Given my interest in calligraphic mark-making you can probably see what attracted me to these works by Brice Marden at Gagosian in Burlington Arcade, London. Marden was influenced by Chinese calligraphy and made the original marks with sticks. His inspiration for this series was a Song dynasty verse, “Seven-character Poem (besotted by Flower Vapours)” by […]
Places
Ram Samocha: Abstract Space at Lewisham Arthouse, London
Ram Samocha is probably best known for creating Draw to Perform, a community of performative drawing artists. Indeed I first came across him over a weekend of performance and participatory mark-making several years ago. This solo exhibition, Abstract Space, at Lewisham Arthouse, consists of black and white works on paper. Given world events over the […]
Cristina Iglesias: The Shore at Hauser & Wirth, London
I am a fan of Cristina Iglesia and have featured her work in a previous blog post so was keen to see this new show, The Shore, at Hauser & Wirth in London’s Savile Row. As much of her sculpture is in public spaces It was interesting to see smaller pieces. Their scale is more […]
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy. Post 2 of 2.
More about the Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, his retrospective at the Royal Academy in London. Note the multiple techniques used in Terra Incognita and Baptist, both from 1992. Evoking the Middle Passage, Marshall weaves in references to African and American history, as in Great America (see my previous post). Here is the barbershop once […]
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy. Post 1 of 2.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories is a retrospective exhibition currently on at the Royal Academy in London. The show is large, not only in the number of works on display but also in scale. Marshall‘s paintings reference the size of works he saw when visiting museums as a child. His ambition was to be up […]
The craft of sumo hairdressing.
A rare overseas sumo tournament was recently held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Before it began I attended a demonstration of sumo hairdressing hosted by Japan House out of curiosity. The presenter was sumo commentator Hiro Morita, the tokoyama (sumo hairdresser) was Tokoami, highly skilled with over 2 decades of experience and his […]