Never mind that, that was then, this is about this week. Five more art things then. five art things, almost posted ahead of time this week (so don’t be phoning up to complain again). Five more art things happening somewhere around right now or any moment now. Five art shows to check out in the coming days. An (almost) weekly round up of recommended art events. Five shows, exhibitions or things we rather think might be worth checking out. Mostly London things for that is where we currently operate and explore, and like we said last time, these five recommendations come with no claims that they are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those annoying art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the “top seven things” or the “best things this weekend”. This is simply a regular list of five or so recommended art things happening now or coming up very soon that we think you might find as interesting as we think we will.
1: The art from this year’s annual Art on a Postcard Winter Auction is on view for one night only on Tuesday November 8th (6-8pm). at the Bomb Factory, 99-103 Longacre, London WC2E 9NR, you do need to get on a list to get in (RSVP here). The auction itself is an on-line affair, on now and until 15th November via the AOAP website. read more about it here – ORGAN THING: Art on a Postcard (AOAP) returns with its highly anticipated just opened Winter Auction. Look at all them names…
Art on a Postcard (AOAP) returns with its highly anticipated Winter Auction featuring a curated collection of emerging and established artists, including national treasure Grayson Perry CB RA, Brooklyn-based surreal artist Clayton Schiff who is listed as being ‘ultra-contemporary’, emerging talent Caroline Wong, who is currently soaring in popularity, and British artist Gavin Turk who has donated a piece which incorporates his current project, Portrait of an Egg.
Over 200 hand-picked artists have submitted works, with bidding starting at £50 to raise money for The Hepatitis C Trust and their campaign to eliminate hepatitis C in the UK by the year 2030.
The Auction also includes Turkish artist Özlem Sorlu Thompson who was one of the artists to create the giant fibreglass eggs for the 2022 Platinum Jubilee. Zemba Luzamba whose experience of migration to South Africa informs his contemporary realist paintings, infusing them with both satire and sympathy; and Han Han a portrait painter based in London who recently exhibited at the Society of Women Artists Exhibition at Mall Galleries, London.
AOAP always champions emerging young artists; this Auction includes works by Miyeon Yi current RCA student, whose work depicts everyday objects and the memory attached to them; Zurich-based Orlando Marosini whose colourful, energetic works are inspired by artists such as Basquiat and de Kooning; Rose Electra Harris, who won the Bainbridge Open at The Art Academy Prizes (2018) recently had a solo exhibition at Greatorex Studios, London; and Glasgow-based Isaac Aldridge who strives to explore the post digital in his bold and unexpected paintings.
AOAP is proud to feature a number of Royal Academicians in this Auction, including Chris Orr MBE RA, Stephen Chambers RA, Kenneth Draper RA, Norman Ackroyd RA, Ian Ritchie OBE RA and Mick Rooney RA. We are also delighted to welcome back AOAP alums Helen Beard, Ryan Mosley, Lois Wallace, Kelly-Anne Davitt, and Max Renneisen and we also spy Susie Hamilton, Heath Kane, some bloke called Sean Worrall, Russell Herron, among many others.
Art on a Postcard was founded in 2014 by Gemma Peppé as a unique way to raise proceeds for The Hepatitis C Trust’s vital work. AOAP prides itself on its curatorial eye, setting it apart from similar ventures – the auctions feature art icons alongside rising stars, ensuring each includes a diverse spectrum of international artists, with a particular emphasis on those potentially excluded from the art world. It’s a simple formula – a postcard-sized piece of paper is sent to the artist to decorate how they wish – that has produced spectacular responses from the highbrow to the humorous.
View the auction and the 585 lots here
2: David Tress – 2022 at Messum’s – The exhibition runs from 2nd until 25th November 2022 – “The energy of David Tress’s pictures is supplied by the playoff between his lights and darks, his textures and surface patterns”.
“His pictures are both abstract and realist, investigative and documentary, penetrating behind the obvious elements in his landscapes, and trying to release the true identity of the place beneath the picturesque. This major exhibition of new paintings, which opens at David Messum’s St. James’s gallery on 2nd November will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with writings by the artist himself, expanding on his working practises and the importance of immersing himself in the landscape which has become the catalyst for these magnificent, powerful paintings”.
Messum‘s is at 12 Bury Street, St. James’s, London, SW1Y 6AB. The gallery is open 10am until 6pm Monday to Friday (tough if you work a full week, shame they don’t do weekends). You ca nview the works on line here
3: Rebecca Brodskis, Let’s Talk About You And Me at Kristin Hjellegjerde Melior Place – from 4th November until the 3rd December, an exhibition featuring the latest portraits by French artist Rebecca Brodskis, “whose work evolves between conscious and unconscious spaces, leading to a reflection on the existence, the self and the otherness”.
