If you’re in London in the next couple of weeks, don’t miss Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935, at the Royal Academy.
It might sound more like an essay title, but it’s a fascinating exhibition in the top-floor Sackler Rooms at the gallery.
Private View II
Horace Panter of The Specials lets his paintings take centre stage
It’s not uncommon for musicians to turn to art as the years go by. In some cases it’s a sudden and often wrong feeling they can paint, but in many cases it’s actually a return to their first love.
The latter is true in Horace Panter’s case. He studied Fine Art at the Lanchester Polytechnic as it then was in Coventry, graduating in 1975, and while there he met another art student, Jerry Dammers, and they went on to found The Specials and the 2-Tone record label, and forge a career in music.
Horace is now staging a show at the White Room Gallery in Regent Street, Leamington, following a couple of others, including one at The Strand Gallery in London.
Asked why he had gone back to painting, the svelte Horace said wryly: “The Specials won’t play for ever and you can be fat when you’re an artist.”
He said he’d always been interested in art, and all through the first life of The Specials he’d be the one on tour going to bed early so he could get up in the morning to go and visit galleries such as the Guggenheim. It’s clear he’s still an art fan – he was delighted with how busy The Herbert was when he went in to see the George Shaw exhibition (and George is a Specials fan).
Graham Sutherland exhibition curated by George Shaw opens in Oxford
Graham Sutherland, Dark Hill – Landscape with Hedges and Fields, 1940 (watercolour, gouache on paper), 48.9 cm x 69.8 cm. Swindon Museum and Art Gallery © Estate of Graham Sutherland
In Coventry Graham Sutherland is forever known for the huge tapestry he designed, Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph, for the new Coventry Cathedral.
George Shaw is currently best known in Coventry for being born in the city, for immortalising Tile Hill in his paintings and being a Turner Prize nominee.
Now their names are linked in An Unfinished World, an exhibition of Graham Sutherland works on paper on show at Modern Art Oxford, which George has curated.
The exhibition’s private view was just five nights after the Turner Prize announcement, won by Martin Boyce. On December 5, after the ceremony in Gateshead, George took his mum back to her hotel, had a cup of tea with her and then went to the pub. He was soon back in Oxford for the opening of the Sutherland exhibition. The story of the exhibition began some time ago.
Turner miss is disappointing but George Shaw has already moved on
So George Shaw didn’t win the Turner Prize. The disappointment in the packed big hall at the Herbert art gallery was palpable, as many people left within a few minutes, spurning the after party.
But although it’s disappointing and he’ll miss out on some of the instant attention (and prize money) the win brings, it’s hardly like to harm his career or artistic reputation. George Shaw is already well respected in the art world, by the critics, by collectors and by a growing number of art fans and that will not change.
Google Turner Prize and flick through a list of the past winners and other nominated artists – the ones who’ve gone on to greatest artistic success/fame/richness aren’t always the winners.
George Shaw exhibition opens with lots of champagne … and cider
Timing is everything, and you can’t predict the future.
So five years ago to the week when Rosie Addenbrooke, The Herbert’s Senior Events and Exhibitions Officer asked George Shaw about staging an exhibition in his home city she couldn’t have known the opening of the exhibition would coincide with his nomination for the Turner Prize.
So just 18 days before he finds out whether he has won or not, the exhibition finally opened tonight, with hundreds of people there to quaff champagne and celebrate.
George’s paintings focus on the Tile Hill estate where he grew up, and have been shown in London, hugely-successfully at the Baltic in Gateshead, and elsewhere – but never in such number in Coventry,
EXCLUSIVE: Turner Prize nominee George Shaw talks about his first major Coventry exhibition
IN The Herbert gallery in Coventry the paintings are on the wall, and the final preparations are being made for George Shaw: I woz ere to open to the public.
It’s the first big home-town exhibition for George, born in the city in 1966, and he’s here overseeing the work and admitting to feeling a little anxious about how it will be received.
“It’s all right doing this, thinking about it before I came to do it wasn’t. Without Rosie’s [Addenbrooke, senior exhibitions and events officer] enthusiasm and commitment it wouldn’t have happened. It was something I was avoiding. You are always afraid of doing something you haven’t done before.
“I was slightly anxious the reality of the situation would take over from the work. In many ways it has but not in a negative sense.”
Artspace and Emerge hold open event
Coventry’s Artspace is hosting Almost Festive Thursday this week, where it will be possible to buy original artworks from local professional artists and makers.
Artspace, an independent arts facility, is joining forces with Emerge, a network for Coventry’s creative people, to hold the event.
As well as buying from the makers’ stalls, visitors will be able to touor the eclectic Artspace studios with artist-led tours, and attend the Emerge networking event where artists and makers will share and talk about their work.
The studios and stalls at the venue in Lower Holyhead Road, Coventry city centre, will be open from 2pm this Thursday, November 17, with short guided tours at 3pm and 5pm, and the networking event from 5.30-6.15pm.
Damien’s move from animal psychology to art pays off
A FRUSTRATION at no longer being able to buy the art he wanted inspired Damien Isaak to start creating his own works at the age of 40.
He’s now staging his second solo exhibition after the first over a year ago was a huge success.
Damien moved to Leamington six years ago, and runs his own rather unusual business there – as an animal psychologist. But there’s not many animals in his art – in this showing at Gallery150 in Leamington I only spotted some rather lovely geometrically-shaped angel fish in Think Tank.
Write and publish your haiku for Coventry arts project
A Coventry-based artist is running a project this week, up to October 9, to tie in with National Poetry Day, which was today.
Lorsen Camps’s project is called Beauty in the Everyday and is being funded by Coventry City Council’s Small Art Grant. He is trying to get as many people as possible to write haiku, three-line poems, which will be uploaded to a Facebook page called Coventry Haiku Project.
Just a week to see Coventry MA students’ varied artworks
Coventry University’s MA students are showing off their work in exhibitions at two venues this week.
The Lanchester Gallery at the School of Art and Design, and the fifth floor of the building, plus The Herbert art gallery up the road are both housing a collection of screenings, installations and performances.
Private View II 