Straight Road - recent artworks by Anthony Murphy at Christophe Edwards & Andrew Webb until 15th December

If you go down to Core One today you’ll be sure of a big surprise. The Core One gasworks is one of the few undiscovered hideaways of good quality art and design in London. It’s like Pimlico Road plonked into an industrial wasteland owing more to Blair-Bush Baghdad than Fulham. You would probably never find it unless you’re in the know. This is the hangout of about 10 dealers all with unique, high-quality tastes. If it weren't so far off the beaten track I'm sure it would have citywide renown as the ‘place-to-be’ outside of central London. I am there for an exhibition of recent work by artist Anthony Murphy.

Murphy is a man of three lives. Having won an Emmy in his early teens for playing the lead in Tom Brown’s schooldays Anthony shrugged off the famous rump roasting scene and forged a successful career as a corporate lawyer before settling in France with his paintbrush. He’s sharp as flint, with the same natural capacity for starting fires. Sat centre stage, engulfed in sofa and friends, Anthony views his crowd with the same suspicion they afford his paintings. Strains of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas are swiftly drowned when a third glass of wine lets loose uproarious tales of Murphy and Co.’s misspent youth. Reminiscing by Giles Roe Esq., an old chum from the student days, was priceless. He got the whole gallery singing along to such classics as “when you’re feeling glum, stick a finger up your…” before diving to the floor after an imaginary budgerigar in one of those jokes that you probably had to be there to get. All in all, last night’s hilarious proceedings at Core One succeeded in putting a fat middle finger up to all the usual art world pretentions.

On to the art! Anthony’s work covers the usual artistic concerns - beauty, sadness, nature, nymphomania and transgender angst. What he lacks in traditional draughtsmanship he makes up for in painterly style, daubing his oils onto the canvas; breaking straight lines into successive broad dabs. His technique and tendency to use vivid reds and oranges reminds me of tasty, exotic Moroccan souks. I would recommend checking out this Swanky Online Catalogue produced by the gallery to get a real idea for the way Murphy flicks between landscapes, situations, nudes and more. Whilst I would normally err away from deciding upon an 'overriding theme' as so many other writers do, these works are so disparate that I feel compelled to. In my humble opinion, which really should be better informed by the artist, these works are joined by their collective mission to give pleasure to both the artist and their future owner. They represent the efforts of a man who came to his craft much later than most; a man who was not bent into shape by art schools, nor tied to the commercial demands of contemporary gallerists. These works represent the wide-awake thoughts and dead-to-the-world daydreams of a man who loves to paint. 


As a final side note the painting of blue trees lining a road at the top of this post is titled The Road to Montsegur. It is the same French village that Mildred Bendall, of my last post, lived and died in.

Useful Links For More Info:
Swanky Online Catalogue
http://www.christopheedwards.com/ 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Murphy_(actor)

Georges Bernède – The Advent of Abstraction in Bordeaux – at Whitford Fine Art until December 21st 2012.

The story of Georges Bernède, born 1926, starts with Mildred Bendall (1891-1977), a rather curious Anglo-French artist who studied under Henri Matisse in Paris. Having rejected a marriage proposal from Jean-Gérard Matisse, the great Henri’s son, she returned to her family home in Monsègur, Bordeaux where she lived out her days relentlessly painting landscapes and fish in her own increasingly abstract manner. Her life seems more peculiar the more you look into it; her father, a wealthy English merchant, insisted on flying the Union Jack from their rural, post-war home in Western France; and neither Mildred nor her two elder siblings ever married or left their childhood home.

Drawing on Bendall’s training with Henri Matisse, Bernède strived towards a figurative language akin to the Cubism of André Lhote, using colour to convey space and feeling. His disregard for convention led him to Abstraction during the 1950s, showing in a number of significant provincial exhibitions. For almost 20 years between the late 60s and 1984 Bernède’s work is of a colourful, lyrical style. Later, in the mid 80s, he almost totally eschewed colour in favour of black and white streaks ornamented with hints of blues and browns. These monochrome canvases came to be his trademark.

The Advent of Abstraction in Bordeaux at Whitford Fine Art brings together the works of a true Abstractionist. Bernède’s brushstrokes summon rhythm, texture and depth from the canvas. While his works can be likened to French modern masterworks by Kline and some Soulages Bernède was never an imitator. He himself admits that others’ artistic achievements never captured his attention; his art is the result of a personal mission for pleasure and perfection. The scope of this exhibition is broader than his previous Whitford show last September which was almost entirely made up of the artist’s later black & white efforts, it is great to see the artistic progression. Works on the cusp of this late phase, like Composition 84-30 (below), show a youthful, colourful vigour and playful quality which was on the whole supplanted by two-tone calligraphic gestures in later years.

Bernède’s art belongs to the very same tradition that threw out the great continental modernists. Franz Kline was in the right place at the right time; so was Bernède – just a different one. Georges Bernède, though a living artist, is a part of the fabric of the 20^th century. With proven provenance and a very competitive price range The Advent of Abstraction in Bordeaux is a must see for anyone who wants to snap up a piece of history before it’s too late.