“Wide-eyed, solemn figures stare out at the viewer from brightly coloured backgrounds, at once bold and spectral, familiar and strange. While Rebecca Brodskis’ previous paintings were based largely on memories of friends or the lingering images of people she passed on the street, these latest portraits are drawn entirely from her imagination, creating a deeper sense of interiority. Let’s talk about you and me; the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery contemplates the ways in which we modify our behaviour in order to align with social expectations and connect with others while sometimes repressing parts of ourselves.
Brodskis’ portraits are the result of the slow, meditative process of oil painting which requires the artist to wait for one layer of paint to dry before she can apply the next. As such, her compositions are precise and graphical in style. Each line is carefully delineated so that as you approach the canvas, the figures are abstracted into shapes, floating within a decontextualised, surreal space. Within this space, social and visual hierarchies are stripped away, and our perspective is refocused on colour and gesture. This latest body of work, however, is unusual in that it shares a warm colour palette of oranges, reds, pinks and yellows, which evokes the idea of an internal, bodily or even womb-like space. At times, this space seems to indicate emotional harmony, while at others, it serves to highlight a disconnect between the external and internal self. In the painting entitled Henrietta, for example, the female figure cuts a somewhat severe silhouette, gazing blanking into the distance while the space that surrounds her is filled with a vivid shade of red, perhaps hinting at some suppressed emotion. The large-scale diptych titled Dinner Party depicts a group of people gathered around a table, though instead of engaging with one another, they appear almost as if they are self-consciously posing for the viewer. Meanwhile, the cool lilac-coloured background adds to the sense of detachment.
Other works play with ideas of mirroring and reflection to explore the ways in which we form connections. In the paintings Safran and Yacine, the figures appear to almost melt into their backdrops while also appearing in dialogue with one another: their clothing, hair and eyes reflecting the same golden orange hues. The clothing and body language of the figures in Another Conversation is similarly synchronised. Though the figures here share the same canvas, they remain contained within their own spaces, separated by a thin border that cuts down the centre of the image with visibly defined ridges. However, there is still a sense of tenderness: their eyes meet across the gap, and their arms cross over the border to touch at the fingertips.
In a series of three paintings titled Secret #1, Secret #2, and The Revelation, Brodskis creates a narrative around self-perception. In both Secret #1 and Secret #2, a veiled figure is seated on a chair, with her back to us, gazing into a mirror. In both reflections, the figure is lifting a finger to their lips, gesturing at the idea of something hidden or unspoken: in Secret #1, the figure’s face is, and their hand is black; in Secret #2, it’s the opposite. The Revelation depicts the same setting; there is no woman in the chair, however; only the reflection in which the woman appears half white, half black, as if the different parts of her have combined. ‘It’s as if she’s left the real world and jumped inside herself,’ Brodskis says, ‘which is sort of what painting does for me. It’s a kind of therapy or meditation.’
Similarly, the stillness of the image, the smooth surface of the canvas, the balance of shapes and the rich colour tones invite a deep state of contemplation. Though each portrait possesses its own emotional resonance and tension, together, they form a crowd of faces that we are invited to step into and create our own conversations”.
Kristin Hjellegjerde Melior Place is, not surprisingly, found at 2 Melior Place, London, SE1 3SZ (there are two Kristin Hjellegjerde spaces in London), the show runs from 4th November until the 3rd December. The gallery is open Tuesday through to Saturday, 11am until 6pm.
Three and a bit, well we can’t really make it one of the five can we? Just a quick remineder that that show in Camden and those paintings from September;s Camden Inspire festival, now on show at Camden Open Air Gallery – a quick reminder that the show comes to an end on November 6th. A gallery full of street art that was originally painyed outside on the street in front of a festival crowd while music played and everyone danced – Camden Open Air Gallery is at 216 Camden High Street, London, NW1 8QR. The Camden Inspire paintings are up until November 6th and then the gallery kick in with and exhibition called Bittersweet by Leo Sweron and Jeru Kinnaird that opens on November 11th. the six photos just u pthere are from the show….
Previously – ORGAN THING: Two days of street art, music and more, did Camden inspire?
4: Dave Buonaguidi, High Crimes & Dirty Habits at BSMT Space – November 3rd until November 27th – “We all do things that we are totally ashamed of… Dave Buonaguidi (a.k.a Real Hackney Dave) is back with his third solo show at BSMT Space, saying them out loud with, ‘High Crimes & Dirty Habits.’
“In this era of cancel culture, we live in constant fear of getting judged or busted for a crime committed in a past life. What were your mistakes? Whether it’s what we do on OnlyFans or the inertia and procrastination that holds us back in life, perhaps now is the time to embrace our ‘failings’ and celebrate them! ‘HIGH CRIMES & DIRTY HABITS’ will be Dave’s third solo show with BSMT. This new collection features unique, one-off pieces combining found, textured materials with his trademark bright pink and 3D lettering.
