'Somewhat Abstract' At Nottingham Contemporary 1

Nottingham Contemporary, April 2014

I was based in Nottingham for a couple of days over the Easter break, so took the opportunity to drop into Nottingham Contemporary’s latest major exhibition, ‘Somewhat Abstract: Selections From The ArtsCouncil Collection’.  I’ve come to associate The Contemporary with this type of mixed show, in which widely disparate works are assembled around an overriding theme, foregrounding the processes of curation along with those of the artists on display.

In this case, the show focuses on a looser interpretation of Abstraction than merely as a definition of the visually non-representational.  As the title indicates, it draws from the Art’s Council collection of (mostly) post-war British art, and includes plenty of work that is nominally representational or primarily conceptual across a range of media and identifiable traditions.  It’s main agenda would seem to be to question what happens at the edges of abstraction, and those points where the recognisable begins its transformation into something other.  Clearly, this may occur through visual/plastic manipulation, but also, through conceptual processes of abstract thought, formal theory or established ideology.  Impressively, the show gives roughly equal weight to all these modes.

Cynics might object that the real motivation behind such exhibitions is to fill gallery space with whatever is easily (and cheaply?), available and can be assembled around a catch-all theme.  However, I do enjoy the opportunity they often provide to make thought-provoking connections or alternative interpretations, and to make new discoveries.  That is certainly true of this show and it includes several of the latter for me, along with some old friends.  It’s also worth noting that in a genuinely trans-media exhibition, and an era when Conceptualism is often prioritised, painting is rather well represented here.

Enamel, Vegetable & Mineral

‘Somewhat Abstract’ fills all four of The Contemporary’s galleries and I spent several happy hours in there, (punctuated by refreshment breaks on its sunny terrace).  The work is distributed around the separate spaces according to distinct shared concerns, and one could focus on each quite satisfyingly over repeat visits.  I found some of these curated sub-themes slightly more convincing than others and, with time on my hands, was content to immerse myself in the show as a whole.  I made various connections of my own as I went along; returning to spend more time with those works that particularly intrigued me.  As they were numerous, I’ll highlight the paintings here, and deal with work in other media in a subsequent post.

John Hoyland, 'Red Over Yellow 18-9-73', Acrylic On Canvas, 1973

John Hoyland, ‘Red Over Yellow 18-9-73’, Acrylic On Canvas, 1973:  The work of British painter, John Hoyland seems lost in time these days, (Art Historically, at least).  His muscular paintings from the 1970s represent the very end of an American tradition of ‘heroic’, painterly abstraction, and of many of the assumptions about painting that were about to be swept aside by a changing zeitgeist.

Not being a believer in sacrificing babies at bath time, I’m often intrigued by much overlooked work from that period, and being confronted by a painting like this makes me forget the official accounts altogether.  An expansive field of primary red extends across most of the large canvas, revealing fragments of underlying yellow and bordered by a narrow frame of browns, crimson and purple.  To stand before it is a gloriously immersive experience, not unlike that gained from a good Rothko, but Hoyland’s approach is less neurotic and far more extrovert.  The energetically knifed and unctuously dripping paint reveals a delight in its gestural plasticity and delivers a lesson in how to make adjacent, closely related colours vibrate.

Peter Lanyon, 'Soaring Flight', Oil On Canvas, 1960

Peter Lanyon, ‘Soaring Flight’, Oil On Canvas, 1960:  I mentioned Lanyon, (featuring this particular painting), in a post following my short break in Cornwall, earlier this year.  He’s a favourite post-war Cornish painter of mine, (and, unusually, - a native).  This is one of his best, and it was an unexpected pleasure to walk around a corner and find it waiting for me in Nottingham.  Like Hoyland, Lanyon represented a typically mid-20th Century approach to painterly abstraction, but applied it to the elemental qualities of the Cornish landscape.

Lanyon projected his experience of gliding into images that amalgamate the realms of earth, air, water and light, and locate the viewer amongst them in a dynamic manner.  There’s no such thing as a fixed viewpoint here as Lanyon’s energetic brushwork describes his glider’s zig-zag progress through the air.  Meanwhile, the moving cloud, (or shadow), diagonally veiling almost half of the canvas is both exciting and compositionally audacious.

Prunella Clough, 'Waterford Yard', Oil On Canvas, 1970

Prunella Clough:  A definite pleasure of ‘Somewhat Abstract’ is its showcasing of several paintings by Prunella Clough.  I often forget about Clough, only to find myself intrigued by her work when I encounter it in municipal collections.  One of her introverted pieces in isolation can lose out to louder voices, and they benefit from being hung in groups, as here.

Prunella Clough, 'South-West Nocturne', Oil On Canvas, 1970

Clough is a straightforward enough fit for this show, with her consistent exploration of the boundary between the identifiable world and the abstract painterly environment.  There’s something terminally ‘British’ about her tonal palette and general mutedness, but I always respond to her use of urban or industrial sources, flattening of forms and consistent emphasis on surface.

Prunella Clough, 'Perforated Fragment', Oil On Canvas, 1985

‘Waterford Yard’, Oil On Canvas, 1970:  Clearly derived from a distinct location, this painting pushes Clough's subject to the very edge of purely formal abstraction, allowing a few observed features to emerge as flattened shapes from atmospheric darkness.

Prunella Clough, 'Samples', Oil On Canvas, 1997

'Somewhat Abstract' (Prunella Clough Paintings In Situ), Nottingham Contemporary,  April 2014

‘Samples’, 1997; ‘South West-Nocturne’, 1970; ‘Perforated Fragment’, 1985; All Oil On Canvas:  Separated by 27 years but forming a pleasing trio, these push things even further into shape and mark-based abstraction, each exuding a subdued elegance, typical of Clough's oeuvre.  They instantly reminded me of the entropic architectural surfaces I was photographing just a few minutes earlier on my way to the exhibition.  ‘Samples’ and ‘South-West Nocturne’ also demonstrate how beautifully slightly heightened colour fragments can sing from more neutral overall surroundings.

