

Anywhere You Fancy

Everything is Everything is an exhibition of paintings of a small corner of South London where the artist was born and bred. In Poundland there are few living creatures of any sort around. Like the American artist Edward Hopper, what is missing in Richardson's painting is as powerful as what is present. Parked cars wait in empty spaces like birds of prey - no happy chattering posse of picnickers is going to heave a hamper out of the boot. No one flings back pretty curtains to look out of those dead-eyed windows.
In Anywhere You Fancy we meet some of the characters who inhabit this world. Although Richardson's work is specific and accurate and local, we know what is going on. The gangster, the fraudster, the runaway, the ingenue, the man who promises us  the earth are all there in his work and as we scan their faces we're in touch with our own hopes and fears. I'm reminded of the impact Roy Lichtenstein makes in a completely different style of portrait painting.

Ray Richardson's work is new to me. He's been called the Martin Scorsese of art, and I'm aware that I approach it not always able to read its references to contemporary music and drama and cinema noire. Stripped of all that, I still find it powerful and orginal work.   

www.beauxartslondon.co.uk
www.rayrichardson.co.uk

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