Tag Archives: artworks

Artists and architecture at a gallery in south London

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ARCHITECTURE, GOOD OR BAD, is one of the arts, and a practical one at that. Until 12 April 2026, the South London Gallery (part of the former Camberwell School of Art) is holding an exhibition of artworks created because of the artists’ reaction to architecture, real and imagined. Theire interpretations include references to intact buildings, as well as ruins and monuments.

By William Braithwaite

The works I liked best in the exhibition were a series of vertical sculptures made by William Braithwaite using timber and concrete. In his personal website (www.williambraithwaite.com/) he explained:

“I aim to create a dialogue between the two disciplines, considering how they inform and complement each other … While my work may reference architectural forms, it remains rooted in visual and conceptual exploration rather than function. The materials, scale, and context of my sculptures serve as tools to examine the aesthetic and spatial qualities of architecture.”

And this he does very effectively as can be seen when viewing the works on display at the South London Gallery. The sculptures are concrete pillars, square in cross-section, with staircases carved in the concrete of the pillars. These steps spiral up the pillars, and above each flight of steps, one can see what one imagines to be the undersides of other flights.

The other artworks on display were interesting but not as arresting as the sculptures by Braithwaite. Of these, I liked a trompe-l’oeil by Ally Fallon, and a larger than life set of sewing tools (needles, pins, and safety pin), whose connection with architecture was not obvious to me.

There are only a couple of days left before this exhibition ends, and I am glad I was able to see it.  Exhibitions held at the South London Gallery rarely, if ever, disappoint. So, if you have missed the one described above, try to see whatever they show in the future (see: www.southlondongallery.org/).

The art of war at a museum in south London

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ALTHOUGH LONDON’S IMPERIAL War Museum contains a rich collection of objects related to warfare, it also has a fine art gallery in which there are many paintings inspired by, and recording, wars from WW1 onwards. The artworks, mostly paintings, are to be found in the rooms in the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries on the museum’s third floor.

“Gassed” by John Singer Sargent

The paintings and other artworks are mostly by artists, who are now well-known, such as, to mention only a few: Joan Miro, Paul Nash, Eileen Agar, Laura Knight, Percy Wyndham-Lewis, John Piper, Eric Ravilious, John Singer Sargent, David Bomberg, and Steve McQueen. Others are by less well-known artists, and many of them have created images inspired by outbreaks of warfare that have occurred since the end of WW2. One of these, made by Steve McQueen, is a collection of postage stamps with faces of military personnel who died during the relatively recent Iraq conflict. These postage stamps, all of which bear a soldier’s portrait and the head of Queen Elizabeth II, are kept in a special wooden cabinet with sliding panels that can be pulled out to see the stamps.  Like all the other artworks, this is both dramatic and moving. And seeing them during a period of warfare in the Middle East made them seem even more poignant.

There are several paintings by artists who joined British Colonial Artists Scheme, which encouraged ‘native-born’ artists to depict aspects of activities connected with warfare in the colonies. One of these artists was an African called Katongole. Another artist of interest is an Iraqi refugee called Walid Siti, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1984, and his etching was inspired by warfare.

Of all the wonderful paintings on display, two particularly attracted my attention. One showing Indian soldiers, who were recovering from injuries during WW1, lying in beds under a large, amazingly decorative dome in Brighton Pavilion, This was painted by Douglas Fox-Pitt in 1919. The other, which is the biggest picture in the galleries, is by John Singer Sargent. Called “Gassed”, it shows a long line of blindfolded soldiers, injured by poisonous gas, being led by an officer wearing a white overcoat. As they walk along, they are passing the corpses of their fellow soldiers.

The artworks in the Blavatnik Galleries at the Imperial War Museum easily rival what can be seen in the permanent collection of Tate Modern, and are a ‘must-see’ for anyone who has an interest in twentieth century artists, especially those who worked in Britain.  

An exhibition which did not appeal to me

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ONE CANNOT HOPE to enjoy every work of art that is on display. Until 6 September 2026, at the Serpentine South Gallery there is an exhibition of paintings by Cecily Brown, who was born in London in 1960, and studied art at London’s  Slade School of Fine Art. She works in New York.

