Tag Archives: artist

An artist brings her troubled life to the eyes of the public: Tracey Emin

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AT TATE MODERN in London until 31 August 2026, there is a superb exhibition of works by the artist Tracey Emin. Daughter of a Romany mother and Turkish Cypriot father, she was born in Croydon in 1963, and brought up in Margate (Kent). Her education in art was at Medway College of Design, where she studied fashion, then at Maidstone Art College, where she graduated in printmaking. Later, she studied at London’s Royal College of Art, and was awarded a MA in painting.

The exhibition at the Tate includes a huge variety of Emin’s artworks: paintings, sculptures, installations (including the unmade bed for which she has become well-known), prints, photographs, videos, and more. There is a room containing a replica of her studio. The exhibits are beautifully arranged, and help to immerse the viewer in depictions of the world and her experiences of living in it. The artist has had a very traumatic life resulting from sexual encounters (including rape as a child), and their often-undesired consequences. Through her artworks she shares the troubles she has experienced with the outside world. Visitors to the exhibition, who might be prudish, might well be shocked by some of what they see in it. However, one should stifle one’s qualms and prejudices, if you have any, and savour the artist’s skills.

Whatever one might think about the subject matter in her art, there is no doubt that Tracey Emin is a talented, highly creative and imaginative artist. The evidence of this is plain to see in the current show at Tate Modern.

This artist shines lights on life in modern India

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BORN IN MYSORE (Mysuru) in 1969, the Indian artist NS Harsha lives and works in that city. He studied art first at Mysore’s Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts, and then at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda (Vadodara). Until 31 July 2026, there is a wonderful exhibition of his large paintings at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Almost all of Harsha’s beautifully executed paintings in the show contain depictions of lighted oil lamps (diyas), often many in a single work. In some paintings, the oil lamps are arranged to form regular patterns. In others, they are interspersed with images of people, animals, food, and items used in daily life. The numerous people who appear in these works are frequently workers in their overalls and hard hats (helmets), animals, and people planting crops. From a visual point of view, the paintings are very pleasing even if one has no idea what, if any, message the artist is attempting to convey. Although they depict contemporary subjects and far from being miniature, they hark back to the historical traditions of Indian Miniature paintings.

In a web page produced by the Chemould (Prescott Road) Gallery in Bombay, I read that:

“Like a chronicler, often drawing from popular stories and local perceptions of international news events, Harsha depicts in his canvasses small town/city Indian life in our increasingly globalized times. His intricately detailed canvasses juxtapose seemingly disassociated images of scenes of small town and village India with those of more recognizably international ones. Harsha’s multi-layered narratives strongly suggest that the global is always already located within the local imagination.”

Regarding the lamps in the paintings, the Victoria Miro website explained:

“The works, which elaborate on the artist’s celebrated, ongoing ‘lamp grid’ series, feature diyas – lamps traditionally made from clay that are lit during rituals, prayers, ceremonies, celebrations and during power cuts – with flames and trails of smoke together creating patterns that guide the eye around each canvas …  In Harsha’s work they represent energy, forces perhaps unseen.”

This interesting interpretation is useful enough, but the paintings alone speak for themselves, and throw an intriguing light on contemporary life in India.

I enjoyed viewing this exhibition, and becoming aware of a fascinating artist, whom I had not come across before.

An artist from the Amazonian rainforest in Cambridge

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FRANK BOWLING WAS born in Guyana (formerly British Guiana) in 1934. He came to England in 1953. He studied art at Chelsea College of Art,  then at The Royal College of Art. He is the first ‘black’ artist to have been made a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (in 2005). Until 17 January 2027, there is a small exhibition of Bowling’s work at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

 

Displayed in a circular room, there are about 10 works to be seen. Almost all of them are large images tending towards abstraction,  but some with figurative details. Some of the images have patches of three-dimensional accumulation of paint, sometimes with fragments of material attached. All the works are gloriously colourful. One of them is an impressionist map of the continent where Bowling was born: South America.

 

The little exhibition is a good example of the idea that ‘small is beautiful’, but most of the exhibits are far from being small.  I  am pleased that I have seen this show.

A marquis and a sculptor and a ruined abbey in Scotland

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 MUCH OF THE ABBEY church in Jedburgh is ruined. Founded in the twelfth century as an Augustinian monastery,  Jedburgh was dissolved in the sixteenth century. Now a picturesque ruin, only one part remains intact. This small chamber contains funerary monuments of the Kerr family  the marquises of Lothian.

 

The fine sculpture depicting William Schomberg Robert Kerr (1832-1870), the eighth MARQUIS of Lothian was carved in 1879. by George Frederick Watts (1817-1904).  

 

By GF Watts at Jedburgh

I was particularly interested to ‘stumble across’ this sculpture by Watts because his sculpture, “Physical Energy”, a huge bronze horseman, which stands in London’s Kensington Gardens is one I often pass while walking in that park, which is near my home.

