I am witnessing an interesting phenomenon. In general, I have not found it easy to get people interested in the idea of a biography of an older generation figurative artist who lives in Leigh-on-Sea, but I notice that on twitter figurative art is hugely much more popular and of much more widespread public interest than you would think if you look at how it is represented in public galleries and the art world more generally.
Since today is tree day on ArtUK, I am posting an early image, Winter on Marine Parade (copyright: John Wonnacott):-
We watched the film Thirteen Lives on Amazon last night about the thirteen boys who went exploring in a cave in Thailand and were then trapped deep within the caves by the premature arrival of the monsoon. Of course, I half remember it from when it happened, but had entirely forgotten, or maybe hadn’t known, that it was a couple of British amateurs who went out specially to help with the rescue. This forms an interesting aspect of the plot, which at a time when the British are being viewed, particularly by the current administration, as generally hopeless, lazy and incompetent is somewhat reassuring. But it is, of course, left-field thinking which solves the problems, not skill at elementary maths.
I went to the party to celebrate twenty years of Margaret Howell in Wigmore Street, the company headquarters next door to the Wigmore Hall, an appropriate combination, both being in their different ways so high minded. There is a short, thoughtful and very atmospheric film by Emily Richardson posted online (see below) in which she ruminates about her influences, mainly family and maybe the Suffolk coast, and her approach to design which is unworldly and in no way influenced by fashion, more fabric and how clothes wear over time.
I bought my first Harris tweed jacket from her shop in St. Christopher’s Place in 1979, so I now realise I was a pioneer (it says the shop opened in 1980, but this must be wrong). I used to buy all my ties from her, but I notice that we have both given up on ties during lockdown.
I discovered about Hoxton Books by reading about it online. It would be hard to find out about it any other way as it is nearly invisible on East Road, just up from Old Street roundabout – a tiny space, but impressively well stocked, including a surprisingly extensive selection of recent books about museums:-
Next door is an equally tiny, but equally thoughtful exhibition space, currently devoted to clothes which have been reconstructed from a 1930s fashion magazine. They are surprisingly contemporary – a utilitarian aesthetic, made by a contemporary Chinese designer under the label seventyfive: an exhibition both beautifully presented and informative, but only on for a week:-
I received through the post this morning a copy of an exhibition catalogue, Eye to Eye: Selected Works from the Lambirth Collection, being held at the Djanogly Gallery in Nottingham. Since I am unlikely to make it to Nottingham, I can at least encourage others to in order to see such a thoughtful group of works by neo-romantics including John Craxton and more contemporary figurative artists whose work is often overlooked – amongst them, Maggi Hambling, Arturo du Stefano and Robert Dukes. Not least, I was intrigued to find my blog amongst the footnotes to the catalogue essay on Peter Coker’s print of his son, Nick, the tragic anti-hero of Joanna Hogg’s film, The Souvenir. I have never been able to reproduce the print, but can now:-
It being so blistering hot and not wanting to spend the whole of the hot weather in our back garden, I thought I would bicycle to see the Sands End Arts and Community Centre, the fourth of this year’s Stirling Prize nominees in London (one does slightly wonder how the shortlist is drawn up: the longlist is done by well-established regional committees and provides a wide conspectus of projects from all over the country, but it looks distinctly as if the shortlist is drawn up by the awards committee sitting in Portland Place without nearly such strong regional representation. I am happy to be corrected on this).
Anyway, Sands End Arts and Community Centre is a nice, small-scale urban project by Alex Ely of Mae Architects: very community oriented, with a big top-lit space for events (there were children in it this morning) and a café looking out onto a grove of walnut trees and a totally parched small urban park. It’s a bit of the city I don’t know: Parson’s Green – quiet and residential.
I can see why it’s been included on the shortlist because it is much more akin to what most architects do than bigger, flashier public projects and it fits well into its surroundings, replicating the form of the glasshouse which apparently previously occupied the site. I can’t quite see it winning, but who knows ? It will depend on the judges and I don’t think the judges have yet been announced, but are likely to include last year’s winner (Grafton Architects), Simon Allford, the President of the RIBA, and a celebrity.
This is what it looks like from the street, set behind a retained brick wall:-
These are views from the adjacent park:-
And this is the clerestory of the big flexible space:-
Some of Issye Miyake’s obituaries, but by no mean all, mention 21_21 Design Sight, the experimental gallery which he established in a small lightweight building designed by Tadao Ando in the heart of Roppongi, the most fashionable part of Tokyo. I remember being incredibly impressed by the adventurousness of its programme, the fluidity of its boundaries between art, craft and fashion – what it classifies as ‘everyday life – at a time when experiential exhibitions were much less common than they have since become. If I had had more space in my The Art Museum in Modern Times, I maybe should have included it for pioneering the cross-fertilisation of design ideas, of which Miyake was a, now much lamented, master.
There’s a very nice interview with Chris Dyson in BD today, assuming it’s not behind a paywall (I managed to read it). I knew that he had worked with Jim Stirling (Stirling’s office attracted a lot of historically minded architects, not least, Léon Krier), but not that he had been trained by Isi Metzstein in Glasgow. As is clear from.the interview, there is no-one more knowledgeable about Spitalfields and its urban environment and he has also been a great supporter of artists, hosting exhibitions in his gallery in Princelet Street which I hope might one day be re-established:-
A big day for me today with the appearance through the morning post of an advance copy of my book about John Wonnacott. One never knows quite how a book will look in the flesh so-to-speak, on paper – good paper, slightly parchment-like – rather than on screen.
The design is by two designers, Luke Hall and Jason Wolfe, based in Walthamstow and they have done a really beautiful job of it, using two fonts, one Starling, a classical font designed by William Starling Burgess in 1904, and the other Quadrant Mono, which is like a typewriter font and gives a liveliness and immediacy to John’s many emails which I reproduce. Printed in Estonia.
It’s not a big book. I wrote it with a great deal of help from John in the early stages of lockdown as a way of documenting his long career, which has been so much less visible since Agnew’s shut up shop. I hope it will enable people to rediscover the great variety and strength of his work.
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