I found Brown’s paintings to be messily composed. Each one looked like paint had been applied without much attention to composition. I might be missing something subtle, but her paintings did not appeal to me.

Well, at least I gave them a chance by viewing them.

Unwanted contemporary artworks on a gallery that shows contemporary art

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THE NEWPORT STREET Gallery near Lambeth Bridge on the south side of the River Thames was founded by the artist Damien Hirst as a place to show items from his extensive collection of contemporary artworks and sometimes his own work to members of the public. Every few months, a different selection of the works in his collection are tastefully exhibited in the gallery. The gallery is housed in converted industrial buildings, described in Newport Street’s website as follows:

“The construction of Newport Street Gallery involved the conversion of three listed buildings, which were purpose-built in 1913 to serve as scenery painting studios for the booming Victorian theatre industry in London’s West End. With the addition of two new buildings, the gallery now spans half the length of the street.”

We visit it regularly, and usually enjoy what is being shown and the way it is displayed.

Today (25 March 2026), we visited the gallery again. Before we entered, we noticed two outer doors covered with spray-painted graffiti, and part of the entrance disfigured in the same way. We asked a woman at the reception desk if the graffiti was an artwork sanctioned by the gallery, and were told that it was not. I said that although unwanted, the graffiti was in the spirit of many things that are often exhibited within the gallery. She laughed, clearly understanding what I was getting at.

See the masterpieces before they go under the auctioneer’s hammer at Christies

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THE AUCTION HOUSE Christies was founded in London in 1766 by James Christie (1730-1803). Their main premises are on King Street, near St James Palace in the City of Westminster. Usually, the auction house is open to the public, who may enter and view the items waiting to be auctioned, and to watch or participate in an auction. Until 12 March 2026, works from the collection of the Belgian couple Roger and Josette Vanthournout, both now deceased, are up for sale. The sale is being held as a series of auctions over a period that extended from 25 February 2026 until 12 March 2026.

“Iron Baby” by Antony Gormley

The Vanthournout couple have been collecting art for over 60 years. At first, they collected Chinese vases, but soon after that, they began buying modern and contemporary art. Roger trained as an interior designer and ran a furniture store in Izegem, Aurora, which had been founded by his father in 1921. Josette (née T’Kint) was an artist and an art lover. From the 1950s onwards, the couple travelled a great deal, visiting art fairs where they engaged directly with artists, dealers and galleries. They tended to buy much of their art from artists, who had not yet achieved great fame, and by doing so acquired artworks at reasonable prices. And viewing the pieces on display at Christies today (5 March 2026), one can easily see that Roger and Josette both had a ‘good eye’, and bought wisely. After the widowed Josette died in 2025 aged 95, the family decided to sell the collection.

And what a collection it must have been, judging by what we saw on display at Christies. There were fine examples of artworks by, to name BUT A FEW: Josef Albers, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Rene Magritte, Henry Moore, Yayoi Kusama, Jean Arp, Lucio Fontana, Jean Dubuffet, Lynn Chadwick, Paul Delvaux, Jacques Lipchitz, Tracey Emin, and James Ensor. I was interested to see a couple of works by Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) because when I lived at home, we had one of his abstract prints hanging on the wall of our living room (I have not seen the print since 1991). There were several sculptures by Antony Gormley. These are quite unlike any of the many works I have seen by this artist. Josette and Roger were lucky to have these examples of his work.

The collection we saw at Christies was well-displayed and filled with an amazing array of art created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Once they have been auctioned, many of the bought by private collectors and galleries far away from London, it will be a very long time, if ever, before they can be seen again by the London public.  

Because it is possible to see works of art that are not usually on public display, visiting Christies (and other auction houses) allows ‘the man (or woman) in the street’ to catch a glimpse of artists’ creations that are frequently not usually accessible except by their owners. And even if you have no intention of making a bid, the staff at Christies are most welcoming and willing to answer any questions you might have regarding the items awaiting auction.