One of many artists who lived in north London’s Hampstead

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DONALD CHISHOLM TOWNER (1903-1985) was born in Eastbourne, where there is now a gallery named after his great-uncle (John Chisholm Turner), and studied art first at Eastbourne School of Art, and then at London’s Royal College of Art. After graduation, Donald first took a studio at Mornington Crescent. Later, he moved to Hampstead, first residing at Holly Hill, and then in Church Row, where he lived for 50 years.

Currently, Burgh House in Hampstead is hosting an exhibition of Towner’s artworks, which is called “Amongst the Trees and Terraces: Donald Towner (1903-1985) and will continue until 13 December 2026. The exhibition includes one painting of St Pauls Cathedral surrounded by bombed buildings during WW2. Almost all of the other pictures have scenes of Hampstead as their subjects, and were painted in his studio in Church Row. Mostly painted in pale colours, they are all pleasing to the eye. Pleasant as it is, I would not rate Towner’s work nearly as highly as that of  his friend (and fellow student), the artist Eric Ravilious (1903-1942). Whereas Ravilious was adventurous in his compositional technique, Towner was more conventional.

Towner was not only a painter, but also a connoisseur and collector of ceramics. He began collecting after the end of WW2, and published several books about ceramics. At the same time, he continued painting until the end of his life.

The exhibition at Burgh House is small but well-laid out in the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Gallery. One large painting, not in that room, hangs in the reception area, and should not be missed.  We saw the exhibition because we were meeting friends in Burgh House’s café. I am not sure that if one does not have an interest in Hampstead, or happen to be visiting the area, that I would make a special journey to see the exhibition.

Art says things that history cannot, St John the Baptist on a tray, and a Colombian artist

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WORKS BY COLOMBIAN artist Beatriz Gonzalez (1932-2026) are being exhibited at London’s Barbican art gallery until 10 May 2026. She began studying architecture in the 1950s, but dropped out. Later, she studied fine arts at the University of Los Andes in Bogota, graduating in 1962.

Over the years, Gonzalez produced a wide variety of works, and throughout her life she believed that (to quote her): “Art says things that history cannot”, and what one can see in the exhibition confirms this. She lived through troubled times in Colombia, and this is reflected in many of her artworks. She has been described as a ‘pop artist’ possibly because many of her works were inspired by things she saw in magazines, newspapers, posters, and other media aimed at the public. However, she discounted this description, as can be seen by this answer to the question “Did you ever consider yourself (now or in the past) a pop artist?” during an interview she gave at the Tate Gallery in 2015:

“No, I considered my work a provincial type of painting. I’ve always considered myself more of a painter and within this remit I painted the joy of the underdeveloped. For me the type of art that I was doing could only circulate internationally as a curiosity. Mine was a provincial type of art without horizons, confronting the everyday: art is international.”

I will not attempt to discuss all the works on display at the Barbican, but will confine myself to her paintings on items of furniture, which she commenced in the 1970s. These beautifully executed creations are often quite witty. “The Last Supper” was one of the first of these pieces of furniture repurposed as a work of art. It consists of a fine table on the top of which the artist has painted a simplified version of a renaissance depiction of the Last Supper. And on a wooden coat stand, the mirror has been painted over with Gonzalez’s simplified version of the famous Mona Lisa painting. Another example is a straw basket with a ribbon on its handle. On the inside of the base of this everyday object she has painted a picture of three puppies resting on a floor. There is also a metal cot whose base is painted with a picture of a sleeping child. In the show, there are some televisions with paintings of people covering their screens. By now, you must be getting the idea of this aspect of Gonzalez’s art. My favourite example of this re-use of household items as places to paint pictures is a circular tray on which the artist has depicted Salome carrying the severed head of St John the Baptist on a circular tray.

Apart from the painted furniture and domestic items, the exhibition has a series of sections that show examples of Gonzalez’s art at the various stages in her artistic career. As is often the case at the Barbican art gallery, the artworks are beautifully displayed and well labelled.

Portraits of Pakistan near London’s Piccadilly

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IT IS WORTH climbing the steep staircase that leads to the Larkin Durey gallery in Mason’s Yard, near London’s Piccadilly, to view the paintings of Naira Mushtaq, which are on display until 20 March 2026. Ms Mushtaq was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She studied art at Kinnaird College For Women, Pakistan, and then at National College of Arts, also in Pakistan. Then, between 2017 and 2019, she studied at University of the Arts London: Central Saint Martins. Currently, she lives and works in London.

The paintings being shown at Larkin Durey were painted in 2025 and 2026. The artist wrote (https://nairamushtaq.squarespace.com/artist-statement) that her artistic practice:

“ … is focused on history, memory and social commentary stemming from a desire to understand grief and memory and how memories are formed as affect … My practice examines these questions by looking at the socio political and cultural context, while in most instances the backdrop of this comparison is my home country of Pakistan – the concerns under question are broader. Which memory is being remembered, who is it being remembered by, and the context of remembrance. How one memory merges with another, multiplicity and singularity of memory, what narratives we tell, what we choose to remember and what is the value of the narratives that we choose to remember if at all, drawing from these areas of interest and I examine memory as a form of impalpable archive while the tangible photograph or sourced materials aid to its inaccuracy, a palimpsest of truths and half-truths.”

