It’s always fair weather

This bumper crop of autumn shows is guaranteed to lift the spirit

IN keeping with the times, the last months have not been particularly successful for gallery selling exhibitions and August is always a quiet month, whatever the state of the nation. However, shows must go on, and dealers and their artists are offering many good things for the autumn. Art—although not necessarily of the Contemporary kind that is automatically given the cliché ‘challenging’—is not only a pleasure and comfort, but can be a wise buy when the economy is shaky.

Here is a small selection of early-autumn exhibitions in London and the South, together with a pointer to some of the dozens of art and antiques fairs. I hope to cover other parts of the country in future columns. These shows offer traditional skills and qualities, often including beauty.

The GX Gallery, 43, Denmark Hill, London SE5 (www.gxgallery. com), does sometimes stray into ‘challenging’ territory, but the current show, ‘Bohemian Crystal’ with sculpture by Vlastimil Beránek (Fig 1), Jaroslav Prosek and Michaela Smrcek, to October 13, together with soulful paintings of clothes and fabrics by the Russian artist Katya Levental, will have a wide appeal. The glass, as would be expected from Bohemia, is of very high quality.

Messum’s, 28, Cork Street, Mayfair, London W1 (http://messums. com) (which should be applauded for retaining the apostrophe) has landscapes by Alan Cotton (Fig 3) from September 13 to October 6. His paintings of Venice, the Lubéron, Cyprus, Connemara and elsewhere are beautiful and the gallery will hang them with the preliminary on-the-spot drawings, pastels and watercolours from which they derive, allowing for an attractive spread of prices.

The Marlborough Gallery, 6, Albemarle Street, London W1 (www.marlboroughlondon.com) is rightly excited by ‘The Art of Steven Campbell’ (Fig 2), from September 13 to October 21. Campbell (1953–2007) was a pioneer of the Scottish artistic renaissance in the 1980s and his powerful vision, although individual, has a kinship with that of Mick Rooney, RA and even Richard Dadd.

From September 16 to October 4, the Jerram Gallery, Half Moon Street, Sherborne, Dorset (www.jerramgallery.com) offers shore- and wading-bird sculp-

Fig 3: Alan Cotton’s Provence—bonnieux from a courtyard at Lacoste. With Messum’s

Fig 2: Untitled II by Steven Campbell. With Marlborough Fine Art Fig 4:

Eight Sanderlings by Guy Taplin. With the Jerram Gallery

Fig 1: Endless by Vlastimil Beránek at the GX Gallery