Magnifying glasses in
hand, Garageland gumshoes extraordinaire Corinna Spencer and Travis Riley have
inspected London Art Fair top-to-bottom to track down this year’s must see artworks.
Not ten steps through the front
door of the fair, Union Gallery is showing four pleasingly ramshackle Rose Wylie
portraits. The paintings combine simple-lined naivety with canny (and
slightly grotesque) wit, and provide a superb opening to the fair.
The Hepworth have hauled a full
mini-exhibition across from their gallery in Wakefield titled The Development of British Modernism.
Amongst the historically arranged array of works, the dusty white brushstrokes of John
Wells’ Landfall provide the
quietest moment of the art fair. Chalky greys and sketchy pencil lines fill in
the bare bones of an unsettled modernist landscape.
Fold Gallery have installed nine
paintings from Tim Ellis’s United in
Different Guises series. Painted on pillowcases, the rectangular geometric
images could be mistaken for a collection obscure flags. A varnish coating shows
the wear of many years of service.
Ra di Martino’s photographs, on
display at Tryon St Gallery’s stand, depict the ruined sets of iconic films
including Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia. The now disintegrated dwelling of Luke Skywalker shows a futuristic 70s vision already in disrepair.
Space in Between have taken an
intrepid anti-commercial stance, using their space for a single installation
work. The piece by Nicole Morris fills the room with a triangle patterned
monochromatic ceiling and a video work that finds the artist sweating through a
series of bikram yoga poses. The yoga is interspersed with a pleasingly
scratchy and lo-fi, frolicking animation, forming one of our favourite art fair
moments this year.
Travis Riley
London Art Fair, 14-19 January, London N1
No comments:
Post a Comment