Reed Wilson Pocket Square
(after El Greco’s Veil of Veronica)
60 x 50cm, oil in board
£3,500
Layers exhibition: Rosamund Coady Still Life with Four Cups & a Spoon Sold
Layers exhibition: Reed Wilson Gilded Thistle £3,500
Reed Wilson Gilded Thistle
50 x 60cm, acrylic on board
£3,500
Layers: Reed Wilson Babel £1,800
Reed Wilson Babel
30 x 30cm acrylic on board
£1800
Layers: Glass of Water & Wafer by Reed Wilson SOLD
Reed Wilson Glass of Water and Wafer
40 x 30cm, oil on board
£Sold
Layers an exhibition of work by Rosamund Coady and Reed Wilson
Reed Wilson and Rosamund Coady both took part in last year’s Open exhibition here. Drawn to each other’s work they met and discovered they were contemporaries at Camberwell and so the idea for Layers was born, their joint exhibition that runs here in the gallery 16th – 24thSeptember.
The title of the exhibition refers in part, to the creative journey with many dead ends, that both artists undertook before each found their way. Both work intensively with their materials in a layering process too, as they take ordinary objects and redefine them.
Some of Reed Wilson’s inspiration comes from spending time in national collections and her Toothpicks, which was included in this year’s Summer Show at the RA, was directly influenced by Bellini’s Madonna and Child as she chose the same colour palette. Reed’s ‘layers’ are destructive: initially she sets out painting everything all at once before she carefully deconstructs it, scraping back and repainting many times, until eventually the pieces in the puzzle fit back together to her satisfaction, whole again.
Rosamund Coady works on simple shapes inspired by the traditional still life, cutting the clay into shapes inspired by ordinary or organic objects: lemons, onions and tomatoes have all featured as forms for plates. These forms are used a base, a canvas, to hold the glazes that are painted on in layers. She mixes glazes instinctively, rather than working to a strict formula and saves the leftovers, mixing them together in a process she calls ‘wild glazing’, where the outcome is both unknown and unpredictable.
I’m delighted to have them showing here together and looking forward to seeing their work together in the gallery in September as part of Shoreditch Design Triangle. We’ll be serving wine in the gallery on the afternoon of the opening day Saturday 16th September
Layers at Town House Spitalfields 16th – 24th September and all works will be on the home page of the Town House website from the opening day.
For the video of the exhibition please click here
Wishful Thinking…..
The Lockdown Paintings of Nicholas Borden
The video of this exhibition has now been posted on Youtube:
Exhibition at Town House 19th June – 4th July, booking not required to visit the gallery
Town House welcomes Nicholas Borden back to the gallery here for an exhibition of his lockdown paintings. He always works from life, taking his easel out with him in rain or shine and he continued to work this way during lockdown, with added views from his windows. So of necessity, many of his subjects in Wishful Thinking were painted locally in East London where he lives – although he did occasionally venture further afield.
This way of working always lends a vibrancy and immediacy to Nicholas’ work that combine to convey a sense of ‘being there’ to the viewer. The works in this exhibition have a particular intensity however, perhaps the result of the circumstances and isolation imposed by lockdown, but also perhaps a response to a more urgent need he felt to record what he saw around him during the pandemic.
What Nicholas recorded in paint was what we all experienced in lockdown: going for a walk, visiting parks and looking at gardens whether from outside or in, the Wishful Thinking of the title for those who had no access to their own outdoor space.
Nicholas Borden’s exhibition ‘Wishful Thinking’ will be on sale at Town House in Fournier Street and on the home page of the website from Saturday 19th June – Sunday 4th July. Please note we will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays while restrictions remain in force. No booking necessary
Town House in Lockdown 6: James Mackinnon
Which brings me to the last painting in this Town House in Lockdown exhibition. It’s by James Mackinnon and it’s an appropriate one to end with as the very first piece of East End art I encountered was by James. It was a long while ago in 1994 and ‘London Fields East: The Ghetto’ was an exhibition at the Museum of London and the memory of peering in through the windows of that extraordinary model of Ellingfort Road in Hackney stayed with me for a long while afterwards. The street was due to be demolished, but was being occupied by squatters at the time, many of them artists.
So, as my journey with East London art started unwittingly with a piece by James Mackinnon, it feels fitting that this lockdown exhibition should end with his Tower at Night, London Fields from 2012. It was the last in a series of paintings of the area around London Fields where he used to live.
To me this has that magical sense of a perfectly still night, that beautiful moon shining, not a breath of wind, like some of the beautiful nights with a spectacular moon we’ve had in lockdown. No cars out, or people walking around but the sense that people are still there in a multi coloured patchwork of urban life. When I stood in the gallery and looked at this painting I wondered what it would look like if someone switched those lights off….
As soon as lockdown started, I really wanted to to cycle into central London to see it as I’d never seen it before. I expected to find it rather beautiful, the buildings, uncluttered by hordes of visitors, finally revealed in all their glory. Instead I found it very sad, depressing even. The doors of St Paul’s were tightly shut with no one on the steps, just one other cyclist there having a look. Unlike this painting there was no lit window to reassure me that there was someone inside, that life was carrying on as normal. This was very definitely not normal and it made me realise that beautiful as they are, these city landmarks are made by the presence of people. The loss of that same buzz of visitors that I’ve noticed in my empty shop is magnified many times over looking at a tightly shut and desolate St Paul’s.
Which brings me back to Doreen’s Mile End Park. I’ve realised that because it doesn’t look like a city view, I don’t feel the need to find people in it, to see life going on behind the façade; it feels rural rather than urban. It’s the city views that need people, without them they are sad, just as central London has been sad in these terrible last weeks.
And that’s what I’ve taken from hanging these paintings together here: yes, East End art is about the buildings and the loss of them, the shops and markets, the poverty, even the beauty, but more than anything else I’ve realised during lockdown it’s about people and it’s about community.
You can see the video of the whole exhibition here:-