And onward from the pleasure of Bianca Raffaella’s opening next door at Flowers Gallery, onward to Kearsey and Gold’s still relatively new space on Cork Street. We’ve been covering shows at Kearsey and Gold for about a year now, there’s been a number of rather rewarding exhibitions in their London space that I guess should be celebrating a first birthday somewhere around about now? There has been some good shows covered on these pages although I will point out that last time I want there on an opening night they wouldn’t let me in and told me I didn’t look like I was interested in art (I guess the implication was I was jsut there for the opening night drinks?). Most of the time they ignore me as they pass out the champagne, their art is only for the beautiful people apparently (which is amusingly fine by me, leave me in peace with the art, I’m not the least bit interested in a glass of whatever, one day you might eve nwork out who’s reviews you’re posting on your gallery website.).
The politics and body language found in London’s art galleries is amusing, there’s certainly a strange body language in here tonight. I don’t know too much about John Pelling as an artist or a person, I was in Cork Street tonight for the Bianca Raffaella opening, and as always, I’m not going to pass a gallery (well there’s one or two we’ve given up on but on the whole, a gallery isn’t passed).
Apparently Tension, for that is what this show opening tonight is called, “brings together two distinct series of paintings by John Pelling from the early 2000s: the White Series and the Elongated Forms. Together, they embody the enduring interplay between spirituality and creativity in Pelling’s eight decades-long practice”. Apparently the two series will be exhibited together for the first time in this show, they almost feel like the work of two different people. John Pelling (born in 1930 in Hove, UK), lives and works in London, downstairs we’re looking at something rather graphically stylised, upstairs the ‘elongated’ work is rather different, there’s something here though, something that doesn’t feel quite right, there’s some uncomfortable that’s uniting the show and the two floors of work, a feel of objectification maybe? Something not quite right about the views of the female form? Something rather dated? Of the Seventies? Sexist rather than sexy? There’s something about this whole show that just doesn’t sit right. At the time of viewing I knew nothing much about John Pelling, I knew the show was opening, I knew I was going to be at the gallery next door, I knew I’d drop in (unless they blocked my entry again of course) and as I was going to be there I really didn’t need to do any advance research, the art can do all the talking and if it makes me want to, I can go look him up later. This show is nagging at me, the whole experience is, normally I’d just walk away, normally I’d just not bother saying anything, you know the policy around here, there are hundreds of art shows we’ve walked away from without having anything that positive to say, We generally can only be bothered when there’s something positive to say about a show or an artist, we don’t generally have time or inclination to say anything about a show that doesn’t grab us in a positive way. I really don’t like the subject matter hanging on the walls, or should I say I don’t like the way the subject matter in being treated? There’s something rather uncomfortable about the show…
This show has been pecking at me since I saw it last Thursday evening and now here on Tuesday afternoon I can’t just leave it. I just didn’t like those paintings and now I have actually bothered to go and look him up, I couldn’t leave it, it was nagging, and oh, that’s the score is it?
Never did have much time for Sunday television (to kind of quote the late Mr. Kilmister), I never did have time for the power tripping of organised religion, seems John Pelling is a one time clergyman, a church minister who strongly objects to the ordination of women and far be from me to tell people how their churches should be run but hey, if I was in any kind of way religious I don’t think I’d really want to be part of a religion that doesn’t see everyone as equal. There’s something very wrong about these paintings however well they might be painted.
“Art has been Pelling’s primary means of protesting his strongly-held opposition to the ordination of women. It has been observed that this position is in stark contrast to Pelling’s love of women generally, and of painting nude female forms in particular. In 1998 Pelling staged an exhibition at the Air Gallery, Dover Street, London, of paintings depicting his opposition to women priests and bishops. Images included naked women draped over church altars, large women with their breasts exposed fighting on the ground for a mitre, a coffin bearing the words ‘Church of England’, and diminutive male priests on their knees in solemn prayer”.
I thought there was something rather uncomfortable about John Pelling’s depiction of women, I though there was something that didn’t sit right about this show.
“I sound a bigoted old buffer,” said Mr Pelling as he apologised at the end of an interview (with Clare Garner of The independent, back in April 1998). “But at the same time, I do love the company of women. They add so much. They are everything to life.” – Everything to life, but not, it seems, to the church added Clare Garner.
Yeah, I didn’t like this exhibition, I didn’t like the objectification, I don’t like the way he paints women, I didn’t like the feeling in the room, I just didn’t like any of it, it was nagging. Sometimes it isn’t enough to just say so… (sw)
Kearsey & Gold is at 19 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LP.
Here’s another #43SecondFilm…
Previously…
If you must then here’s a slide show of images from the exhibition
THE ORGAN 