"Gilbert & George" for Brighton

Existers 1984

Works by the artist partnership Gilbert & George are to visit Brighton Museum. The display will comprise works ranging from 1969 to 1991 including bold-coloured works such as Existers created in 1984 and later works such as Hunger and Thirst, both created in 1992 and Family Tree 1991. The works explore the artists’ own image, their place as misfits in society and their concept of ‘art for all’.

Many of the big, brightly coloured works are from the 1980s, a period of huge energy and change for the artists, when Gilbert & George were also developing new and specifically modern techniques of photography and printing.

This exhibition draws from ARTIST ROOMS, a touring collection of over 1,600 works of modern and contemporary art by more than 40 major artists. The collection is displayed across the UK through a touring programme, supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Creative Scotland. ARTIST ROOMS was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments.

Festival 2017 scrappost

The Snowdogs auction

The Blue Route

Effective installation by Kaarina Kaikkonen composed of shirts and ropes in the Fabrica Gallery.  Kaarina is also responsible for "Time Passing By" at the Clock Tower.

2013, the T-shirt Festival

Rather like religion really. Don't expect to understand it. - Just believe.

The East End . . .

 . . . of the Undercliff.

Walkers reaching the far east end of the Undercliff, 500 yards beyond Saltdean Gap, cannot help but feel a sense of anti-climax. Not only is it an inevitable dead-end but the once dramatic glimpse provided of the untamed cliffs beyond is there largely obscured by a concrete barrier. This barrier, to judge by the usual warning notice, is mainly designed to deter the rash-minded from "entering the caves" in the small bay beyond. 

Looking east.

Google Earth view.

The last 310 yards of the Undercliff Walk lie beyond the city's boundary and were built by Chailey Rural District Council in 1963. Presumably it is now the responsibility of Lewes District Council. One can understand that they might not feel the same commitment to the Walk as a visitor attraction as BHCC.

At the moment there is one derelict seat. The site seems to be calling out for something to make it more of a destination, such as a site-specific sculpture. Maybe Thomas Heatherwick or Anthony Gormley has something looking for a home?

 

Festival Programme covers

Just over three years ago the first post on Brighton Bits was motivated by the simple desire to have a quick moan about the cover design of the Festival programme.  The guest director that year was Anish Kapoor and I likened his design to a "tide of gloom creeping over the city", suggestive of a then threatening recession. It may have been prophetic!




Mr Kapoor's other contributions to the 2009 Festival were more stimulating and he has since gone on to have an exhibition at the Royal Academy. One of his latest works is the landmark sculpture for the Olympic Park, "ArcelorMittal Orbit", see below.

ArcelorMittal Orbit

The cover for this year's programme is attractive and uncontroversial. It is based on a photograph by Victor Skerebneski of Vanessa Redgrave, this year's Guest Director. The design of cover image and programme is by  Harrison & Co. of Marlborough Place, Brighton.

"Dreams of Here"

The current art exhibition at Brighton Art Gallery features the work of three living painters linked by their strong associations with Sussex. The differences between these three artists in terms of style, technique and subject matter is huge. Undeterred by this however, the anonymous writer of the publicity leaflet has done a splendid job in teasing out a common theme for the exhibition:

The leaflet declaims, "Brought together their work follows the course of a journey from a land of literal description, (Julian Bell, below) . . .

. . .Through the layered subtleties of sense perception (Tom Hammick, see left) . . .













. . . into the buried landscapes of our subconscious worlds.

(Andrezej Jackowski, below). My brackets throughout.

Entry is free, it is on until June 10th and well worth a visit.

Breakfast in Brighton

This large oil painting measuring 5 ft high was the undoubted hit of the 1995 'Brighton Revealed' exhibition where it dominated one wall of Brighton Art Gallery. It was painted c.1950 by Edward Le Bas and later became the part inspiration for a quirky book of the same name by Nigel Richardson. 

Le Bas had travelled and painted a lot on the continent and, because of this, an imaginative art dealer originally named the painting 'Breakfast in Majorca'. In fact it shows a scene in the front room of a house in Clifton Terrace, Brighton, looking out over the private gardens towards the since decapitated Metropole Hotel and the sea.

The way Le Bas has captured the light flooding over the table is genius, although from the direction of the shadows it appears to have been a rather late breakfast.

Another painting c.1952 by Le Bas entitled "Brighton from Clifton Terrace" appears to be from an upper room situated towards the Dyke Road, eastern end, of the terrace, as it shows the corner of the italianate villa, 43 Dyke Rd, then occupied by Clark's Secretarial College. A possible candidate for the viewpoint of this painting is 6 Clifton Terrace, a guest house at that time. 

Both the above paintings are in private ownership. 

