On we go with Part two, on from the Robin F. Williams covered in Part one. Graham Little pieces demand that you lean in. We weren’t really in Cork Street for Graham Little’s show, Robin F. Williams was the real reason for heading West on Thursday night, Alison Jacques is right over the road from the Williams’s show and before rushing off the main objective of the evening that is the opening of Pia Camil‘s solo show at Elizabeth Xi Bauer‘s. Graham Little pieces really do demand that you lean right in and search them
“In the mid-1980s, a copy of Vogue found its way into the home of Graham Little (b.1972, Dundee, UK) in Dundee, Scotland, by way of a neighbour who was gifting the magazine to the artist’s sister. As curator and writer Laura Smith recounts: ‘Little, already accomplished with a colour pencil, became fascinated by the powerful ‘80s imagery of self-assured, emancipated women’. From that moment, ‘[he] stopped drawing onions and branches and started drawing perfume adverts’…”
It is tempting the say these are delicate little pieces, they’re neither though, fairly modest in size, they are rather strong pieces, a take on Romanticism presented in some kind of Postmodernist way, intricately worked gouache and coloured pencil drawings, intricate plays, intrigue in a different way, refined and almost in a world of their own or at least a rather different art world (and quite a contrast to the Robin F. Williams exhibition we were exploring fifteen minutes ago). Sophisticated, tasteful, and as much as I can really respect them, maybe not really what the rather unsophisticated, some might say tasteless me wants to encounter. Respect to it all, not really doing it for me.
Time to exit Cork Street and and get over to Pia Camil‘s show, well via whatever we might encounter on the way back to the Lizzy Line, Bond Street station and over to Farringdon. The show at Hanover Gallery doesn’t look like it will welcome the likes of me and the scowl offered by the doorman confirms it, he doesn’t need to say anything..
A quick look at Tin Man‘s Ralph Steadman exhibition, well you know, the good Doctor Gonzo is on the wall (several times). The nomadic gallery is at 31 St George Street, London W1S 2FJ this week, the rather decent Steadman show runs from 2nd to 11th October.
Actually quite a few of the West End galleries are still preparing for openings next week, I guess the real circus lands at the weekend. Lot of industry at the big Pace space on Hanover Square, let’s get to the Pia Camil show and the next page.. (sw)
The Graham Little exhibition is on at Alison Jacques Gallery, Cork Street, London, until November 14th
Previously
As always do click on an image to enlarge it or to run the slide show…
