11 March 2015

East end galleries sketchbook walk

First stop (Thurs 5th March), Standpoint, with a mixed show (till 22 March) - "No one lives in the real world".

I chose this structure by Michaela Nettell - "inspired by Cedric Price's visionary design for the Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo. The works deconstruct and reconfigure the aviary's tetrahedral structure, imagining (im)possible variations on its form" -
Even for (im)possible variations, getting angles of triangles in perspective is a battle. What came off worst was the resulting shape of the plinth, relative to the sculpture ... it needed closer acquaintance ... a ground plan ...
Elsewhere in the gallery, Sasha Bowles' "Postcard Wall" reconfigured well-known portraits. My fave, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, got off lightly - instead of being replaced by a complicated texture or imagined creature, she was merely hidden behind a clever bit of repainting -
Both Janet and I were drawn to Srinivas Surti's "Portal" which "presents the idea of the poetic image as an abstraction located between image, object and architectural form" - okay, I really did find it poetic, and resonant.
Lots of interrelationships - here's the back -
and Janet's drawing, with gentle use of colour -
On we went, to Victoria Miro to see Sarah Sze (till 28 March), and to trace her use of primary colour and everyday colour and strange little objects, trailing cords, lamps -
 ... the New York Times with the photos replaced with sections of images of "something huge" - oceans, deserts, the universe -
Love the dandelion-gone-to-seed cut out of a padded jacket! It contrasts with amorphous but solid squidges of clay, amid ambiguous structures -
Having had an eye-opening experience about "tidy pages" in sketchbooks, I spent more time looking at the objects than at the lines I was making on the page -
and then got out the crayons, amid drawings from a previous gallery walk -
That certainly made a change from sparse, tidy pages!

It was Pat who had pointed out the scattering and clumping of the various colours of objects, and having done a few drawings with pencil, she too got out the crayons -
Tea was taken in The Narrow Boat, on the canal (too cold to sit outside though!) and there was much talk of Drawing and Art...

1 comment:

Stitchinscience said...

I'm envious of these gallery walks, sounds like you all have a very stimulating time. Finishing at The Narrowboat sounds most appealing.