'The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction..', moves, 2012

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. 

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). 

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.