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 Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion at Two Temple Place

11/02/17

Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion

Two Temple Place

28 January – 23 April 2017

As artists continue to be priced out of even the farthest reaches of London’s boroughs, and many move down to places on the south coast, such as Hastings, it seems there is something of a revived rural exodus to mirror that – or, more correctly, those – of the early- to mid-20th century, when numerous artistic communities established themselves in the county of Sussex, with guilds, enclaves and retreats. Exemplifying the many faces of modernism, these various groupings might, at first glance, seem as different from one another as chalk and cheese, but biographical and conceptual links can be made, weaving a deft narrative of the period and its protagonists, and this is precisely what the sixth annual exhibition, in the successful winter exhibition programme at Two Temple Place, has achieved. The result, Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion, brings together painting, film, sculpture, furniture, music and photography from more than 30 lenders and nine museums and galleries. What the curator, Dr Hope Wolf, describes as a “visual cacophony of styles and media” is contextualised against the late-19th-century interiors of the London venue, making visible the very style from which many of the artists included sought to depart.

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