Each of the 20 paintings on display depict faces or parts of faces. In each painting, the artist has used subdued colouring, which maybe suggests a sadness about her subjects, and concern about her often troubled native land. Some pictures depict faces and people in such a way that they look as if they are adapted from stills taken from a film (movie), being watched through darkly tinted spectacles. One portrait shows a distorted face, which reminded me of the way that Francis Bacon used to paint. And another evoked memories of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. Otherwise, her style is her own. Despite their melancholic, sometimes menacing subject matter, and dark colours, the paintings are both highly original and pleasing visually.

I am very glad I climbed the steep staircase to view this talented artist’s paintings.

The Long way in London’s Tate Modern art gallery

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THE ARTIST RICHARD LONG (born in England in 1945) studied art first at Bristol’s West of England College of art, and then between 1966 and 1968, at London’s St Martins School of Art, where his teachers included Anthony Caro and Phillip King (my mother worked alongside these two sculptors in the early 1960s). He is described as a ‘land artist’, and his works include sculpture, photography and text, as well as performance. Since the 1960s, Long has been creating artworks based on his experience of long walks he has made in places including the UK, the Sahara Desert, Iceland, the Himalayas, and Australia. He plots his walks on maps, and these become works of art. He also takes photographs of the terrain through which he has walked. In addition, he creates sculptures where he has walked using local materials, and then takes photographs of them in situ.

The Tate Modern is currently (March 2026, but I do not know when it ends) showing a collection of Long’s creations. This includes examples of his maps and photographs, text works (printed words), as well as three floor sculptures, each of which consist of pieces of stone arranged within the confines of a circle. One of them contains variously shaped chunks of Norfolk flint, another consists of pieces of red slate, and a third with Delabole slate, black in colour. Although they look almost randomly arranged, I imagine that the artist has placed them according to some design he had in mind. Seemingly simple, these sculptures are surprisingly striking.

I believe that what we saw at the Tate Modern’s exhibition is in complete harmony with what Richrd Long has said (quoted on the Tate’s website) about his art:

“My work really is just about being a human living on this planet and using nature as its source … I enjoy the simple pleasures of wellbeing, independence, opportunism, freedom, dreaming, happenstance; of passing through the land and sometimes stopping to leave (memorable) traces along the way.”

The exhibition is well worth seeing.

An extraordinary exhibition of art by an artist born in Czechoslovakia

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BORN IN WHAT was Czechoslovakia in 1990 just after the end of Communist rule in that country, Klara Hosnedlova graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She creates in many different ways, including photography, sculpture, furniture, embroidery, and site-specific installation. A collection of her work is on display at the Bermondsey branch of White Cube Gallery in south London until 29 March 2026.

One room of the gallery is occupied by tall sculpture made with knotted natural fibres. Its base is a collection of thick serpent-like fibre ropes that spread across the floor like the roots of a tree. Attached to this structure, there is something that resembles an enlarged seashell which contains an image that includes depictions of fingertips. This inclusion reminded me of the appearance of mitochondria when viewed with an electron microscope. Although I find it difficult to describe this artwork in words, what can be seen in the far larger gallery next door is almost indescribable.

 The larger of the two galleries containing Hosnedlova’s work is ‘mind-blowing’. Many of the artist’s sculptures and embroideries (which look like paintings) have been assembled to create an extraordinary immersive art installation. Both fantastic and exciting, it is at the same time the stuff of nightmares. The website of the White Cube described it as follows:

“The principal room of the gallery opens onto a central, metal platform flanked by looming metal walls, each mounted with prodigious sandstone sculptures upon which further embroidered images are embedded. Constructed from industrial and composite materials, the architectural implements of Hosnedlová’s installations often contain impressions of built environments. Intended to be walked and sat upon, the stepped, quadrangle platform is composed of metal grilles … While the platform recalls the openness of urban, public space – exposing, if not intimidating, sites cleared of natural shade or protection – the grille meanwhile refers to its function in the city as an interface between terrestrial and subterranean worlds. Strewn carelessly over the platform, like shed skins, are some abandoned articles of clothing …”

But even these words are inadequate to describe the scene that confronts the viewer. It must be seen to be believed. I asked gallery employee whether the huge installation was to be sold as a single whole item.  I was told that although the installation was created to provide a fascinating visual experience, the individual items that it contained were to be sold separately.

When we visited the large room of the exhibition, a South Asian security guard saw the expressions of amazement on our faces, smiled, and pointed out where to stand to get a good photograph of the whole installation. And after we had seen it, and were leaving the room, he smiled at us, and gave us the thumbs up. I returned this gesture of satisfaction.