Tag Archives: art

the hypatia collection.

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Good art and beautifully designed chairs. Two of my very favourite things will be brought together in an exhibition by the Madrid-based artist Nikoleta Sekulovic, at Rebecca Hossack gallery in London. 

The Hypatia Collection, named after an Ancient Greek female philosopher famous for being the greatest mathematician and astronomer of her time, consists of ten paintings of female nudes, each seated on a chair from furniture company Viaduct’s collection. Each chair has been personally selected by the sitter. 

The paintings are acrylic and graphite on canvas, in a limited palette of mostly white, greys, black and browns; the soft, muted forms of the figures both contrast with and complement the angular lines of the chairs. I love how the paintings feel both modern and timeless. Nikoleta Sekulovic, Hypatia, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 180 x 130 cmNikoleta Sekulovic, Nossis of Locri, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 167 x 150 cmNikoleta Sekulovic, Moero of Byzantium, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 170 x 125 cmNikoleta Sekulovic, Anyte of Tagea, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 160 x 165 cmNikoleta Sekulovic, Aesara of Lucania, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 150 x 160 cmNikoleta Sekulovic, Porcia Catonis, 2019, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 150 x 175 cm

The models, all known to the artist and all fellow mothers, are given classical titles – the names of ancient Greek female poets and philosophers, and a small historical description of her will be inscribed on the back.

‘…. perhaps the most significant concept behind the combination of a muse and designer furniture is the idea of finding the stillness within, even if it is for a fleeting moment.’ Nikoleta Sekulovic.

The chairs include several of my personal favourites –  He Said chair by Mattiazi, Hiroshima dining chair by Maruni, Tri-Angle stool by Karakter, the enigmatic Eugene lounge chair by E15, amongst others.Nikoleta Sekulovic is an artist presently based in Madrid. Born in Rome to a German mother and a Serbian father, she has worked in London, Paris and New York.

The Hypatia Collection, 28 January – 21 February 2020, Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, Conway Street, London.

Images courtesy Rebecca Hossack Gallery

 

henrietta dubrey.

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I first discovered the work of Henrietta Dubrey at the Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead last year, where one painting – an angular face with jet black hair and black-clad torso, set against a pale blue background – caught my attention. This year, I recognised her work immediately and determined to find out more.

Henrietta trained at the Wimbledon School of Art and then the Royal Academy Schools. Inspiration came from the Middle Generation St Ives painters who followed Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson: Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter and Patrick Heron, amongst others. Family holidays in St Ives as a child were a strong influence in this; as was the sea and surf and sandy beaches. She now lives in Cornwall.

Her body of work is both abstract and figurative, with a palette of subdued colour – earthy tones and sky blues. Her abstract paintings are at once calm and energetic, with the occasional jolt of bold colour. Figures are naive and deceptively simple, drawn wth a bold, confident hand and economy of line. I see so many influences, not only the St Ives painters, but international modernists too – Picasso, Miro and the Cubists. I love the simplicity, composition and strong forms.

Henrietta’s extensive body of work can be found on her website, here. She is represented by Edgar Modern, Bath and has an upcoming exhibition at Strover gallery, Cambridge. The Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead, finishes today.

Feature Image: Vocabulary 2017 58 x 156 cms

Early Afternoon 2017 130 x 105 cms
Go For It 2017 38 x 49 cms
Late Afternoon 2017 130 x 105 cms
Messenger 2017 45 x 33 cms
Abstract Woman 2017 79 x 65 cms
Chalky Down 2017 71 x 44 cms
Catalan Dream 2017 55 x 41 cms
Blow Me a Kiss 2017 25 x 13 cms

All images courtesy of the artist.

season’s greetings.

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Celebrating ‘life and all its myriad forms’, Antony Gormley’s Christmas Tree is a western red cedar with its trunk wrapped in a tapering column of light.

The Connaught Christmas Tree, Mount Street, London W1. Image by owl’s house london.

serpentine summer.

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One of the highlights of summer in London for me is the annual launch of the Serpentine pavilion. Every year, an internationally renowned architect is invited by the Serpentine galleries to create their first built structure in the UK. My personal favourite of the pavilions over the years was the pavilion of Oscar Niemeyer, not least because I managed to score an invitation to the opening night party that year.

Bjarke Ingels’ 2016 pavilion is a beautifully sculpted mass of slender, fibreglass boxes, stacked to form a twisting, tent-like structure. But also this year, four Summer Houses have been added to the program. These architectural follies offer a contemporary interpretation of an adjacent, 18th century Neoclassical summerhouse, Queen Caroline’s Temple. They are on show until October 9th, after which they will be sold off and disassembled. They are for sale, here, with prices ranging from £95,000 to £125,000.

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The Summer House of Berlin studio Barkow Leibinger is designed ‘in the round’ and out of plywood, conceived as a series of structural bands. It’s fun to traverse and sit amongst, with its curving ribbon of wood hovering overhead and twisting back around forming places to rest.

Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi’s summer house is the most literal interpretation of the neo-classical summer house, offering an inverse replica of the original temple in form and proportion. Using prefabricated building blocks of rough sandstone, the composition takes the basic elements of architecture – a room, a doorway and a window – and forms a simple, elegant shelter.

The summer house of Yona Friedman comprises a series of metal rings of differing diameters that can be disassembled and re-assembled to form various compositions. Some of the voids are filled with transparent polycarbonate, most are open. It’s not so much a shelter as a backdrop for display.

Asif Khan has designed his Summer House as a series of undulating vertical posts, whose forms appear to enclose and open up to reveal the view beyond as one passes through. The ground is conceived as a continuous gravel landscape, punctuated by stepping stones. The sound of the gravel offers another dimension to this summer house, which has a wonderful fluidity and to me is the most successful of the four. Though don’t expect it to offer any shelter from this country’s inclement weather.

Serpentine Summer Houses, Hyde Park, until October 9th, 2016.

All images, Iwan Baan, via The Modern House; feature image, owl’s house london Instagram.

 

a journey of delight : calder at tate modern.

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‘There’s something totally joyous and unpretentious about the work which communicates to people,’ she added. ‘He’s one of the few artists who can sit in both camps: the public and the elite world.’ Farah Nayeri, NY Times

For those who have not lost their childish fascination with colours and shapes, movement and balance, Calder’s work remains a delight and inspiration. There is little darkness in his work, only a restless, fascinated mind, immersed in a journey of delight.

Calder plays it straight. Calder’s work is exactly what it appears to be. The strength of his work is this directness, without subtext; a refreshing lack of hidden meaning. We see Calder’s delicate mercury sculpture sitting with the vast canvas of Guernica in the background; Picasso’s dark genius and Calder’s lightness working brilliantly together. Picasso’s primary themes are those of humanity; Calder’s are of nature; he plays with lines, mass, force and momentum.

Calder emerged in an era when art was still catching up with the discoveries of 19th Century science and the technology of the 20th – not least the moving image. Calder’s work brings movement centre stage into art in a way that surpasses other artists often unsatisfactory attempts of that era to incorporate time (I’m thinking of cubism). Apart, of course, from the most successful new art form of the 20th Century, the movie itself.

Human visual aesthetics is derived from a highly developed appreciation of the body in both movement and poise. Calder’s unflinching preoccupation with mechanics; his exploration of the fine line between balance and movement, his testing of how far a rod or sinew can be stretched and still hold, resonates with what we naturally find beautiful and satisfying.

Calder does all this, and brings it into delicate and playful fusion with the rawness of his materials, the formal language of late Matisse and a touch of the surreality of Miro. I’m going back for more.

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You can read Farah Nayeri’s article, here:

Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, Tate Modern, until 3 April, 2016

Guest post by Jeremy Walker, architect and cardboard sculptor (HeathWalker Studio). Photos: owl’s house london using iPhone 6.

bold, with modernist undertones.

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I discovered Louis Reith through Instagram, his images all bold graphics and modernist undertones. Dutch born, Reith has a background in graphic design which is clearly evident in his work, along with his fascination with book design and printed matter.

Crossing media from ink drawing to collage to three-dimensional installations, all works are nevertheless strongly connected, with monochromatic palettes and bold forms. I love the modernist quality, the images and typography from an earlier era abstracted in a new, contemporary way. I can imagine them in a very modern context – big spaces and white walls, or set against a more traditional interior of wood panelling and intimate spaces.

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Untitled, collage of found book pages, 20-5x28cm

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Untitled 2015 soil on wooden panel, 122x183cm

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Untitled 2015 soil on wooden panel, 66x122cm

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Installation view, Archiv, at Nina Sagt Gallerie, Dusseldorf
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Installation view, Soil on wood, 2014, 128x189cm

More Louis Reith, here.

Feature image: Untitled, collage of found book pages, 20-5x28cm.

All images courtesy of the artist.

lightscape.

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A review of James Turrell at Houghton Hall

The role of an artist is to show us the world in a new light. To open our eyes to what we already see.

Turrell is a connoisseur of light and as a pilot is intimate with the sky in all its variance. Here in Norfolk he reveals the subtlety and variety of our maritime sky, the moisture in the air softening the light in a way that would never be seen in Arizona.

Turrell believes our eyes are most suited to seeing at dusk when there is very little light. St Elmo’s Breath is his most ephemeral piece at Houghton and reveals to us that we can see much more than we ever thought possible. The effect is so subtle that at first it is hard to believe you are really seeing anything, but gradually the photons start to accumulate and a silken carpet of red light reveals the space to us.

The poetic rationalism of his work has a strong resonance with the Palladian architecture of Houghton. Models of his work inside a crater in Pasadena reveal platonic volumes hollowed out from the earth which frame the nebulous phenomena of the sky so we might see them afresh.

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James Turrell at Houghton Hall until 24th October 2015.

Guest review by Jeremy Walker, HeathWalker Studio, with thanks. Photographs, owl’s house london.

happy weekend.

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A stunning display by Japanese flower artist, Azuma Maoto. More, here.

There’s a fascinating read in the NY Times Style magazine on another flower artist, Satoshi Kawamoto, the artist and creative director behind installations for brands like Filson, Gant and Mr Porter. Read it here. (Via)

Happy weekend.

today’s image.

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The wonderful Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Catch the Dolce Vita exhibition if you can, (until 13 September) highlighting the Liberty, Futurist and Rationalist periods of the early twentieth century in Italy, with works by Carlo Bugatti, Carlo Scarpa and Gio Ponti. Bellissimo.

Photo by owl’s house london. Follow me on Instagram, here

happy weekend.

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Seldom Seen, 2002, James Turrell. Photograph: Peter Huggins

I can’t wait to visit the James Turrell exhibition in Norfolk next weekend. Jonathan Jones calls it ‘a psychedelic legal high in the English countryside’ (read his review, here)

Houghton hall, a beautiful Palladian house on the North Norfolk coast, already has an impressive art collection, with works by Richard Long, Jeppe Hein and Rachel Whiteread. There is a previously commissioned piece by Turrell, called Skyspace, from 2000 (image above). This current exhibition includes the illumination of the Hall’s facade into a light show, which begins at dusk on Friday and Saturday evenings.

LightScape, James Turrell at Houghton Hall, North Norfolk until 24th October 2015.

More James Turrell, here