Has anyone noticed the scarcity of contemporary painting exhibitions in local public spaces, such as the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery or even the Seattle Art Gallery? I'm not sure if its the same with public spaces in the eastern part of this continent, but around here painting has a very low profile.
There is an exhibition right now at the Tate Modern in the UK (closing Feb 9 in case any of you happen to be in the vicinity in the next few weeks) called
Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists. As I can't attend this exhibition, I had to satisfy myself by learning as much as I could through the internet (always a less than ideal experience, but sometimes that is all there is). The five artists in the exhibition are
Tomma Abts,
Gillian Carnegie,
Simon Ling,
Lucy McKenzie and Catherine Story.
I am familiar Tomma Abts from seeing her work in
Painting Today, a book on contemporary painting. Abts work appears in a section called 'Ambiguous Abstraction'. The element of Abts work that surprised me, even thought I was only looking at a reproduction, is the relief surface of these geometric abstractions. Abts talks about her process in a
short video. A longer (one hour) artist talk by Abts can be found here:
Abts Turner Prize 2006.
Gillian Carnegie is a Scottish artist that uses a complete range of traditional subject matter in her works from flowers in vases, interior and exterior architecture, to cats. Another painter who focuses on architecture is
Simon Ling.
Lucy McKenzie and
Catherine Story work in the edges between painting and sculpture. Here is an excellent essay by
Barbara Engelbach about McKenzie's work. There are also some images on this link as well. The work in the exhibition isn't necessarily tied by thematic concerns but rather just by paint. They are all artists who are extremely engaged in the practice of painting.
I'm glad its not just me noticing the lack of painting exhibtions; in this review in Guardian,
Laura Cummings comments on the very same thing. An article called '
Why Painting Still Matters', is a nice follow-up to the Cummings pieces. I think no matter what is happening in the art world, there will always be a place for painting.