The Avant-Garde in Georgia. Review by Barbara Lewis. Every two years, Belgium and neighbouring countries host Europalia, a four-month international arts festival to celebrate one country’s cultural heritage. Until early next year, the latest biennale focuses on Georgia, a resonant choice given the conflict nearby instigated by Russia.
exhibitions
ReClaim. Review by Barbara Lewis. A thought-provoking display of jewellery-cum-art that leaves us with a renewed awareness that recycling cannot reverse the harm we cause.
Frans Hals Exhibition. Review by Barbara Lewis. Frans Hals (1582-1666) painted portraits, “nothing, nothing, nothing but that,” wrote van Gogh to fellow painter Emile Bernard, but that they were “worth Dante’s Paradise and the Michelangelos and Raphaels and even the Greeks”.
CONFESSIONS OF A HIGHLAND ART DEALER: Kate Ashton reviews a memoir full of hope and persistence by Tony Davidson
Claudette Johnson’s exhibition Presence. Review by Jenny Vuglar. Johnson first came to attention in 1982 while a student at The Polytechnic Wolverhampton. Britain’s ‘black cultural renaissance’ began, not in the famous institutions of London but in the Polytechs of the north: Wolverhampton, Trent, Sunderland.
Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas. Review by Graham Buchan. It is clear from this retrospective of Sarah Lucas’s thirty-five year career that an obsession with tits, toilets, cigarettes, shoes and chairs informs much of her work.
Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris. Review by Barbara Lewis. As curators and art historians work to redistribute glory that men historically monopolised, Pallant House Gallery’s latest major exhibition devotes itself to extracting Welsh-born artist Gwen John from beneath the shadow of her more worldly brother Augustus John.
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden. Review by Graham Buchan. Two years ago Tate Britain mounted a major retrospective of Paula Rego’s work and it was a great exhibition. Now the National Gallery shows a single piece of Rego’s work, albeit a big one: Crivelli’s Garden is nearly ten metres wide and two metres high.
![Piet Mondrian, Composition in colour B, 1917. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 45 cm. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum[48965]](https://londongrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Piet-Mondrian-Composition-in-colour-B-1917.-Oil-on-canvas-50.5-x-45-cm.-Collection-Kroller-Muller-Museum48965-180x200.jpg "Piet Mondrian, Composition in colour B, 1917. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 45 cm. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum[48965]")
Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life. Review by Graham Buchan. I recommend this show because any exhibition which redresses the balance in favour of a neglected artist is to be commended even if, as I think, af Klint’s work is not altogether good.
Archaeological Museum of Heraklion and Palace of Knossos. By Barbara Lewis. Regarded as the first advanced civilisation in Europe, Minoan Crete dated from around 3000 BC until around 1100 BC, preceding ancient Greece.
Peter Doig, The Courtauld Gallery. Review by Barbara Lewis. Peter Doig never tries to create real spaces, only painted spaces, we learn at the beginning of the Courtauld’s exhibition of some of his most recent work, including paintings created since his move from Trinidad to London in 2021.
John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey. Review by Barbara Lewis. John Craxton managed to emerge from school without passing a single exam, not even in art. Instead, charm, daring, connections, irrepressible talent and luck served him better than any merely formal qualifications.
By Barbara Lewis • art, exhibitions, painting, year 2024 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, painting