“In my print work I love working with found ephemera and objects like maps and love letters and deactivated hand grenades and it’s the same with my street art work, using phrases and words that I have remembered and overheard from the past and brought them to life in 3D. Coming from the world of advertising where everything I did had to make sense, I now love to create pieces that don’t make sense but create a level of intrigue and I find that really interesting and powerful. The concept behind High Crimes & Dirty Habits was to explore the levels of ‘crimes and misdemeanours’ that we all experience on a daily basis, from procrastination to attempted murder, and create a reaction, I want people to see the pieces and be inspired or challenged, to feel guilty or slightly uncomfortable but most importantly to have a laugh.”- Dave Buonaguidi
BSMT Space these days is at 529 Kingsland Road, Dalston, London. E8 4AR. High Crimes opens on November 3rd with the show running until November 27th.The gallery is open Wednesday through to Sunday, 10am until 5pm, (6pm on Saturdays)
5: Gavin Turk, Kerze at Ben Brown – From 4th November until 14th January, 2023 – “Ben Brown Fine Arts is proud to present Kerze, their fourth solo exhibition of British artist Gavin Turk at the London gallery”. Not that this one needs a recommendation from us
The exhibition will unveil a new series of paintings, meticulously rendered still lifes of candles based on Gerhard Richter’s renowned photorealist paintings, though in typical Turk fashion the recognizable imagery is subverted by presenting the candles as recently extinguished, their curls of smoke trailing up the canvas.
Over the last three decades, Turk has relentlessly challenged notions of value, authorship, and identity in his work, often by boldly referencing the work of modern masters and infusing it with his own identity and hand as an artist. His work is at once provocative, disruptive, humorous, mischievous, and erudite, earning him the distinction as one of the most interesting and notorious contemporary British artists today.
‘I first came to notice this painting [Kerze, 1983] in 1988 when it was used on the album cover of Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. It seemed to extend the mood of the music and got lodged in my subconscious; now more than 30 years later, this feeling of pathos has started to reappear in my work.’ Gavin Turk
The exhibition Kerze, the German word for candle, will bring together 11 paintings based on Richter’s iconic series from the early 1980s of sublimely elegant and disquietingly haunting photorealist paintings of lit candles. Singular and in groupings up to three, arranged in hazily lit interior spaces, the still lifes are framed by the horizontal lines of tabletops and verticality of obscured curtains or windows in the background. In Turk’s faithful iterations, the candles have recently been snuffed out, their delicate threads of waxy smoke illuminating the canvas, altering the narrative, and shifting the symbolism inherent to the subject matter. Turk is fascinated by objects and imagery connected to the psyche and the surreal: candles, pipes, eggs, doors, windows, clouds, and smoke appear throughout his body of work. He consciously incorporates art historical references into his work, layering them mischievously like clues. Turk muses, ‘The candle is a metaphysical symbol, it is a clock, it is a guide, the lit flame is a burning energetic sprite; extinguishing it creates smoke, an afterlife, a holy ghost, a veil, a messenger.’
This body of work oscillates between a romantic or tragic dialogue with history and a puckish rhetoric questioning authenticity and identity. These memento mori works can be approached through a labyrinthine set of interpretations, nodding to the ‘tubism’ of Fernand Léger and graphic juxtapositions of Surrealist René Magritte, to the powerful symbolism evoked by Richter in depicting his candles, a charged motif that has been referenced throughout art history for centuries. The question now building from the narrative of the paintings: Why have the candles gone out?
Ben Brown Fine Arts is at 12 Brook’s Mews, London, W1K 4DG. The gallery is open Monday to Friday, 11am until 6pm
6: Born to make you happy at The Residence Gallery – The show runs from 5th November until 4th December . Not so much a recommendation as something that has us curious, An exhibition of new works by Débora Delmar, Lucy Evetts, Zoë Marden and Gray Wielebinski, curated by Helen Neven. The exhibition takes as its subject, pop star Britney Spears.
“The Residence Gallery is delighted to announce ‘Born to make you happy’, an exhibition of new works by Débora Delmar, Lucy Evetts, Zoë Marden and Gray Wielebinski, curated by Helen Neven. Taking as its subject pop star Britney Spears, the exhibition will explore issues of agency, construction of persona and self-coding, freedom and submission through paintings, sculpture and installation that also reflect confessionally on aspects of the artists’ own biographies and histories. An in-conversation with the artists moderated by Helen Neven and a performance by Zoë Marden will take place at the gallery on Sat. 24 November”
The Residence Gallery is at 229 Victoria Park Road, London, E9 7HD. The gallery is open Thursday to Sunday, Midday until, 3pm on Thursdays and Sundays, 6pm on Fridays, 5pm on Saturdays (what is going on?) The show runs from 5th November until 4th December with a so called private view on Friday 5th November 7pm until 9pm
And while we’re here those Cultivate on line shows go on…
THE ORGAN 