Showing posts with label Deacon - Richard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deacon - Richard. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Abstract Drawing - Drawing Room

Richard Serra, Untitled, 2009
Abstract Drawing is at Drawing Room until 19 April and features an impressive list of artists (see below). Curated by Richard Deacon this exhibition makes for an interesting complement to the show of his work currently at Tate Britain (see below). Deacon will discuss his approach to drawing and his selection for this exhibition at Drawing Room on 6 March.
Read a review of the exhibition by Adrian Searle.
The following text is from the Drawing Room website:

“One of the things that has interested me in making this selection – aside from the intrinsic delight at looking at so many drawings – has to do with ideas about what or where is the real… This exhibition has no ambitions to be a universal survey, but in selecting a show around the idea of abstract drawing, these various strands – inscriptive, calligraphic, ornamental, generative, individuating and identifying – have all featured.”

The earliest works exhibited here are drawings made in 1906 by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, recently heralded as producing the earliest forms of Western abstraction, and in 1917/18 by Kazimir Malevich,  regarded as the father of abstraction. There is a rare blot drawing by Jackson Pollock (1951) that exploits the quality of working with fluid mediums on porous paper. Works made in the 1960s include those by Eva Hesse, Mira Schendel, Dom Sylvester Houedard (well known for his concrete poetry), and Frederick Hammersley (an American artist who pioneered computer drawings).

Two works on paper by Sol LeWitt, a One-second drawing by John Latham,  works by Indian modernist Nasreen Mohamedi, and Romanian artist Victor Ciato were all made in the 1970s. Works made in the 1980s include rarely seen drawings in relief by Anish Kapoor and works by artist and historian John Golding whose Paths to the Absolute (2000) is a key text on abstract art.

Watercolours on paper by David Austen represent the 1990s and works from the 2000’s include senior Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Turner prize winner Tomma Abts and nominee Alison Wilding (the latter the subject of a major Duveen galleries display at the newly renovated Tate Britain, London), London-based artists David Batchelor,  Emma McNally and Sam Messenger and International artist Susan Hefuna, who has German-Egyptian heritage.  Another highlight is a newly commissioned wall drawing by US-based artist Victoria Haven.

Bob Law, Cross for Me, Kiss for You CCCXVII 03.01.00, 2000
David Batchelor, Magic Hour Drawings, 2013
Eva Hesse, No Title, 1965
John Latham, 1 Second Drawing, 1971
Roger Ackling, One minute is long enough, so it's a second, 1977
Richard Deacon, 14-11-11, 2013

Saturday, 15 February 2014

Richard Deacon - Tate Britain (and The Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum!)

Richard Deacon, After, 1988
Richard Deacon is at Tate Britain until 27 April 2014; Deacon's 1989 sculpture Kiss and Tell (see below) is currently on display in The Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.

Richard Deacon came to public attention in 1981 in an exhibition called 'Objects and Sculptures' shown at the ICA and the Arnolfini. Alongside Bill Woodrow, Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and others he was one of a loose group tagged 'New British Sculpture'. 
Whereas most of his peers forged a sculptural language that eschewed Minimalism's pure materialism in favour of figurative references and a narrative content responding to the contemporary urban and industrial social landscape, Deacon made, and continues to make, resolutely abstract work. His fantastically shaped forms betray a preoccupation with  the nature and possibilities of a wide range of material formed into hugely satisfying, beautiful and often suggestively organic shapes.
Read reviews by Rachel Cooke, Waldemar Januszczak and Alastair Sooke and a series of interviews with the artist on the Tate website.
Richard Deacon, It's Orpheus When There's Singing #7, 1978-9
Richard Deacon, Art for Other People #6, 1983
Richard Deacon, Art for Other People #12, 1984
Richard Deacon, Struck Dumb, 1988
Richard Deacon, Fold, 2012
Richard Deacon, Kiss and Tell, 1989 (On display in the Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum)