The best art exhibitions coming up in Bristol and the Westcountry – selected by the Friends of the RWA…
Here’s our pick of the best art exhibitions and events happening in and around Bristol and the south west in the month ahead – including a look ahead to upcoming features….
AT THE RWA
Me, Myself, I: Artists’ Self-Portraits – from 30 April
Me, Myself, I: Artists’ Self-Portraits is the RWA’s landmark reopening exhibition following the transformational Light & Inspiration £4.1 million capital project. Opening to the public from 2 May – 19 June 2022, it will take place across all main gallery spaces.
The exhibition includes over 70 works by artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Angelica Kauffman and Lucian Freud, alongside contemporary work by Grayson Perry, Gillian Wearing and many more.
Curated by Tessa Jackson OBE, the show provides an illuminating overview and historical context to society’s current interest in self-representation and selfie culture, through an exploration of self-portraiture by artists over the last three hundred years.
Exclusive Priority Days for Friends are on 30 April and 1 May 22. Book your places here.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Compiled by Sue Quirk and Laurel Smart
1) LAUREL SMART: COLOUR BEYOND DARKNESS
30 MARCH – 8 MAY, TETBURY ARTS, TETBURY. PREVIEW: SATURDAY 2 APRIL 12pm
Laurel started painting large abstract canvases about four years ago. Most often they are entirely intuitive and only tell their story once they are complete. They tend to be busy, energetic and evocative. Laurel loves colour and the physical experience of applying paint to the canvas.
She is fascinated by the relationship between chaos and order in nature. This is reflected in the way she paints, starting with apparently random marks, gradually imposing some order and then disrupting it to build it up again. The paint is many layers deep. “The painting will often impose itself on me and I follow where it takes me, rather than make it do something else. I try to keep an open mind about how a painting will evolve. Rather like a conversation, I respond to the last mark and the new dynamic that is created. I rarely know when a painting is finished. Each painting has a resting period and then if, at the end of that time, it doesn’t ask for more, it’s done! But no painting is safe from revision!”
2) JULLIAN SCOTT & OLIVER KENT: IMAGINED THINGS
2 – 6 APRIL, CENTRESPACE, BRISTOL
Both artists are interested in the landscape and in material culture as forms of evidence. Each, in unusual ways, engage with matter and making as a research process. There is a shared interest in colour and in the physical activity of making objects and marks.
Julian Scott: “My paintings are abstract and are the result of a reflective process that is both intuitive and cognitive. Internalised versions of lived experience, particularly memories of place, interact with the paintings as they emerge. I am always looking for new insight and to be surprised by them in some way.”
Oliver Kent: “As an archaeologist I work with pottery (mostly broken) to unravel meanings and histories. As a maker I enjoy the material itself and the freedom it brings to play with those meanings and histories.
3) JANET SAINSBURY: DON’T LOOK NOW
2 – 30 APRIL, PLOUGH ARTS CENTRE, GREAT TORRINGTON, DEVON. PREVIEW FROM 2 – 4 ON SATURDAY APRIL 2
A new series of oil paintings examining the often complex relationship between the muse and artist. Anthropomorphic coastal rock formations provide a dramatic presence, influencing the dynamics and connections between the characters. Unstable, finely balanced rocks threaten to topple and erode the landscape and change the narrative.
4) ECHOES IN TIME, MIXED EXHIBITION
UNTIL 9 APRIL, ARTIZAN GALLERY, TORBAY
The spring exhibition showcase, Echoes in Time, welcomes artists who in their work explore themes of identity, the self, and the effect of time on both these constructs. Whether it be through traditional portraiture or a presentation of the self in a more abstract or narrative space, the participating artists look at the complex relationships we have with the evolving self.
Featuring artists: Thomas Oscar Miles, Rocio E. Bucheli, Genevieve Murray, Emma Roberts and Virginia Griem; Becky Nuttall’s, “Art of the School”; and an Artist Support Pledge showcase.
5) ANNABELLE TIM HOGBEN / ALEXIS SOUL-GRAY: STRAW GIRL
UNTIL 20 MARCH, EXETER PHOENIX
ANNABELLE TIM HOGBEN: exhibition of recent paintings by Devon-based artist Annabelle Tim Hogben that explore issues of representation, identity and the self.
