Review of John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing at Two Temple Place, London

25/03/19

John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing

Two Temple Place, London

26 January – 22 April 2019

With the bicentenary of his birth on 8 February this year, there is, deservedly, a renewed interest in the Victorian polymath, John Ruskin: a writer, whose collected publications run to 38 volumes; an art critic; an artist; a teacher; a social commentator; a collector; and, importantly, a supporter of artists. His anniversary is being marked by a plethora of exhibitions around the country, including several at Brantwood (his final home in the Lake District); Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud: Watercolours and Drawings, which is touring from York Art Gallery (29 March – 23 June) to Abbot Hall Art Gallery, in Kendal, on the edge of the Lakes (12 July – 5 October); and John Ruskin: Art & Wonder at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield (29 May – 15 September). The latter is a further iteration of the exhibition, John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing, currently on display in the neo-gothic mansion, Two Temple Place, on the Embankment, London, which celebrates primarily Ruskin’s intentional legacy, the Guild of St George. 

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Review of Constable and Brighton at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

18/04/17

Constable and Brighton

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

8 April - 8 October 2017

When the painter and curator Peter Harrap moved to Brighton in 2010, he had just finished working on the Royal Academy of Arts’ exhibition No New Thing Under The Sun. A key work that he had been responsible for including in this exhibition was the sketchy, expressionist, and quite remarkable for an artist associated with finished arcadian scenes, Rainstorm over the Sea (c1824-28) by John Constable (1776-1837). It came as something of a surprise, then, when local history researcher and new neighbour Shân Lancaster came knocking at his door to let him in on her supposition that Constable himself has lodged at this very address – then 9 Sober’s Gardens, now 11 Sillwood Road – on a number of his stays in the popular seaside resort: between 1824-28, Constable regularly returned with family, in an attempt to aid his ailing wife’s health (she was suffering from tuberculosis).

Intrigued, Harrap joined Lancaster on a mission to prove that this had indeed been Constable’s address. After much trawling through local directories, property deeds and Constable family correspondence of the period, they came across an uncatalogued letter in the Tate Archive addressed to Mrs Constable at this very address. In 2013, Richard Constable, the great-great-grandson of the artist, unveiled a blue plaque on the house. Sadly, having died in 2015, he is no longer around to enjoy this enlightening, thoroughly researched and scholarly significant exhibition co-curated by Harrap, showcasing more than 60 sketches, drawings and paintings made by Constable during those years, many in the “painting room” he created at Sober’s Gardens – now Harrap’s own studio – at the time doubling up as a bedroom for the cook, Mrs Inskip.

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Image:

John Constable

Seascape Study: Boat and Stormy Sky

c1824-28

Oil on paper laid on board

18.50 x 15.50 cm

Given by Isabel Constable, 1888

Photograph © Royal Academy of Arts, London

Photograph: John Hammond

Review of Risk at Turner Contemporary, Margate

31/12/15

Risk

Turner Contemporary, Margate
10 October 2015 – 17 January 2016

The term “risk” is thought to have first appeared in maritime insurance contracts in the 13th century. The concept has evolved with time, becoming imbued with scientific, physical, psychological, societal, political, statistical and myriad further connotations. The sociologist Gerda Reith, for example, argues that there is no such thing as risk in the world, only the dangers we construct in our heads. Artists have certainly long played with the many different aspects of risk-taking, pushing themselves and their practices and materials to the limit, letting go of control, risking harm, even deliberately causing (self-)harm – and to enjoy their works, audiences are often also invited to take some level of risk. This exhibition brings together more than 70 works from the mid-20th century to the present day, as well as some older artefacts, exploring the concept of risk in a society increasingly controlled by risk aversion, with our preoccupation for health and safety and disaster planning.

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Reviews of Ruskin's Turners at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Jane Austen at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

30/08/15
Ruskin's Turners 
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
16 June - 4 October 2015

and 

An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Jane Austen
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
16 July - 4 October 2015

Published in The Mail on Sunday, 30/08/15