Jamie Shovlin - Haunch of Venison

Jamie Shovlin, Derrida by Christopher Norris (Variation 3), 2011-12

Jamie Shovlin: Various Arrangements is at Haunch of Venison until 26 May.

The exhibition presents a series of seventeen large-scale paintings based on the cover designs of the Fontana Modern Masters series published in the 1970s. The paintings represent titles that were scheduled for publication but never appeared. Shovlin's elaborate methodology for producing the paintings is explained on the Haunch of Venison website.

Shovlin is an interesting artist whose previous projects have included the 'curation' of exhibitions of work by the missing schoolgirl Naomi V Jelish, and of the memorabilia of a German glam-rock band called Lustfaust. In both cases they were entirely the creation of Shovlin - though, he claimed on Front Row (18 April) that the band does now exist! Listen to the band here.

Jamie Shovlin, Berlin by JohnGray (Variation 1), 2011-12

Jamie Shovlin, Various Arrangements, installation view

Jamie Shovlin, Various Arrangements, installation view

Jamie Shovlin, Various Arrangements, installation view

Katie Paterson: 100 Billion Suns - Haunch of Venison

Katie Paterson, 100 Billion Suns

Katie Paterson: 100 Billion Suns is at Haunch of Venison until 28 April.

Paterson's projects engage with time, space and scale. 100 Billion Suns involves the firing of confetti cannons and refers to Gamma Ray Bursts - these are the brightest explosions in the universe, which burn with a luminosity 100 billion times that of our sun. The confetti cannons contain 3,216 pieces of paper whose colours correspond to each of these cosmic events known to have occured. Every burst of confetti creates a miniature explosion of all of these vast explosions, in just under a second. Watch a film about this project here.

Read an article by Brian Dillon, watch When art meets astronomy, and Tate Shots: Meet the Artist.

Below is  a selection of Paterson's works as described on her website. 

Katie Paterson,  As the World Turns

A turntable that rotates in time with the earth, one revolution every 24 hours, playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. If performed from beginning to end, the record would play for four years. The movement is so slow it isn't visible to the naked eye, yet the player is turning, imperceptibly.

Katie Paterson, History of Darkness, 2010 ( 2200 handwritten slides)

History of Darkness is a slide archive; a life-long project, it will eventually contain hundreds upon thousands of images of darkness from different times/places in the history of the Universe, spanning billions of years. Each image handwritten with its distance from earth in light years, and arranged from one to infinity.

Katie Paterson, Streetlight Storm, 2010

For one month on Deal Pier in Kent, during the hours of darkness, the pier lamps flicker in time with lightning strikes happening live in different parts of the world. Lightning signals from as far away as the North Pole or North Africa are received by an antenna on the pier and translated into light. As the pattern of lightning strikes changes, so the pier lights oscillate correspondingly.

Katie Paterson, All the Dead Stars (detail)

 A map documenting the locations of just under 27,000 dead stars - all that have been recorded and observed by humankind.

Katie Paterson,  Ancient Darkness TV

Working with astronomers from the Mauna Kea Volcano telescope, an image of ‘ancient darkness’ was transmitted on New York television station MNN. Broadcast for one minute, it revealed darkness from the furthest point of the observed universe, 13.2 billion years ago, shortly after the Big Bang and before Earth existed, when stars, galaxies and the first light began to form.

Katie Paterson, Vatnajökull (the sound of)

An underwater microphone lead into Jökulsárlón lagoon - an outlet glacial lagoon of Vatnajökull, filled with icebergs - connected to an amplifier, and a mobile-phone, which created a live phone line to the glacier. The number +44(0)7757001122 could be called from any telephone in the world, the listener put through to Vatnajökull. A white neon sign of the phone number hung in the gallery space.

(Listen to a recorded extract of Vatnajökull (the sound of) here.)

London: The Mystery of Appearance - Haunch of Venison

Francis Bacon,  Pope I -study after Pope Innocent X by Velazquez, 1951

London: The Mystery of Appearance - Conversations between Ten Postwar Painters is an exhibition at Haunch Of Venison. The title is taken from a quotation from Francis Bacon:

To me, the mystery of painting today is how can appearance be made.  I know it can be illustrated, I know it can be photographed. But how can this thing be made so that you catch the mystery of appearance within the mystery of the making?... one knows by some accidental brushmarks suddenly appearance comes in with  a vividness that no accepted way of doing it would have brought about

Francis Bacon in Sylvester, David (1980) Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1962-1979, London: Thames and Hudson, p105

The exhibition presents work by ten British artists who sustained a commitment to figurative art through a period dominated by abstraction:  Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield, William Coldstream, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Leon Kossoff and Euan Uglow.

See review by Andrew Graham-Dixon. The exhibition continues until 18 February 2012.

Michael Andrews, Study of a Head with a Green Turban, 1967

Frank Auerbach, Study of Primrose Hill, 1973-4

Frank Auerbach, Primrose Hill, Winter Sunshine, 1962-4

Patrick Caulfield,  Coloured Still Life, 1967

Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon (study), 1961

Leon Kossoff, Willesden Junction, Summer No.1, 1966

Euan Uglow, Nude, Lady C, 1959-60

Frank Stella - Haunch of Venison

Frank Stella, Delta, 1958

My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object... If the painting were lean enough, accurate enough or right enough, you would just be able to look at it. All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion...What you see is what you see. 

Frank Stella in Glaser, B. and Lippard, L. R. (1966) "Questions to Stella and Judd", Art News, September, (discussion originally broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York, February 1964 as "New Nihilism or New Art?"), reprinted in Battcock, Gregory ed. (1968) Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, London: Studio Vista, pp157-8

A rare exhibition of work by Frank Stella, one of my very favourite artists, is at Haunch of Venison from 30 September to 19 November. Read an article about Stella by Alastair Sooke and see his interview on The Culture Show (BBC2).

Frank Stella, Grape Island, 1958

Frank Stella, Sidney Guberman, 1964

Frank Stella, Les Indes Galantes, 1962

Frank Stella, Basra Gate I, 1968

Frank Stella, Gkinne II, 1972

I wanted to get the paint out of the can and onto the canvas. I knew a wise guy who used to make fun of my painting, but he didn't like the Abstract Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that's what I tried to do. I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.

Frank Stella in Glaser, B, and Lippard, L. R. (1966) "Questions to Stella and Judd", Art News, September, (discussion originally broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York, February 1964 as "New Nihilism or New Art?"), reprinted in Battcock, Gregory ed. (1968) Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, London: Studio Vista, p157.