Le Bas was born in 1904, educated at Harrow, Cambridge University and the Royal College of Art and started to exhibit at the Royal Academy from about 1930. He met Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury Group in the 1940's and was elected to the London Group in 1942. By 1955 he had become a Royal Academician and in 1957 was awarded a CBE. By this time he had amassed an extensive collection of 20th century paintings which were the subject of a special exhibition at the RA in 1963. His relative early death in 1966 was attributed to heavy drinking.

The only Edward Le Bas in the Brighton Museum collections is the delightful "The Bedside Table", c.1940, which is currently on display in the Art Gallery.

Today some of Le Bas' paintings have values in the order of £20,000. 

The Five Senses

A serendipitous arrangement of paintings in Hove Museum.  It forms part of the current Fine Art exhibition "The Five Senses" in which all the paintings are chosen to demonstrate the different ways artists through the ages have chosen to suggest touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. 

Some of the paintings in this exhibition are rarely seen. Brighton & Hove has a collection of about 1500 oil paintings and of course numerous water-colours, etchings, drawings, sculptures etc. Yet gallery space is only available for a few percentage of these. Even if displays were changed every 6 months or so it would take several decades before we could have seen the whole collection. It is true of course that any item would be made available to view on request, yet this hardly compares with the pleasures of casual viewing and the concomitant anticipation of new discoveries. 

There seems no prospect of a significant increase in gallery space in the forseeable future. An extra room in the Brighton Museum might become available when/if, in a few years time, the Local History Centre moves to the Keep in Falmer but, even if the space freed is used for an art gallery, it will not make a significant contribution in comparison with the size of the collection.

Brighton has been called "London-by-the-sea", but unlike London we lack a prestigious Art Gallery and apparently, any philanthropists, sugar or grocery barons for example,  to build us one. 

This free exhibition continues until 1st March next year.

Tetrapods

Tetrapods protecting the wave-spending beach at Brighton Marina. They were invented over 50 years ago in France as a substitute for large boulders which tend to get dislodged over time by the pounding of waves. They are designed to lock together in a random but open structure which dissipates the energy of the wave through turbulence. Numerous variations in shape have since been produced but all go under the generic name "tetrapod", borrowed from zoology. 

Their use became very widespread at one time, but the pendulum has swung against "hard stabilisation' of coastlines as this interferes with natural currents, material drift and deposition. Tetrapods now are only used in special situations such as that shown above; and Japan has undertaken a large programme of removal of tetrapods in an effort to beautify its coast. However they are intriguing objects and collectively form a fascinating abstract sculpture. Moderation is the key.

But is it Art?

This pair of abandoned boots outside the "Seven Stars" this morning called to mind the Rene Magritte painting, and then the further thought that I might be looking at a Brighton Festival artwork.

Either that or someone had very cold toes by the time they got home last night.

At the Fabrica

The light & sound installation by Brian Eno, Guest Artistic Director for this year's Festival, is wonderful. Enter the blacked-out gallery and relax on one of the deep comfortable sofas facing an array of monitor screens. Let the soft melodic soundtrack wash over you while the screens display an ever-changing mosaic of hand drawn patterns which soothe and entrance the eye. Such sounds of the outside world that penetrate this once religious building become insignificant and far away.

The work is entitled "77 Million Paintings", (but who's counting?) and the accompanying leaflet describes it as "Monumental in scale, duration and thematic scope" which "underscores our essential human and ephemeral nature". I felt it was like being inside a grown-up kaleidoscope but none the worse for that.  Well worth inclusion on your Festival 'must-see' list. Entrance is free.

Pebble Art

Seen on the Western Esplanade, a few 100 yards west of the King Alfred. It must have taken quite some time to collect and sort the pebbles according to size and colour and then arrange them in this complicated pattern. But the creative impulse cannot be restrained . . . .

Anish Kapoor

A view of Mr Kapoor's installation at the old fruit and veg. market in Circus street. (The colour of the child's anorak is purely accidental). The work is called "the Dismemberment of Jeanne d'Arc"  and is made up of 5 items covering almost the entire market floor which seem to vaguely mark out a woman's body. Two enormous tortured cylinders lie behind the camera. The two red heaps in the distance are presumably the spoil from the central excavation which although looking spherical in this shot is actually an extremely elongated ellipse. 

It is very impressive from scale alone and well worth a visit. I have heard from two separate sources that young children are particularly fascinated by it.

The Festival Programme cover which I criticised in an earlier post now begins to make more sense. Anish Kapoor is the Guest Artistic Director for the Festival with several of his works on display throughout the City. It was obviously deemed appropriate  to have his work featured on the programme cover.

On the other hand one wonders if one of the primary functions of the programme has been overlooked. Surely it should be bold, eye-catching and attractive. Brighton is full of talented Graphic Designers. How about a competition next year?