If you missed the big exhibition The Indiscipline of Painting: International
Abstraction from the 1960s to Now at Tate St.Ives,
where an attempt to survey abstraction in postmodern times, then you have the
opportunity to see it at the Mead Gallery at Warwick
Art Centre from 14th January to 10th March. This was an interesting
exhibition at Tate St.Ives and it was a big exhibition that relied on more that
just pulling out some of the old paintings in the Tate storage facilities, but
actually borrowing works from further afield.
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Francis Baudevin print, for 'Indiscipline of Painting' (win a print here) |
Hopefully it will give the
future curators working at or with Tate St.Ives, the confidence to push for
more interesting works and gain more support or funding to in creating a
popular show and enticing art lovers down to the Cornish peninsula.
Though some of the work had a
lightness that I found frustrating when seeing the works in such a confined
space, perhaps it says more about the 'postmodern' times than specific artists
approach, there still remained a slickness and Minimalist aesthetic throughout
that makes you feel that abstraction is just about decoration, I felt it wasn't
historically accurate, there are none of the 'big British heavies', or any of
the later works by the St.Ives artists like Heron, Scott, Barns-Graham etc,
that held on to abstraction through the sixties and seventies and were
recognized more internationally than in Britain during this time, or any of the
hard-edge painters in London at the time such as, Denny, Hoyland, or the later works of Gillain
Ayres, Mali Morris etc. but some inclusions by artsist that have little to do with abstraction or have played a minimal part in its history. Still, it was an interesting show and worth seeing, and we bigged it up in a post back in October (see here).
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Mali Morris, 'Plural on Red' 2002 |
Here's the press release: 'The Indiscipline of Painting' is an international group exhibition
including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by
British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages
of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been
revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50
years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of
abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.
The contemporary position of
abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a
modernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the
medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression.The
Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how
painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to
provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s
decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.
The show brings together works by
British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features
major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol,
Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser known
artists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.'
The
painter and curator, Daniel Sturgis is presenting a lecture on the exhibition
on Tuesday 31st January in the Conference Room at 6.30 PM, click here for more details.
A debate on the Tate's blog http://blog.tate.org.uk/?p=8783
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