A Fertile Utopia: Kevin Sinnott at Flowers Gallery

In Kevin Sinnott's exhibition at Flowers Gallery Mary-Claire Wilson discovers a fertile utopia of oversized cockerels, gusty, tempestuous laundry hanging, flushed faces and red skirts blowing in the wind.

Running Away with the Hairdresser (1995)

Kevin Sinnott specialises in large scale, figurative paintings with rich brushstrokes which capture striking moments in ambiguous stories. These moments are always telling, often steamy and frequently feature landscapes or details from his Welsh homeland, where one of his most popular paintings Running Away with the Hairdresser (1995) hangs in the National Museum of Cardiff. 

His latest work continues in a similar vein, but, as usual with Sinnott, there is a reworking and reinvention of themes. The exhibition’s title, Domestic Species, hints at the contrast between the familiar and the exotic in this show, which interweave to create a heady new world.

Flora Parrot: Fixed Position

There is a cave nestled between a taxidermist and a nail parlour on Islington's Essex Road. Garageland Reviewer Alicia Rodriguez ventures in and suffers a slight formal crisis (in a good way).

The cave is made up of ambiguous substance. Our form is undetermined within the dark, damp spaces, although we mostly think that we are solids. Our position is hard to define by just our own edges or borders – it’s more complicated than that. Where does the earth stop and our body begin? In Fixed Position, Flora Parrott has produced a series of ‘3D diagrams’ in order to develop a study of fixity and sensation. This study takes the form of an installation that mediates information and space.

Getting the Picture

Michael Peters attempts to find the dividing line between art and interior design and proposes that more time should be given over to in-bathroom video installations.

I remember a particular episode of the television quiz show Pointless in which a pair were asked to identify artists featured in the 'notorious art exhibition Sensation.' They looked at each other quizzically, and, after an extended pause, one turned to the other and asked, 'bought any pictures recently?'

Jeremy Deller's English Magic

Mary-Claire Wilson pens a love letter to Jeremy Deller's newly emigrated Venice Biennale show, English Magic at William Morris Gallery. 

We Sit Starving Amidst Our Gold (2014)

I’m going to come clean. I’ve had an art crush on Jeremy Deller, if not since he won the Turner Prize in 2004, then at least since I saw his retrospective at the Hayward in 2012. He’s an artist with no formal training, who neither draws, paints nor sculpts, and he makes art that can’t be sold. Take that, Messrs Emin and Hirst. And his English Magic, on now at the William Morris Gallery (and then touring the UK) was commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennale 2013. A pied piper of popular culture, he creates what might be termed social interventions, part razor-sharp commentary, part wry and witty quip, part utopian fantasy.

Nightmare on Great Sutton Street: Jan Manski's POSSESIA

Garageland reviewer Joe Turnbull stumbles across an exhibition at BREESE Little that he finds thoroughly unattractive, and that's a good thing.

Implement I, 2013

I've lost count of the number of exhibitions I've been to at commercial galleries where the artwork is aesthetically pleasing: bold and bright colours, clean lines, easy on both the eye and the grey matter behind it. They're like a showroom, offering up their most beautiful wares for prospective buyers. 

Gilda's House

Corinna Spencer's visit to Gilda's House is all going swimmingly until she realises she's being watched.

 

There is an intensity to the sparseness of the interior of Gilda's House. Rather than being crammed with images and memorials to a person, there are instead fleeting glances in the corner of one's eyes of lives still being lived. The artist, Sue Cohen says that these images are telling us about people on the outskirts of life. 

I Love Chris

Alicia Rodriguez visits the first SALT. Book Club, and finds a community approaching feminism through the obsessive study of contemporary art within the walls of a half-empty office building.

SALT. – edited by Fine Art graduates Saira Edwards, Hannah Regel, Thea Smith and Jala Wahid – is a publication dealing with contemporary art and feminism. Each issue features a carefully curated selection of essays, art writing and artwork. 

As I write this I have issue 4 open in front of me: it is a collection of extremely high quality submissions that reference the theme of ‘pageantry’. The magazine offers a refreshing, sleek and heavily ‘fine art’ – a faux-dumb, discerning – aesthetic with pleasingly little explanation or self-promotion. It reads like an artwork in itself, one that revels in its own research. It is exciting to find that there is a community approaching feminism through the obsessive study of contemporary art – and they are based in South-East London.