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The mid-year batch of shows at the RWA contains enough to amuse and puzzle most people in roughly equal amounts. I visited with a small group of cultured professionals from Frenchay Brain Injury Rehab Unit; although we could have been non-artists from anywhere. I can confirm that my friends enjoyed themselves.
The Elisabeth Frink ‘Wild’ collection concentrates on the relationship animals have with humans, and with each other. It is genuinely wild in parts. As she said herself, this exploration is “better than just doing horses”. Or self portraits, which most of her (human) heads tend to be.
The Lisa Milroy geisha paintings were a surprise: she had a reputation for making medium-sized pictures containing rows of domestic objects. And it’s taking quite a risk making figurative work on such a scale. Despite the size and the painterly attack, they have a slightly comic-book, ‘pop’ look.
The Mary Fedden walls contain a potted history of part of English art: the earlier paintings are recogniseably of the same vintage as early Graham Sutherland and the other romantics of the late 'Forties.
But most of what is on view is recogniseably Fedden style: abstracted still lifes in harmonic colours, looking towards St Ives and beyond.
The show that has got the big bangs though is Jack Vettriano in the main gallery; the opening night featured actual tango dancers threading among the crowd - of course. It’s a surprise to see the paintings for real at first. Although they are quite small and not a lot bigger than the big-selling repros, they are surprisingly flat; in places almost like pop art (again) in their treatment. Well, fair enough: they are genuine pop art, of a sort. Vettriano shares the limelight with photographer Jeanette Jones; their double act is titled ‘Ballroom Spy’. Some of her work, which resembles movie stills from the 'Fifties as much as anything, was the raw material for some of his.
Also trumpeted loud was Damien Hirst’s contribution to the collection. He has hired some craftsmen to make a ten-up copy of the well-known disabled-girl-shaped collecting box. He gave the result a name: ‘Charity’, which somehow gives it the air of making a statement of a sort. Anyway, It stands in front of the RWA shouting, “Look at me!” which is all to the good, after years of Joe Public only being dimly aware of the edifice as an ancient office building hidden behind a car park.
One technical point last: I and my entourage visited on a mercilessly sunny day. Although the sun was beating down on the gallery roofs, we did not wilt, and remained cool and comfortable throughout. This is progress.
Photography: Che Ming Leung