Two artists and a critical view of the British empire

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THE SINGH TWINS, Amrit Singh and her sister Rabindra Kaur Sing, were born in Richmond (Surrey), and brought up in Birkenhead (Cheshire). Between the mid-1980s and early ‘90s, they studied art at University College Chester, then at Manchester University. These highly creative women produce works that incorporate features of Indian traditional art, mediaeval illuminated manuscripts, contemporary western culture, and pop art, often all combined in one work.

The exhibition at Kew Gardens, “THE SINGH TWINS: Botanical Tales and Seeds of Empire”, which is showing until 12 April 2026, is filled with great examples of their artwork. Their highly decorative, colourful works are rich in interesting details, rather in the way that Italian renaissance paintings were enriched with symbols and features that would have meant a great deal to those viewing them when they were first paintings, and to art historians many centuries later. The many details in the pictures at Kew evoke many thoughts in the minds of people seeing them today, and remind the audience of events that happened not too long ago when Britain had a vast empire and Britannia ruled the waves, and much of the world’s commercial activity.

Each of the pictures on display at Kew contains plenty of witty and often chilling reminders of what the British (and other Europeans) did to the lands they colonised and exploited. Though filled with imagery relating to Britain’s imperial past and its consequences both abroad and in modern Britain, the pictures are glorious to see. A video, with a commentary written in verse and narrated by the twins, accompanies the exhibition. If the pictures alone do not convey the artists’ messages to all viewers, watching the film is very helpful. In keeping with where they are being exhibited, this collection of the twin’s work focusses not only on colonial histories but also on the plants that helped the colonisers enrich themselves.

The exhibition can only be visited if you have paid for entry to Kew Gardens or if you are a member. After seeing the exhibition you can wander around the gardens and spot some of the many plants that were originally brought from different parts of the empire to grow in the botanical gardens.

Man, nature, hills, and mountains in the Western Ghats of India

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WE VISITED BANGALORE’S Chitrakala Parishath, an art school, on the last day of an exhibition called “Hidden Gems of the Western Ghats”. We were alerted to it by a good friend, Ajay Ghatage, who posted something about it on Facebook.

 

The Western Ghats are a line of hills and mountains that separate the Deccan Plateau from the western coastal strip of India, the shore of the Arabian Sea. The ghats are in the most part forested.

 

The exhibition included sculptures, many of them beautiful stone carvings, paintings, and a few ‘installations’. Each work expresses its creator’s reaction to the nature and its exploitation (and/or despoliation) by mankind. And the majority of the artworks on display did this well, beautifully, and often highly imaginatively.

 

Amongst the installations, there was one by Shivanand Shyagoti that particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of a tree trunk into which hatchets had been stuck. On the wooden handles of each of these choppers, there were line drawings of the woodland creatures whose habitat would be disturbed by deforestation.

 

The other works on display were at least as imaginative as the one described above. What was impressive about the majority of the artworks was that although they often conveyed messages about the fragility of the natural environments of the Western Ghats, they did it subtly, creatively, and,  most importantly, beautifully.

An artist from China who is creating works of art using gunpowder

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CAI GUO-QIANG IS an artist who was born in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, in 1957. Many of his artworks involve the extravagant and clever use of explosive materials, as can be seen in a documentary film being screened at the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey (south London) until 9 September 2025. The film is accompanied by a collection of the artist’s images created on canvas, glass, and mirrors. Pleasing to the eye, these images have been created by an unusual method.

Guo-Qiang uses gunpowder, and ignites it, to assist him produce his pictures. The gallery’s website outlined his technique:

“… each composition is first mapped by sprinkling the powder, then covered and weighted before ignition, so that the blast disperses, recomposes and fuses matter into image.”

The unpredictability of the explosive material adds an interesting chance element to the finished product, but despite this, the composition was initially planned by the artist. In some of the works on display, not only was gunpowder placed on the base (i.e., paper, glass, etc) but also pigment powders. The explosions caused by igniting the gunpowder cause interesting spreading and scattering of the pigment.

The artist began experimenting with using explosives in his works on materials such as canvas and paper in the early 1980s in Quanzhou. Occasionally, the work in progress would ignite, and the fire had to be smothered to save the artwork. The works on display at White Cube were created after 2015, mainly in the 2020s. By now, he has refined his technique so that wholescale conflagration does not happen. However, as a gallery assistant told us, if you look carefully at some of the works, small burn marks can be found here and there.

Apart from being created in an intriguing way, I found the pictures being displayed in the gallery to be both attractive and beautiful.

Fascinating artworks at a gallery in Cambridge

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ARTSPACE 5-7 IS A small gallery housed in a pre-WW2 Modernist building in Portugal Place, a side street that leads away from Bridge Street in the university town of Cambridge. We visited the gallery in August 2025, and viewed a collection of sculptures and drawings by the London born artist Richard Bray (born 1955). A few years after being awarded a degree in Photographic Arts at the Central London Polytechnic, he was awarded a degree in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design. His exhibition at Cambridge is called “Visible Invisible”.

Whereas kinetic art depends on its movement for effect, Bray’s finely crafted sculptures and prints are static. However, as the viewer moves around his artworks, viewing them from different perspectives, what can be seen changes. Bray’s works seem to acquire internal movement that can only be perceived when the viewer moves past or around them. These effects, which add great beauty to his works, cannot be captured using still photography. Three of the sculptures were on display in the churchyard of St Clements opposite the gallery

Bray spent time in Tanzania during the 1980s. What he must have seen in the way of local design and crafts has clearly influenced the appearance of the works we saw in Cambridge. In fact, when I first entered the exhibition, I saw what I mistakenly thought was a collection of sculptures from Africa.

The gallery because of its Modernist design is worth seeking out when you visit Cambridge. The exhibition of Bray’s works, about which we knew nothing in advance, were refreshingly exciting to see.

Alien Shores in south London’s Bermondsey

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THE ARTIST ANSELM Kiefer is said to have remarked:

“I think there is no innocent landscape, that doesn’t exist.”

By Nomoru Minata

For what we see when we regard a landscape is the result of millions of years of geological and meteorological evolution as well many millennia of interventions by biological phenomena including human activities: both constructive and destructive. As the writer and academic Robert Macfarlane wrote:

“We live on a restless crust of earth. Behind the façade of stability, everything is shifting, imperceptibly, but continuously.”

 Artists have been creating images of landscape for many centuries. The earliest known depictions of landscape include Minoan frescoes created in about 1500 BC. The genre of European art called ‘landscape painting’ began in Holland in the seventeenth century. The website of the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey noted in connection with this:

“17th-century Dutch artists of the Golden Age, during which the genre ‘landschap’ was first named, turned away from religious subjects as an expression of Protestant values …”

Until 7 September 2025, the White Cube at Bermondsey is hosting an exhibition called “Alien Shores”. Curated by Susanna Greeves, this show:

“… explores landscape as a place of memory, imagination, yearning and belonging. Through painting, video, photography and sculpture, the artists included offer speculative, symbolic or surreal depictions of emotional terrain and voyages of the imagination, visions of the distant past or possible futures.”

The exhibition includes works by 37 artists, all of whom worked in the twentieth and/or twenty-first centuries. It is a display of modern and contemporary works of art that either depict landscapes or try to evoke thoughts of landscapes. The works are distributed amongst three rooms. In the first two rooms there are videos and kinetic sculptures as well as paintings. A video by Noémie Goudal is particularly fascinating and dramatic. The third and largest room contains a mixed bag of paintings and a sculpture by Noguchi. My enjoyment of the paintings in this room was not 100%. Some of the paintings looked like wall space fillers rather than great works of art. However, it his is not a room to be missed because it contains three outstanding landscapes by Anselm Kiefer. Seeing these in the company of many of the others served to emphasize (to me) what a great contemporary artist he is. Other ‘stars’ in this room were paintings by Minoru Nomata, Georgia O’Keeffe and Marina Rheingantz.  A three-dimensional screen depicting a leafless forest by Eva Jospin in the long corridor of the White Cube also impressed me.

Although I wondered why a few of the artworks were included in the show, the Alien Shores exhibition has much to recommend it. It was fascinating to see how in a time frame of well under 100 years, artists have been tackling their various portrayals of landscape, and the interesting varieties of ways they have done it.