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| Teo Burki |
It seems so long ago now since we were
allowed to gather together to celebrate, well, anything, so before this
splendid show disappears from the memory, here’s some impressions. Opening on
12 March at the A.P.T Gallery in Deptford, the private view was a well-attended affair with lots of bubbly, and
sushi, that proved difficult to eat whilst practicing good CV hygiene. But,
enough of the food and onto the art.
Curated by final year and some first year
MA students at Central St. Martins, in what, as it turns out now, was in effect
their final degree show, it was a sadly short-lived five day exhibition, but
one that I am very glad I caught before virus precautions closed it. Twenty
seven students showed a wide variety of work across all media from ceramic
tiles, to stone carving, to painting and video.
I’m not going to comment on each person’s
work, rather I want to highlight those pieces that particularly appealed to me.
Art, it’s a taste thing. So, in no particular order:
Kathryn
Gee (film) & Rowan Riley (textile) presented an
interesting collaboration of diaphanous embroidered textile onto which a short
series of images was projected. The piece was pleasingly hung in its own side
room, and had the benefit of having an iron spiral staircase behind it, which
serendipitously added texture to the whole. I watched the image sequence
several times and enjoyed it more on each viewing.
Painting that on first encounter is precise
and perfect in its dreamy realism is the stock in trade of Sizou Chen. But look closer and you’ll see the disturbing nature of
the imagery of her young, if not pre-pubescent, girls; their bodies arranged in
un-natural poses and some with their limbs at impossible angles. They are
disruptive and deliberately challenge the viewer – why are you looking/don’t
look/ see, but look away, and so on. I found myself distinctly uncomfortable, and
that is the point, and more so when I watched her animations of the paintings.
Unsettling with a gloss of the beautiful, and nicely done.
Another woman artist presenting sexualised
images is Tijana Petrovic. Her large
scale painting, a semi-naked back view self-portrait of a woman in her
stockings and panties, is another deliberate provocation to which I have a
conflicted feminist response. I find it troubling that a contemporary artist
would paint an image that conforms tradition and in that sense plays to the
expectations of the male gaze. I did not see how, if at all, this was a
reclaiming of this ground; there was no defiance, no head turned staring at the
viewer. Indeed the face of this woman was absent, replaced by a head full of
strawberries. Surreal? Yes sure, and beautifully executed, but I guess I wanted
more from it.
The part-printed canvases of Eduardo Rebelo are fine abstractions in
that they are all about colour. For me they conjure the bright palette of
Southern Europe and I loved their vivacity, complementarity and bold mark
making. Equally vivid is the work of Teo
Burki whose piece here is a riotous collage of paper and paint presenting a
multiplicity of pleasing images that require work on the part of the viewer.
Initially the whole is an attractive abstract, but as one moves closer and
around the canvas, one is rewarded with a number of vignettes and some very
balanced painting. It’s part Twombly meets Rothko meets Matisse, but is in fact
none of these.
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| Clara Fantoni |
Total abstraction comes in the unlikely
form of a large plastic sheet made quite by chance as the result of it being a
groundsheet for other paintings. It is the work of Clara Fantoni who has produced/found an interesting piece with both
strong and subtle marks in a secondary colour palette. She has a challenge on
her hands though as to how to preserve work in this ultimately flimsy material
without destroying it.
K Blick is busy exploring traditional Portuguese ceramic tile making. Here
she has decorated an alcove’s worth of tiles with playful images of dinosaurs
and other animals in what is a patchwork of Greek myth meets Jurassic park with
a crawling baby thrown in. I rather enjoyed its mysterious wit.
Sculpture came in the form of Siân Fan’s pond of perspex waterlilies, which take the representational into
the digital age, as they are in part decorated with geometric shapes for their
greens. I found the superimposed disruption of other leaf patterns and other
flowers, and their botanical impossibility strangely pleasing. Emma Moore’s stone cutting is pleasing
for its utter simplicity of line, which exposes the beauty of the natural
materials she uses. Mounting the sculpture high on steel supports is an
excellent choice to bring the sun to eye level. I also enjoyed the deliberately
partially-made marble piece tucked against the gallery wall. Work in progress
has its own merits.
Politics was represented on a large scale by Simon Hodgkinson’s bold monochrome monotype/painting, which
dramatically counterpoints the catastrophic climate present with a possible
greener future. I enjoyed character spotting: Attenborough as god on his
central cloud, Morrison and Trump as caged dinosaurs, Greta Thunberg as
superwoman, along with a cast of endangered animals, slag heaps, pit winding
gear, solar panels and windmills. It is always a challenge to show polemic
lightly and with subtlety, and this work succeeds in this regard as it demands
close viewing to absorb the entire conceit.
One tip I would suggest it to catalogue the
show in advance. It was a pity that there wasn’t time for this, as whilst the
artists’ CV’s were provided in a helpful brochure, there was no clue as to the
title of any of the pieces, or indeed their prices if they had been for sale.
People are pretty shy about asking the cost or work, and so it might save
embarrassment all round, if a price list can be produced.
As to titles, I think artists in general are
missing a trick. Untitled might be a deliberate obfuscation, but I suggest it should
only be a rare one. Over-used it loses its power. More likely it might be, and
probably is in most cases, just a bit lazy. Titles are hard to write – tell me
about it - , but done well they can add to and not detract from the art work,
provide subtle or not so subtle clues to intention and meaning, and they do not
necessarily close down multiple readings. I would like to have known what all
of these works were called.
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Sam Shepheard-Walwyn
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And now for my star of the show. The outstanding painting for me is
that of Samsom Shepheard-Walwyn.
Only very partly influenced by Kiefer, and only in one landscape, his two other
paintings were my absolute favourite pieces for different reasons. His mythical
bird was a brilliant use of paint. The boldness with which he allowed white
paint to run in order to suggest the birds’ feathers was genius. And the
vicious dog chasing another white bird was excellently animated, teeth and all.
I’d happily have taken either of these home. Bravo.
Congratulations though to everyone - high quality work, very well displayed. It’s
just a real pity that not one of the tutors turned out to support their
students’ work and efforts in mounting a professional show. They could have
easily awarded the degrees on the basis of this exhibition alone. From me at
least: Distinctions all round.
