Stephen Buckeridge

#104. Geoff Hands writes on “A Road Not Taken” at The Crypt, London

Installation view of “A Road Not Taken”

A Road Not Taken: Eleven abstract painters exploring painting and the metaphor of the journey is at the Crypt, St. Marylebone Parish Church, London, 16 June – 6 September 2018

A journey, even a short one, can be harrowing. The five-minute walk from Baker Street underground station to St. Marylebone Parish Church at the wrong time of day obliges a stop-start, half-gyrating weave through the throngs of tourists queuing (and not queuing) to get into Madame Tussauds™. So it was with relief that I arrived intact in the Crypt in the lower church. I half expected a musty, dark basement but was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a warm and bright environment. Ample lighting and white-painted walls created the ambience of the modern gallery, albeit with some additional Christian iconography displayed on pillars in the centre of the space. The quiet was not so surprising of course and this created a meditative space in which to consider the twenty paintings on display. Co-curator Stephen Buckeridge pitched the exhibition to Contemporary British Painting (a broad church) some two years ago and revived the idea with Terry Greene more recently. The support and infrastructure of this organisation is to be welcomed for many painters working on the periphery of the gallery system.

Some of the exhibitors in A Road Not Taken will be well known to Abcrit readers, others not so. The decision not to label the works obliges the viewer to consider the work in itself, without influence of favour based on personal interest or preference (though an illustrated list of works is available). In addition to their own work, the curators have selected paintings by nine others. Greene has written:

“The Road not Taken is a ‘journey’ of encounters that explores the idea that art offers us abstractions of experiences. By considering the physical act of painting in terms of a journey, the art object describes or embodies the inner territory through which the artists navigate. The art object functions as evidence for a ‘place’ visited, seen and experienced.”

This is a fascinating statement. The “inner territory” implicates notions of a metaphysical space and the paintings, I assume, act as outpourings from the ‘self’ (of the artist). The paintings also embody the notion of a map, much more than a diagram, of itself with no obvious or specific external reference points, places or personas. The ‘physical act’ is a given really, and we can see that the physical is constituted both in the medium specificity of the paint and from the process of application, in various ways, in the works on display. The paintings are also records of a certain kind of thought process, generally unplanned and improvised. Such practice is most likely supported by habit and pull of future projects, however tenuous.
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#58. Geoff Hands writes on “Testing <1<2<1<2," at ASC Studios, London

How Many Abstract Paintings Do We Need To See In The World, Really?

Testing <1<2<1<2 is open by appointment until Friday 31st March 2017 and then open to the public Sat and Sun 1st 2nd April 2017, 2-5pm

The argument over Abstraction in art (especially painting) still drags on. In Elephant magazine, issue 29 (Winter 2016/17), the prestigious American painter Kerry James Marshall makes some interesting, if debateable, comments on “Abstract picture making” as little more than an “academic mode”. He claims that: “The fundamental principle of art making is representation… There are quite enough problems to solve to keep you going for sometime. If you never succeed there, and you go to abstraction because it seems easier, you miss the philosophical and aesthetic questions involved. Besides, how many more abstract pictures do we need to see in the world, really?”

Though tempting, it would be too easy, and crass, to say that there are also too many figurative paintings in the world. There are probably far too many bad paintings of any classification. But there can never be enough good ones – which is partly what drives an artist on, if that’s not too romantic a notion.

A strangely contrasting point-of-view was made more recently on the (highly recommended) Two Coats of Paint blog. Sharon Butler, reviewing ‘A New subjectivity: Figurative Painting after 2000’ at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, makes the fascinating observation that, “In adopting imagery without direct reference to the objects that underlie them, the artists seem to be noting – indeed, demonstrating – the disconnected manner in which life is now lived. Fragmentation and detachment – a kind of existential abstraction – are the norm.”

Whether appropriated by some contemporary figurative painters or aligned with some sort of new figuration, where the painters “find everything to be a matter of images” (to quote Barry Schwabsky from the online catalogue for “A New Subjectivity’), Abstraction clearly and demonstratively engages with the problems of painting (and collage and sculpture) despite the surprising conservatism of Kerry James Marshall. Indeed, Schwabsky’s comment hits the proverbial nail on the head – for the result of Abstraction is always the image (2D or 3D) – which is, surely, the ‘thing’ we engage with in the gallery?

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