Central St Martin’s – MA Fine Art Interim Show 2011

Matt, Tom and I went down to the Central St Martin’s interim show at Coin Street in the OXO Tower last week, on the invite of my friend Mike Marcus. As with most student shows, especially mid-terms, the work was mixed and patchy, but brilliant in parts.

Vasilis Avramifis

In the first room I was particularly fond of a large clay wheel, set on rollers on an easel and Vasilis Avramifis’ dreamlike landscape-come-still-lives reminiscent at of both 14th century religious paintings, Max Ernst and Glen Brown.

Over in the main building, an empty warehouse, an enterprising artist was selling conceptual art for 50p a sheet. Typed out each slip of paper was a short, cliched, abstract statement. She was raking it in.

Upstairs Tom and I spent some time discussing linguistics (his specialty, not mine) in front of Kate Barsby‘s word art. We were also mesmerised by her video of unfulfilled urges, like the hands that never sharpen the pencil they’re holding with the sharpener that they keep toying with.

Josephine Declerck’s candid documentary shots of young Eastern European male squatters around London  were well complimented by a series of the buildings they've lived in. On the film front there was a very well shot religious ceremony in Pakistan, but it was too dark to see who made it.

Mike Marcus

We finally found Mike on the top floor, with a work that was quite book related – he’s composted a bible, a Torah and a Koran in glass vitrines to the point at which they’re no longer distinguishable. He’s not yet had any death threats.

London Art Fair 2011

London Art Fair in Islington marks its territory in the crowded London calendar with a focus on paintings, print and sculpture.

Andrew Curtis - New Empire (Josiah Warren)

Matt and I were gifted tickets by Hoxton gallery Payne Shurvell. Matt’s particularily fond of Andrew Curtis‘ ‘Wild England series’ – grainy black and white photo prints of Suburban gardens, over which non-native trees are blacked out by ‘Whity Jet’ paint the pigment of which comes from fossilised monkey puzzle trees. Curtis is a print maker for high profile artists such as Hirst, so when he’s making his own work with his wife they like to be a bit more rough and ready.

We also had a good conversation with Jealous Editions, whose enterprising business model involves working with tutors at the various art schools to identify emergent MA fine art students. One Jealous Graduate Prize winner from each school has screenprints made of their work to be sold in affordable editions. The system appears to be very effective, with an interesting selection of work on display alongside more established artists.

Sarah Tse

One of the Graduate winners is Sarah Tse whose drawings have also been noticed by Woking-based collector Chris Ingram. Chris’ contemporary collection already includes Suki Chan and Haroon Mirza, who last week one the Northern Art Prize, so I’d keep and eye on her!

Tom Leighton @ Cynthia Corbett

Other highlights for me included the Danielle Arnaud gallery and Tom Leighton’s digital photomontages of sprawling imaginary urbanscapes at Cynthia Corbett. In the project space, Hamni Gallery from South Korea had some rather mesmerizing iRobot-style kinetic buddhas by Ziwon Wang. Hanmi are about to open their first gallery in London on Maple St, near the CG offices, and figures remind me that The Kinteica Art Fair is coming up next week.

If there was one thing I could take home (other than a Ziwon Wang robot) it would be one of the Eduardo Paolozzi prints from FAS Contemporary, complete with Wittgenstein quotes. Paolozzi is my favourite of the Modern British Artists, who were visible everywhere at the fair thanks to the current RA show. For me Paolozzi’s circuit-board like designs and pop cultural assimilation anticipate the electronic information age in which we now live. His brilliant mosaics light up my journey every time I catch the tube from Tottenham Court Road.