Art on a Postcard Summer Auction private View, Hoxton Gallery, London, June 2023 – Art on a Postcard have set their standards high in recent times, last Winter’s Bomb Factory viewing of the cards was always going to be a hard act to follow, there’s been a number of small auctions for various causes since The Bomb Factory show but the now annual Summer and Winter shows and auctions are the big ones. 2023’s Summer Auction has just gone live on line and last night was the one night opportunity for a viewing of the paintings and pieces featured this time around.

This time Hoxton Gallery is the host, a gallery currently housed over two fabulous floors of a Georgian townhouse on City Road somewhere towards Islington, wonderful art gallery, all peeling wallpaper and stripped back paint  rather than plush white walls. Tonight  it doesn’t feel quite such a big event as last Winter’s wonderful Covent Garden Bomb Factory show, is there less art this time or is just a little more compact in the smaller rooms of the house? Whatever the answer, it might well be even better this time around in terms of the actually art on view. There’s some delicious little pieces here, actually there’s nothing little about the majority of the pieces here, they might be postcard size but there’s some very big paintings in here.

It is eclectic of course, lush still lives, oranges, lemons, pears, abstract pieces, things of a more illustrative or graphic nature, landscapes, people,animals, trees, there isn’t much in terms of street art flavours, nothing very urban, besides that there’s something here for most people. I suspect almost everyone will have a different set of favourites, there really is a battle for attention going on, so easy to miss something first time. And as always, you do need to see the work in the flesh, pretty much everything here comes to life in a way it doesn’t quite on the Art on a Postcard auction site. Bid with confidence people, everything looks even better in real life than it does on line (and so much of it looks good on line).

Already established as quite an event, an important date on the London art calendar and have they really only been holding their Summer auction events for just five years?  Once again the annual Summer Auction is in support of The Hepatitis C Trust. “The auction boasts an extraordinary line-up of emerging talents and established names in the art world including Corinna Button, whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture and printmaking and whose work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions over the last two decades; Jeremy Deller, an AOAP-favourite and celebrated English conceptual artist and Turner Prize winner; American artist Larissa Bates, whose artwork has been the subject of solo exhibitions around the world including London, Berlin, New York and Madrid; and rising star Kora Mora Rojo, whose vibrant symbolic paintings have been exhibited in Mexico, Milan and London, with an upcoming debut solo show later this year.

Joining the roster is Zimbabwean-born artist Tafadzwa Masudi, whose poignant portraits featuring balloons and exploring the diaspora experience have garnered widespread acclaim and were recently featured in a solo show at JD Malat Gallery and at 1-54 London; British printmaker Kate Gibb, known for her captivating music sleeve artworks, most notably for The Chemical Brothers; and Irish painter Paul Nugent, whose uniquely layered paintings have been exhibited worldwide, including a solo exhibition at the VOLTA, New York.
 
The auction features a host of notable emerging talent on the cusp of greatness including current RCA MA student Ji Won Cha, whose thought-provoking artworks delve into the intricate relationship between landscapes and our sense of belonging; Ayumi Matsuma, a graduate of the New York Academy of Art, who has exhibited her artworks at prestigious galleries such as Flowers Gallery, Art Miami, and Sotheby’s, New York; and recent RCA graduate Alya Hatta, whose practice explores the Southeast Asian identity through the interplay of colour and form”.

Good to see Cultivate regular Caitlin Flood-Molyneux over there making what is possibly an Art on a Postcard debut, and that is one of the strengths of Gemma Peppé and her team, the curation, the finding of exciting new artists, it is something that has become a feature of the Art on a Postcard auctions now; the new names, the artists we might not know yet, the constant flow of new blood up there next to those more familiar names on the gallery wall (and the auction website). Art on a Postcard shows are genuinely exciting, there’s always something that catches your eye. and not always with the first initial viewing, you really do have to take your time exploring it all. There’s pieces in here in the gallery that you might miss first, second or even third time that suddenly jump out and demand your full focus of attention, the best pieces might not always be that obvious. There’s some really strong work in here (again) and as we’ve said before Art on a Postcard shows really have become events now, important exciting things. Art needs to engage and excite.   

I’m not going to pick out favourites or highlights right now, besides anything else, it is rather difficult. We will do some picking in a couple of days, this isn’t really the time and place. Last night’s viewing was about the whole thing, the collective whole, the rather exciting coming together of art and artists, about the curation, the selection, last night was about the exhibition as one whole exciting thing and as one whole thing, last night’s viewing was another Art on a Postcard triumph, another excellent show.  (sw)

The Summer auction is open now and runs on line until July 6th, view it all here

As always, click on a image to enlarge and see the whole thing or to run the slide show, if you see something that intersts you go find it here .