Found

We went yesterday afternoon to the exhibition Found which has been put together by Cornelia Parker at the Foundling Hospital, based on the idea that the original Foundling Hospital was supported by a group of artists in the 1740s who chose to offer ‘Performances in their different professions, for Ornamenting this Hospital’.   It’s a wonderfully eclectic group of works, mostly interspersed throughout the Museum, although with a more conventional semi-exhibition in the basement.   We liked the eroded helmet shown by Ackroyd and Harvey;  the screenprint by Patrick Caulfield, which prefigures the work of Michael Craig-Martin;  Michael Craig-Martin’s own FILM, which he made when he was a student at Yale;  Richard Deacon’s self-curated shelf which doesn’t appear in the catalogue;  Edmund de Waal’s group of works based on found objects in Orkney;  Antony Gormley’s cast of Paloma which echoed the bronze light fittings (was this deliberate ?);  Mona Hatoum’s wire drawings;  and Alison Wilding’s frog.   Many of the artists are RAs in the same way that the original artists who supported the Foundling Hospital became the group who established the RA, united by kindred interests.

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