New beginnings
The art world has not lain idle during the pandemic. Here are some new projects to look forward to in 2022
THE past couple of years have been an extended hibernation, punctuated by occasional sunlit forays. Many of us have tried to use the time to get on with creative projects, such as long-projected books, but they have taken much longer than they should. As one such laggard, I am full of admiration for people who have simply got on and done whatever it was. Among them have been several art dealers who have set up new businesses, or at least new premises.
I wrote here about Jenna Burlingham’s move to a new space in Kingsclere, Hampshire (November 24, 2021). An opening at much the same time was that of GBS Fine Art on the first floor of 13, Sadler Street, Wells, Somerset. This is a new venture by Giles Baker-smith, who ran the Blue Gallery in London between 1994 and 2006 to promote then comparatively littleknown figures, such as Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry. His Wells gallery will do the same for a new generation.
The GBS space has been providing an opportunity for the Somerset-based Modern British dealer Freya Mitton to put on a show local to her instead of hurrying about the country from fair to fair. She has made a wide selection from her stock, including her staples, Mary Fedden (Fig 1) and Julian Trevelyan, but says ‘what they have in common is that they are all recognised artists who have an established market’.
Cassius & Co is an allied business that opened last year in between lockdowns. A proper bookshop at 63, Kinnerton Street, London SW1, just off the King’s Road, it combines exhibitions and art for sale, by Balthus, Picabia and Rie among others, with rare 20th- and 21st-century books.
Unsurprisingly, other businesses have launched online, dispensing with physical galleries. The latest—so new that it is not quite live as I write, but will be by publication—is The Tree Art Gallery (www.thetreeartgallery. com), offering ‘contemporary paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture and furniture dedicated to trees’. It is the brainchild of Emmeline Hallmark, who has had a distinguished career at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s and has gathered an impressive stable of artists, including Mary Anne Aytoun Ellis (Fig 2), Nigel Hall (Fig 3), Anne Desmet, Peter Lanyon, Julian Perry and Mark Frith. Prices will range from £100 to £80,000, and 17% of the income from sales will be donated to arboreal charities of the artists’ choice, such as the Woodland Trust and Forests without Frontiers.
It is nearly two years since Messum’s relocated from its long-time London home in Cork Street to 12, Bury Street, St James’s, SW1, where it has a handsome corner gallery over two floors. The current physical exhibition there (until January 28) is of acrylic paintings and monotypes by Maxwell Doig (b. 1966). He lives and works in Huddersfield, but many of these subjects are on the Suffolk and Norfolk coast, and he has as sure a feel for the materials from which his boats are made as he does for the wood, brick and stone of buildings (Fig 4).
Looking ahead and to New York, a rather different Suffolk coast will be seen in Maggi Hambling’s exhibition at Marlborough, 545, West 25th Street
(March 10–April 30). It is extraordinary that this should be her first ever American show. There will be several canvases from her ‘Wall of Water’ series painted in 2010–12. In part, these were a response to the death of a friend and when they were first shown at the National Gallery in 2014, Dame Maggi (b. 1945) said: ‘I feel younger now than I ever did when I was young. I seem to be painting more freely… I’m trying to paint death with as much life as I can.’
There will also be new themes, including wild animals painted in oil, but so freely that it is more like drawing. Her most recent ‘Edge’ paintings, tall canvases reminiscent of Chinese ink scrolls, suggest mountains and wastes through bold accumulations of indigo and white, as much about emotion as landscape.
Two years ago, Flowers, 21 Cork Street, W1, gave us some chuckles to take into the first lockdown with an exhibition of Glen Baxter’s whimsical take on modern art and philosophy. His cowboys, accompanied by Boy Scouts, lepidopterists and other dead-pan characters, return to the ranch until February 19 with a new show to bookend the pandemic. Inexplicably, the show of characteristic pastel drawings is titled ‘Inexplicably Vermillion’ and, this time, the artist takes aim at tofu (Fig 5), as well as modern art.
Although it is not a selling show, I cannot omit mention of the first exhibition devoted to Sir Quentin Blake’s illustrations for poetry (Fig 6), which has just opened at the Kirkby Art Gallery, Knowsley, Merseyside (until April 16). It has been organised by the House of Illustration, which is currently in chrysalis form before it evolves into the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.
That is to be housed in the former engine house at New River Head, Clerkenwell, close to Sadlers Wells Theatre, and ‘will be the UK’S home for illustration and the largest space in the world dedicated to illustration’. It is certainly not before time that London should catch up with Paris in the encouragement of drawing.
The current poetry show, which will travel to the Dick Institute, Ayrshire, after Knowsley, includes one or two surprisingly sombre drawings, such as the cover illustration for Michael Rosen’s On the Move. Next week Backward glances