Rowley Gallery Blog
We’d been told to stay indoors and not go out, except for exercise and if so to stay two metres apart, breathe fresh air, think separate thoughts and cast our own shadows. Stay safe, take care and not go viral. It was the sunniest Sunday I’d seen in ages, the car parks of Epping Forest were overflowing, all of us fleeing the city to escape the epidemic. That’s how it felt, as if there was protection here. Continue reading “Chasing Shadows”
I love the Annely Juda Gallery very much. I’ve been visiting as long as I’ve lived in London and it always feels like I’m coming home. I first knew it as a small warehouse space in Tottenham Mews, next-door to the Angela Flowers Gallery. It was all scrubbed floorboards and whitewashed walls hung with jewel-like fragments of Bauhaus, De Stijl and Russian Constructivist art. Most exhibitions seemed to be called The Non-Objective World and they were always a great education in abstraction. In 1990 she moved to Dering Street where I first discovered the work of Eduardo Chillida, and saw an exhibition of minimal white reliefs by Alan Reynolds. It was a revelation. Continue reading “A Small Retrospective”
This was another camera-shy exhibition. We had to switch off our cameras at the entrance, even though it was full of exhibitionist ‘performing sculptures’, all of them posing and pouting and teasing. Mostly they’re mobiles though none of them moved, their motion implied through poise and balance. Yet despite these contradictions, it’s a fantastic show, elegant and vibrant and fun. Continue reading “Performing Sculpture”
Driving to work the other day I was diverted from my normal course and led to discover the Isokon building. I’d never seen it before but instantly it seemed familiar and true, as if it were an archetype, elegant and beautiful, the epitome of 1930s utopian modernism. Continue reading “A Short Diversion”
Das Meisterstück (The Masterpiece) is an exhibition of large format photographs of painters’ palettes by Matthias Schaller at the Refectory, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, May 8-June 7. Maybe he saw our earlier blog post, Palettes! This one is JMW Turner and it’s impossible not to see resemblances between it and his paintings. Like looking at a dog and its owner. Continue reading “Das Meisterstück”
SNAP HQ, a cor-ten steel shed at Snape Maltings, nerve centre of the SNAP visual arts programme for this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, directing our gaze towards the great Suffolk sky. Continue reading “The Sky At Snape”
Whilst I was preparing the Malevich In Amsterdam post I kept uncovering photos of Mondrian paintings from last year in Amsterdam. There are presently exhibitions in Margate and Liverpool marking seventy years since his death, so it seemed appropriate to post some of those photos here, in memory of Mondrian in Amsterdam. Continue reading “Mondrian In Amsterdam”
First there was this Christmas card from a painting by Mick Moon, made with oil paint & string on board and called simply Tree. Then I heard the three Staveley-Taylor sisters (aka The Staves) singing Winter Trees:
Continue reading “Winter Trees”
This is a lovely exhibition. Two artists working side by side, each intent on being unique, but inevitably enjoying each other’s echoes. Mondrian||Nicholson:In Parallel at the Courtauld Gallery. Continue reading “In Parallel”