hamer the framer

Cat’s Cradle (2)

At the beginning of Stan Brakhage’s filmmaking career, he read all the writings of Sergei Eisenstein he could locate, and this dense montage film is one result. A record of an encounter between Brakhage, Jane, and their friends James Tenney and Carolee Schneemann, it intercuts fragments of each with a cat, floral wallpaper, an embroidered fabric. The figures, the cat, and inanimate objects are made to collide with each other, but they also seem to mysteriously commingle, almost as if alchemically transforming themselves into each other, people becoming objects and animals, and inanimate things seemingly becoming human.

Cat’s Cradle (1)

Continue reading “Cat’s Cradle (1)”

Mbuti: Children Of The Forest

The Flowers That Did In Eden Bloom

In a series of painstakingly constructed works using found materials Chris Kenny examines and muses on the notion of Paradise: our attempt to define it, build it, reach it or perhaps remember it. Rows of little wooden houses built from abandoned amateur landscape paintings are incised with the names of ideal worlds: Arcadia, Elysium, Utopia. They poignantly demonstrate the common desire to make a heaven on earth, a perfect garden, a harmonious society.

Chris Kenny’s exhibition is at Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, 26 April – 11 May 2014. More details here.

Jenny Franklin At Kensington Place

At the beginning of April we installed ten paintings by Jenny Franklin at Kensington Place restaurant, the latest incarnation of their Art Wall series of exhibitions. There are two oil paintings on linen and eight framed watercolours on paper. Continue reading “Jenny Franklin At Kensington Place”

Lunaris

The new CD by the Frank Harrison Trio arrived yesterday. It’s an album of acoustic trio music, piano, bass, drums, with echoes of Keith Jarrett, Esbjörn Svensson, Fred Hersch, but mostly it sounds like the Frank Harrison Trio. The CD cover features a watercolour by Andrew Walton (which appeared in an earlier Frames of Reference post here), Moon Arc, the moon over Port Meadow, Oxford’s answer to Grantchester Meadows. Frank’s father, Michael Harrison, was director of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge until 2011, and a great friend of Andrew Walton. The album is dedicated For Moikal.

Frank Harrison Trio – Sunrise (Port Meadow)

As well as working with his own trio, with Dave Whitford on double bass and Enzo Zirilli on drums, Frank Harrison also plays piano and keyboards with Gilad Atzmon in the Orient House Ensemble, and he was also involved with Robert Wyatt’s mesmerising For The Ghosts Within.

Art & Life (& Memory)

This painting by Ben Nicholson, titled c.1930 (Cornish Port), features on the cover of Art and Life 1920-1931, the catalogue for the exhibition at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, examining the artistic partnership of Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson in the 1920s and their friendship and collaboration with Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis and the potter William Staite Murray. Continue reading “Art & Life (& Memory)”

Hag Stones

I visited Andrew Walton a couple of months ago when I was in Oxford to see his exhibition and at his house I discovered a hoard of treasured relics. Hollow stones suggesting Henry Moore maquettes, recollections prompted by Liam Hanley a few days earlier. Continue reading “Hag Stones”

Arrivals & Departures

This is the back wall of the showroom at The Rowley Gallery. I felt I should post this photograph on Frames of Reference to celebrate the arrival of eight new prints from Gail Brodholt because it’s rare for us to have so many at one time. They usually depart very quickly. Continue reading “Arrivals & Departures”

Seascapes & Seescapes

Two exhibitions, one in Greenwich, another in Margate, both featuring paintings by J.M.W. Turner, both spectacular. The image above is a watercolour from the Tate Collection, Harbour Scene at Sunrise, possibly Margate, so let’s begin in Margate. Continue reading “Seascapes & Seescapes”