Useful Links for More Info:

http://www.whitfordfineart.com/

Pets Academy! Frederique Morrel's patchwork menagerie at the Stephanie Hoppen gallery.

For some bewildering scenes of what-the-fuckery you should head down to the Stephanie Hoppen gallery on Walton Street. Running until December 21st - if it doesn't sell out before then - Pets Academy! is all about Ms Morrel's utterly bonkers fusion of taxidermy and embroidery.

The beasts are life-size, anatomically perfect and almost entirely covered in vintage stitch-work. Some of the fabric looks like it was looted from a church cushion factory. One is a vision of Velásquez's nude, pixelated by the cloth's deft needle-work. Real hooves protrude from fabric bodies. I have never seen anything like it. The most startling thing is that it's all brilliant!

The indefatigable Stephanie Hoppen was a wonderful host, on hand with the artist to explain all the finest details of construction with due passion. Choice cuts of fabric are carefully stretched over fibreglass taxidermist models, bringing to life what would otherwise be quite a crowded room of dead animals. Frederique's eye for detail is superb, the way a nude's curvy bum sits neatly into the muscular groove at the deer's rump shows real consideration for the final outcome. One wall is adorned with at least a dozen doe heads each made up with false eyelashes, a bit of bling and a few more horns than is normal in the wild. At the artist's insistence one of these is hung upside-down adding nothing and distracting a little from the point of the show. No doubt she had her aesthetic/academic reasons for this but unless they are shared and, at least in part, agreed upon, it's ideas like this that come dangerously close to toppling into the ever-broadening masturbatorium of for-the-hell-of-it contemporary art. The works hold their own without the gimmicks.

What could have been a grand orgy for those with a penchant for animal cruelty turned out to be an eclectic, eccentric, presumption defyingly tasteful and fun exhibition. While the turnout seemed slightly low, sales are through the roof; one client bought four before the show even started! This should come as no surprise to anyone as Frederique Morrel has done a fantastic job at creating curiously original works of contemporary art.

Other highlights of the evening include hearing of a client's vexation, and subsequent demands, at having bought a unicorn with a curved horn. And Anastasia, the Ukrainian gallery assistant's, attempts to serve me a cocktail snappily named "Prosecco with elderflower and vodka" - devised to make even the most lowly hobo put a deposit down on a life-sized, multicoloured moose head.

Useful links:
http://www.stephaniehoppen.com/
http://www.frederiquemorrel.com/

East meets West - Contemporary Chinese Landscapes. Hong Ling @ Asia House.

The other day a friend invited me to Asia House for the first UK exhibition of works by Hong Ling, revered in China as the foremost contemporary landscape painter. What really excited me was that Xuefei Yang billed as "the world's finest classical guitarist" was to perform. After a decent speech by the organiser, Hong Ling took to the pulpit accompanied by his translator. He is Mr Miyagi's doppelgänger; an old sage who mastered his Pollock meets Turner craft by plucking flies from the air with paintbrushes. His elegant Chinese interpreter relayed his reasons for loving the UK (that we invented whisky and our ability to binge on it is one of the deepest cultural links between East and West) with unintentionally expert comic timing.

This segued neatly into Xuefei Yang's recital of traditional Chinese songs arranged for a traditionally western instrument. It was made clear that this was to be the theme of the night - between pieces she crowbarred in her thoughts on the East/West divide as evidenced in Hong Ling's splodgy landscapes. Throughout the performance I had the honour of standing near the back next to Hong Ling, the language barrier was a bit of a problem so we exchanged slightly awkward nods and bows in place of conversation.

As the performance concluded the crowd made its way to the basement to see the exhibition. He paints incredible landscapes - some brown, some white, some red - covering all the seasons. Its the abstract expressionist quality that makes them so original. Unlike an action painter where flow relegates precision, Hong Ling's technique gives deliberate intention to every speck of colour. A quote on the wall reads "The most singular contrast between Chinese and Western art is the difference in the source of inspiration, which is nature itself for the East and the female form for the West". Apparently Hong Ling was trained so that when painting a rock you must paint its inner feelings, making mountainsides a considerable mental effort. Do rocks dream of growing up, making pebbles and settling down somewhere pleasant? Probably not, but it's a charming thought adhered to by more than one whisky-sodden artist.

My personal highlight of the evening was when I complimented Xuefei Yang, 'the world's finest classical guitarist', she asked "Are you mixed race?"; "Well I'm half French..."; "But you look half Chinese!" 

In effect this summed up the evening, it was an East meets West diplomatic mission where the delegates were brought together and distracted by fine art, food and wine. Being told by the world's finest guitarist that I look half Chinese was a flattering, if slightly bizarre, peak in Anglo-Asian relations.

Useful Links:
http://asiahouse.org/exhibitions-and-events/detail?id=181
http://www.xuefeiyang.com/