RWA Exhibitions Sept 2011

During my lunch break today I went to look at the current series of exhibitions in the RWA gallery.  More information is at the link here.

There are several separate shows.  Firstly, a small retrospective of screen prints by Bridget Riley, which I much enjoyed, not least because we have been exploring screen printing at college this week.  It was interesting to see how exactly the prints are register.  The shapes are the recognisable Riley swirls and sweeps, with rather odd mixtures of pure colour - greens and pinks, for example.  I am not sure I really like Riley's works of this kind - the bigger, painted and brightly coloured panels are more gripping, to my taste, but these prints were technically interesting.

The main work on show is the group of paintings by Louise Bourgeois which Tracey Emin added to after Bourgeois's death in 2010.    There is a Guardian review here http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/dec/01/tracey-emin-louise-bourgeois-exhibition 

I liked the Bourgeois paintings, rich colour and smooth line drawings, but I was less than enthusiastic about Emin's additions, which seemed to me to diminish and detract from Bourgeois' work, rather than enhance it.  The overall effect seemed to be rather childish and silly, like rude drawings in the school toilets, and I can't get excited about them.  I'm not sure they say anything useful about sexual abuse or miscarriage, or whatever Emin has added - although others clearly think otherwise.

These drawings prompted a heated discussion in our first Art History session with Jo Kear the other day - at that point I hadn't seen them so didn't join in, but now I have, I would have supported the negative voices....

Next, and in the same room as the Riley prints, was a rather odd selection of landscape works by various artists from the RWA collection called Naturescape.   I'm afraid none of these pictures made a great impression on me, although I am sure they were good examples from the RWA Collection.  They didn't seem to me to fit with the other bits of the exhibition.

And finally, there was a selection of large canvases by Michael Kidner, a pioneer of Optical Art in the 60s.  Many of his works would have been equally comfortable if produced as patchwork quilts, being regularly repeating and tessellating geometric shapes, many hand coloured much like some of my sketches towards quilts done in the 80s and 90s.  The overall effect of some of these works was quite arresting.