Our world is full of abstraction, life has morphed and been pulled out of shape and the pace is accelerating. The digital world distorts our view of the world, sometimes it feels as if context can be hard to find in the ‘post-modern’ world we now inhabit. Abstraction, deconstruction and appropriation affect our lives in every way, from the phone in your hand, to the building you work in. And now, hosting a major exhibition of British art with abstraction as its common thread, the understated Nottingham Contemporary building is literally full of the ideas and movements that informed its own architectural creation.
This is a massive show, both in scope and the sheer amount of art work. The galleries are brimming with seven decades of art made in Britain, covering every significant art movement since the Second World War. It is the largest presentation of The Arts Council Collection outside London, with work by eight Turner Prize winners nestled happily amongst the more established movers and shakers of post- war British Art. The title of the show tells us this is a collection on the verge, exploring the divide in modern art between the abstract and figurative and argues that perhaps abstraction doesn’t exist in its own right at all anymore; indeed, many of the artists shown here definitely share attributes of both. Abstraction to the left of me, representation on the right… Here I am stuck in the middle at two…
Two o’clock, and I am wandering a crowded Contemporary; people are here in droves and whether they are appreciating the cleverly curated mass of work as a whole or being drawn to their own individual favourites, the place is buzzing in a way you often see when collections and artists are shown together on this scale. The galleries and artworks are not presented in a chronological manner; instead, the works are scattered and bring together fascinating works from different periods in tantalisingly interesting juxtapositions and clever shared concerns. If you have little knowledge of art history you will still find your own connections and revel in these fascinating decades of British art.
Each gallery nods to a subtle theme. In Gallery three, for example, which contains work representing the natural environment I am reflected in the deep blue museum glass of a Raphael Hefti piece and instantly placed in the middle of this abstracted world; behind me television screens play Hilary Lloyd’s slow motion Bill Viola-esque sequences while the steel of an Anthony Caro sculpture is all revealed and fragmented around me. A friend texts me with random and isolated pictures of ideas for birthday presents (she is at The Range) …it all becomes a bit intense, life truly imitating art, or is it the other way around?… the digital pictures on my phone cutting my visit into bits, a pillow, a frame, an ornament… a frog?
Sitting happily in front of the massive red square painted by John Hoyland (Red Over Yellow, 1973), Eduardo Paolozzi’s The Frog begs the question – is it figurative or abstract? I decide the ornamental frog on my phone is a little too ‘abstract’ for the person we are buying for…. I go for the frame. Next to this meditative red square painting – and in sharp contrast – hangs a piece by Gilbert and George; framed postcards of highly saturated flowers arranged into a kaleidoscope of kitsch, bouncing with vitality and reminding us of the presence of the Pop Artists. As I move further along the same wall from Abstract Expressionism to idiosyncratic living art, we are greeted by a true pioneer of the British Pop art movement: Peter Blake, with one of his beloved wrestlers. To the right of this, The World from Memory, by Emma Kay, is a conceptual, highly detailed and delicate ethereal line drawing of the world. A highly personal piece, it invites the viewer into her private version of reality and challenges us to think about what we really know about the world and how we learn it. It reminds me of another map on show at New Art Exchange in Nottingham: Yara El-Sherbin’s giant interactive map of the world that you navigate like the buzz wire games you play at fetes.
As I move on into gallery two I am seduced by work by some of the painters I have a personal affinity with. The painter Frank Auerbach has a few pieces, one of his Primrose Hill studies and Head of E.OW. They sit heavily worked and etched in time by the reworking of thick layers of paint, and calm me. They slow the pace and give me time to reflect on the show as a whole. I slowly discover more fantastic curating decisions in this gallery as a David Bomberg self- portrait hangs directly opposite a Walter Sickert (Bomberg being a student of Sickert, Auerbach being taught by Bomberg....). This is made all the more interesting as I was taught by a tutor taught by Auerbach. Lovely personal stuff, but what finishes it off is the fact that the Bomberg self-portrait looks down over the works in this gallery, especially the six juicy resin blocks by Rachel Whiteread that are placed directly in front of him, and this truly radical trail-blazing artist looked intrigued with her ‘cubist’ result.
Wolfgang Tillmans' prints and photographs are heavily represented throughout the exhibit. Is this because he sums up the show? For this collection at least he is, perhaps, a conclusion or binding force to all that is the experience of life as represented by visual artists today. As I move past the increasingly post-modern diagrams, sculptures, projections and deconstruction I find myself stood in front of Stephen Willats’ fascinating Can you find a way to get us out of this place - a perfect question since as I gaze at his social nightmare of diagrammed modern-housing amongst all of this deconstruction my phone goes off again. I stare back at the representation of modern life as hell in front of me and at the end of the gallery just out of sight, through a Barbara Hepworth sculpture; I glimpse the recognisable anguish of a pope screaming. For me, my visit to this fantastic exploration of decades of art comes to a sudden conclusion with the screaming face of a Francis Bacon painting…. Screaming out in existential pain at this post-modern world we all belong to. Summing up the show and how I feel, elated and full, but definitely fragmented and Somewhat Abstracted, my phone beeps again, but I leave it in my pocket.
Somewhat Abstract runs until June 29
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