Shaping Futures: A Perfect Partnership

 02/12/20

Published in the winter 2020 issue of Art Quarterly

Review of Artemisia at the National Gallery, London

02/11/20

Artemisia

National Gallery, London

3 October 2020 – 24 January 2021

 

The Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c1656) is well on her way to becoming as widely recognised an artistic icon as Frida Kahlo. Certainly in the era of #MeToo, her autobiography of being raped by a fellow artist, a friend of her father, at the age of 17, and enduring a seven-month-long trial, which included torture, to test the veracity of her testament, goes before her and makes her name – for better or worse – more well-known than her artwork. Of the latter, those paintings depicting biblical heroines as strong – and often vengefully violent – real women are the most beloved, and, in fact, generally the only ones known. I confess to having been oblivious to many of her more tender subjects until this long-overdue – and latterly delayed due to Covid-19 closures – exhibition at the National Gallery, London, finally opened its doors.

Read the full article here

Feature: Behind the Scenes conserving Artemisia Gentileschi at the National Gallery, London

12/12/18




Published in the Winter 2018 issue of Art Quarterly

Interview with Ed Ruscha

10/06/18
Interview with Ed Ruscha

Published in the Summer 2018 issue of Art Quarterly and online at Art Fund

Review of Goya: The Portraits at the National Gallery

20/11/15

Goya: The Portraits

National Gallery

7 October 2015 – 10 January 2016

The late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, is not generally thought of in terms of light, rather in terms of darkness. His best-known works are arguably his fourteen Black Paintings, which depict, in very dark terms, the atrocities of the Napoleonic War and the artist’s fear of insanity. However, a third of Goya’s output comprises portraits and more than 150 of these still survive today. The current exhibition at the National Gallery, the first dedicated to this genre of his work, showcases nearly half of them.

Read the rest of this review here

Image:

Francisco de Goya

María Luisa wearing a Mantilla, 1799

Oil on canvas, 205 x 130 cm

Colecciones Reales, Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real de Madrid

© Patrimonio Nacional

Editorial: Views of the Art World

28/09/15

Published in issue 18 (autumn 2015) of StateF22

Review of Art in Dialogue: Duccio | Caro at the National Gallery

04/08/15

Art in Dialogue: Duccio | Caro

National Gallery, London

13 June – 8 November 2015

In 1999, the National Gallery invited Sir Anthony Caro (1924-2013) – along with 23 other major contemporary artists – to create a new work in response to one painting each in its permanent collection. The result was an exhibition entitled Encounters – New Art from Old (14 June – 17 September 2000), which formed part of the gallery’s millennium celebrations. Caro, choosing to respond to a small fragment of a work by the medieval Sienese master Duccio di Buoninsegna (active from 1278 until his death in 1319), produced not just one but seven sculptures, forming the Duccio Variations (1999-2000). The third of these is now on display in room 66, alongside the painting that acted as the catalyst, The Annunciation (1307/8-11).

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/art-in-dialogue-duccio-anthony-caro-review-national-gallery-london

Interview with Maggi Hambling

28/12/14
Maggi Hambling: interview

Maggi Hambling: Walls of Water

National Gallery, London

26 November 2014 – 15 February 2015

Maggi Hambling: Walls of Water: The Monotypes
Marlborough Fine Art
3 December 2014 – 10 January 2015

In 1980, Maggi Hambling was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery. A controversial character, whose public sculptures have divided opinion and who is known for her outspoken opinions, she is also a passionate painter. Despite being almost 70, she considers herself still to be learning about the joys of oil paint and feels lucky not to be in a profession from which she is compelled to retire. With two concurrent shows, Walls of Water – the paintings and the monotypes – at the National Gallery and Marlborough Fine Art respectively, and a further exhibition and book due in March 2015, Hambling invited Studio International to her south London studio to talk about the sea, life, death and love.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/maggi-hambling-walls-of-water-review-interview-national-gallery-scallop

Review of Michael Landy: Saints Alive at the National Gallery

31/05/13

Michael Landy: Saints Alive

National Gallery, Sunley Room

23 May – 24 November 2013

“Before we go any further, can I just make sure that you actually know who I am and that you know what I do?” This was the question with which Michael Landy (born 1963) announced himself upon arrival at the National Gallery having been invited for consideration for the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation Associate Artist scheme. A Goldsmiths graduate (1985-1988), a YBA, and a participating artist in the notorious Freeze exhibition (1988), Landy is probably best known for his 2001 installation, Break Down, for which he took over an empty department store building on Oxford Street and systematically catalogued and destroyed everything he ever owned. One might, therefore, understand his uncertainty. Nevertheless, he was appointed as the gallery’s eighth Associate Artist and accordingly given a studio for two years. 

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/michael-landy-saints-alive