Last week I made a visit to Tate Britain, in particular to
see the Patrick Caulfield Exhibition.
This was a review of a selection of his
paintings, it was a bit of a shame not to be able to see some of his prints as well
alongside.
One of my particular
favourites of his works is
Pottery which he painted in 1969.
It was one of the works that stood out to me the very first
time I visited the Tate on a school trip as a young teenager. I think in part it was the wonderful amount
of colour that he used, but also the composition. At school we were very much expected to work
in a representational way depicting what we saw, rather than just our
imagination and a lot of my then black and white visual patterns mimicking
Bridget Riley weren’t really considered serious enough.
Here though was an image that was representational but not
trying to include every last detail, there was perspective in the drawing but
no attempt to use tones to add to the 3D representations. It did things we weren’t meant to do but was
still very clear to see what was happening compared with other abstract or
modernist works which at that time were too weird for me. So minor subversion rather than major rule braking,
made it easier to understand what was happening.
After seeing the Patrick Caulfield work I went on to the
Gary Hume exhibition. I have to say that
his work is not so much to my taste, there is play with the medium and subjects;
however nothing that really fires me.
Then as I was there I went into the current Lowry
exhibition. This was noticeable busier
which certainly shows the effect of know names pulling people in. This exhibition focuses on the industrial
elements of Lowry’s work and it is a large exhibition with many of his works. His work is interesting because of his focus
on what was essentially a very unpopular subject amongst painters. Parallels were drawn between his work and a
number of social realists in Europe where this genre was far better accepted
than in Britain during his life time.
The nature of the work though does mean a certain lack of
joy in the spectacle. Having seen some
of his seascapes at previous exhibitions they talk to me than the industrial
scenes and similarly in this exhibition it was some late paintings of the Welsh
Industrial Landscape that were more moving than many of the others.
The last item that I saw was Simon Starling’s
Phantom Ride
the
current Tate Britain Commission in
the Duveen Gallery.
I often don’t have
the patience for video works but this one held my attention throughout as the camera
moves around the space you are standing in and passes a range of work that has
previously been shown in the gallery, a space first opened in 1937.
A very brief history of space and art and an
interesting reflection on place and time.
