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11/05/16
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Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of F22 magazine

Review of Refiguring the 50s at Ben Uri

08/01/15

Refiguring the 50s

Ben Uri, London

14 November 2014 – 22 February 2015


Exhibitions at Ben Uri are reliably educative, offer a historical overview, bring together artists whose work deserves comparison or joint consideration, and provide rigorous yet accessible literature, both on the gallery walls and in the accompanying publications. Refiguring the 50s is no exception. The exhibition collects the work of five figurative painters working in Britain in the 50s: Joan Eardley (1921-1963), Sheila Fell (1931-1979), Eva Frankfurther (1930-1959), Josef Herman (1911-2000) and LS Lowry (1887-1976). Each is distinctive in his or her style, but a common interest in society, working people as subject matter and the underlying human condition provides a thread which strings the works together and allows the gallery, and curator Sarah MacDougall, to spin a narrative and create a vivid picture of the era and its social change, patchworking together these various viewpoints.

To read this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/refiguring-the-50s-ben-uri-joan-eardley-sheila-fell-josef-herman-ls-lowry

Review of Uproar! The First 50 Years of the London Group 1913-1963 at Ben Uri Museum and Gallery

06/01/14

Uproar! The First 50 Years of the London Group 1913-1963

Ben Uri Museum and Gallery

31 October 2013 – 2 March 2014

When Mark Gertler exhibited The Creation of Eve (1914) at the London Group’s third show in 1915, he was as shocked by the reaction of the public as they apparently were by his painting. The press accused him of “calculated and unpleasant sensationalism”[i], “deliberate eccentricity”[ii] and “impertinence, with a seasoning of blasphemy”[iii]. Looking at the work today, it is hard to imagine how it might have engendered such a frenzied and uproarious response, but such was the mood prevailing in the early decades of the last century. The London Group itself was set up in opposition to the art establishment, from the start being billed as the alternative not only to the Royal Academy but to the reigning anti-establishment exhibiting society, the New English Art Club (NEAC). Jacob Epstein is credited with having coined the name at a meeting held on 15 November 1913, and it was considered an appropriately all-encompassing moniker, in contrast to such locally named groups as the Fitzroy Street Group and the Camden Town Group.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/uproar-the-first-50-years-of-the-london-group-1913-1963