This collection of large canvases is shown together for the first time, alongside examples of a parallel drawing practice, forming Annabelle Tim’s first solo exhibition in a public gallery. They present us with a series of scaled-up representations of bodies, or body parts, which appear folded into the frame and variously twist, writhe, grasp and support, or else are overlaid in various states of hyper-representation, warped scale and abstraction. By turns stark, humorous and confrontational, they may invite us in, meet us with a direct, unflinching gaze or place us in the uncomfortable position of the voyeur.
ALEXIS SOUL-GRAY: Working in painting, collage, assemblage and printmaking, Soul-Gray explores ideas of nurture, dereliction and the mother archetype in relation to trauma and loss. She employs a variety of found imagery and objects, both as points of reference and as physical material to question issues around memorial, nostalgia and commemoration.
She describes her works as “a direct manifestation of a shattering and destructive personal trauma, creating a lexicon of possibilities that attempt to speak of the universal experience of loss, the mother and nostalgic longing.”
6) JEAN ROSE: PEOPLE, PARKS AND PLANTS
UNTIL 4 MAY, VICTORIA ART GALLERY, BATH
The painterly energy of the artist Jean Rose has been channelled into this charming exhibition full of the delights of a life well lived. Inspired by the intimate interiors of Vuillard, she developed her warm painterly patterns in park scenes and floral subjects that reveal the clarity and focus she sees in the world around her. Still working into her nineties, this remarkable artist completes a painting a week.
During lockdown she turned to Sydney Gardens for inspiration. This exhibition gives visitors a glimpse of the relationships she sustains with her family, home and outdoor spaces.
7) CANDICE LIN: PIGS AND POISON
UNTIL 8 MAY, SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL
A major new commission by LA-based artist Candice Lin that expands her ongoing research into marginalised histories, colonial legacies and the materials that link them. Combining materials as diverse as opium poppy, bone black pigment and lard, the exhibition weaves together wide-ranging stories of migration, biological warfare, and British and American colonial relationships with China to explore how Asian people have often been defined in relationship to animality, contagion, and the inhuman. Lin traces how these definitions have subsequently influenced constructions of whiteness and citizenship in the United States.
LAST CHANCE TO SEE
- UNTIL 3 APRIL: ROBERT BAGGALEY, LINDA CRANE & BOB DEVEREUX A joint exhibition. PENWITH GALLERY, ST IVES https://penwithgallery.com/exhibition/studio-gallery-robert-baggaley-linda-crane-bob-devereux-2022/
- UNTIL 3 APRIL: GAYNOR WILLIAMS AND SUE IFOULD: EARTHBOUND Watercolours and bookmaking. HARBOUR HOUSE, KINGSBRIDGE, DEVON https://www.harbourhouse.org.uk/g22-gw.shtml
- UNTIL 4 APRIL: AGA KUBISH: BETWEEN LAND & SEA Linocut prints and original illustrations. HEART OF THE TRIBE, GLASTONBURY https://heartofthetribe.com/event/aga-kubish-solo-exhibition/
WATCH OUT FOR…
- MILKIE: MY HAPPY PLACE: 1-23 APRIL My Happy place conveys ideas of the happy and the sad, exploring the relationship between how we view ourselves and how we feel within ourselves. HOURS, BRISTOL http://www.hours-space.com/2022/02/05/my-happy-place/
- CHRISTINE ALLISON: EVERY BREATH WE TAKE: UNTIL 24 APRIL tribute to the planet’s most important and too often undervalued resource: trees. LYME BAY ARTS, BRIDPORT https://lymebayarts.co.uk/wordpress/every-breath-we-take/
- IDA APPLEBROOG: RIGHT UP TO NOW: UNTIL 2 MAY The exhibition includes a collection of archival photography and technical notes relating to biomorphic sculptures dating from 1969 until the early 1970s. HAUSER & WIRTH, BRUTON https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/35570-ida-applebroog-right-now-1969-2021/
If you would like an exhibition or artist to be listed please email laurel.smart@blueyonder.co.uk for consideration.
The Floating Circle 