London Art Fair

Can we every have too much art? ... possibly yes, when it's all in one place... eg the London Art Fair. In my four-hour visit I saw too much to absorb - yet much of it was rather ignorable, either gimmicky or samey or seen last year. If you browse in the gallery list on the website, clicking through to the images, you can get the same effect without going to the bother of being there.

It was a surprise to see, among the modernity, a 15th-century German carving - an "Anna Selbsdritt" to add to my collection -

Also surprising, among the many Ivon Hitchins landscapes on show and for sale was an interior with figures -

Work by Julie Airey appeared light and calm from a distance, and up close revealed the importance of a few lines of stitching, being "acrylic and embroidery on muslin" -

Detail; painted muslin layer is stitched onto painted background

A pair of tall thin pieces by Gordon Baldwin got me thinking ahead to making "chimneypots" -

Discovery of the day was the altered book pages by Carolyn Thompson, with revisions sewn on with hair -

Detail of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, altered

Do have a read of this one on her website, which was also on show.

Many other artworks that caught the camera's eye, these among them -

Harriet Mena Hill

Sandra Blow - "acrylic and tea on ticking"

Katherine Jones

Leo Davy - the texture of the white echoes the shapes of the colour below

Marcelle Hanselaar

Tricia Gillman's "Memory Strings"

Lucy Jones, Reflections

Takefumi Hori's gold and silver leaf brought Dorothy Caldwell's work to mind

Claudia Carr, Col de Fornia, 2016

One of the first and last things I saw was this large painting with its sculptural elements -

Marcus Harvey, Sailing By, 2016
"Acrylic, jesmonite on inkjet on canvas"

The "crashing boar" incident was not exactly my favourite part of the day - enthused by seeing the work of Sarah Gillespie, I stepped back and was "attacked" by a knee-height bronze boar innocently standing in the middle of the gallery space. I managed not to fall onto his spiny back, but the tip of his tail caught me on the way down. I got off lightly and could walk away without hobbling. Fortunately the skirt I was wearing is made of invincible fabric and only a little mark was visible. Under it, though, as I found out at home, the slip and tights suffered huge holes, and my thigh has a 3" surface gash and a lovely bruise is developing. So embarrassing, but it could have been so much worse! 

To end, a mystery - 

These works by Susan Hefuna are described as "pencil and thread on tracing paper" - but they look more like white ink and red paint on tracing paper ... maybe the pencil and thread are underneath?