Frank Auerbach, 'Primrose Hill', Oil On Board, 1959

Frank Auerbach, ‘Primrose Hill’, Oil On Board, 1959:  Another interesting strand within the overall exhibition is the inclusion of paintings by Walter Sickert, David Bomberg and Frank Auerbach.  Famously, each taught the next, passing a baton of traditional representational painting that became increasingly abstracted through the physicality of paint application, without ever sacrificing the primacy of subject.

There are three Auerbach’s in the show, (including a terrific portrait etching of Lucian Freud), but this one is my favourite.  It’s an early, largely brown example, from the days when, apparently, he couldn’t afford a wide range of colours in the quantities needed to build his massively impasted paintings.  It reinforces my feeling that Auerbach’s obsessive attempts to carve space and form through sculptural paint and sheer force of will, are far better suited to landscape subjects than the figure.  It’s all deeply obscure, but I still feel I could walk down the hill, through all that unctuous gravy, towards the distant building emerging from the  nocturnal gloom.

Francis Bacon, 'Head VI', Oil On Canvas, 1949

Francis Bacon, ‘Head VI’, Oil On Canvas, 1949:  If I’m honest, I sometimes find Bacon a bit overrated.  There’s no doubt he produced many powerful images, but there are some fairly lame, poorly constructed ones out there too.  Whether or not he eventually became self-parodic, this famous early picture is a concentrated example of his work in its power to affect, and undiluted shock value.  In translating Velasquez’s 1650 portrait of Innocent X into the image of an eyeless screaming Pontiff, Bacon created a perfect symbol of human tragedy or lost faith, and an icon of post-war Existentialism.

Bacon was pretty dismissive of abstract painting, although his work often employs passages of suspended description to interesting psychological effect.  Here, the figure is confined within a trademark artificial space frame and subsumed within an ambiguous abstracted void.  I guess Existentialism could be described as a philosophical abstraction, although it sometimes feels pretty real to me.

Tomma Abts, 'Heit', Acrylic & OIl On Canvas, 2011

Tomma Abts, ‘Heit’, Acrylic & Oil On Canvas, 2011:  When German-born Tomma Abts won the 2006 Turner Prize, some trumpeted ‘a return to painting’.  That seems typically superficial, but the award did at least validate painting as a live issue, alongside the wide range of other media available to 21st century artists.  More interesting than the promotion of one medium over any other, is the way that Abts repurposes certain tropes of abstract painting tradition to illustrate that, nowadays, everything is up for grabs.

Painted across two adjacent canvases, ‘Heit’, shares the same modest dimensions and the general appearance of geometric Constructivism or Op Art, seen in all her art.  Paradoxically, Abts constructs such works organically, without prior planning, accumulating the textural marks of corrections and alterations beneath their final surfaces.  She also introduces illusionistic shadows, (as here), creating considerable internal tension as the final painting pulls in three different  directions at once.

Keith Coventry, 'Crack City', Oil On Canvas, 1993 (2 Of 4)

Keith Coventry, ‘Crack City’, Oil On Canvas, 1993:  Like Abts, Coventry pastiches the style of high Modernism here, in a set of four, repeated reworkings of Malevich’s white-on-white Supremacist square.  His agenda is highly conceptual however, and reimagines/retitles the squares as the footprints of housing blocks in London’s notorious Woodpecker Estate.  It’s an arch comment on the legacy of Utopian Modernism’s damaged legacy that, admittedly, relies on knowledge of the estate’s dysfunctional reputation.  Like the small bronze crack pipe sculpture displayed alongside, it also alludes to the hard drug addict’s abstract disengagement from everyday experience.

Zebedee Jones, 'Blue/Green', Oil & Wax On Canvas, 1993

Zebedee Jones, ‘Blue/Green’, Oil & Wax On Canvas, 1993:  I know nothing about Jones’ work, (beyond what a quick online search reveals), so this piece called to me, purely on its own terms.  It’s clearly in the tradition of the painted monochrome, and of conceptual painting about process and the medium’s specific properties.  I’m still a sucker for this kind of self-reflexivity and, whilst it lacks the sumptuous spectacle of Jason Martin’s work in a similar field, I enjoyed its nuanced surface and somewhat sullen demeanour.  I also love the way its internal content transcends the edges of the canvas creating an energised, ragged interaction with surrounding space.

Varda Caivano, 'Untitled', Oil On Canvas, 2011

Varda Caivano, ‘Untitled’, Oil On Canvas, 2011:  This is another, rather modest, blue-green painting by an artist I don’t really know.  It could have become lost amongst the surrounding work, but something about it called me back for repeated views.  Filled with an accumulation of insubstantial shapes, it seems to share the sense of an ambiguous but navigable environment, (albeit with difficulty), that I enjoyed in the Auerbach already mentioned.  Accumulations of scrubby, translucent paint, and chinks of revealed, contrasting colour between larger shapes, introduce breathing space into what might otherwise be a claustrophobic experience.

It pleases me that ‘Somewhat Abstract’ introduced me to two interesting painters of whom I had no previous knowledge, amongst some acknowledged big names and relatively familiar images.  It’s also intriguing (and illuminating of the current cultural situation) that work which might have emerged at any point over the last hundred years, (for example, in the case of Abts and Caivano), was actually produced within the last decade.

Nottingham Contemporary, April, 2014

‘Somewhat Abstract: Selections From The Arts Council Collection’, Continues until 29 June 2014 at: Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB.