Page 53 - Studio-International-January-1974

Northern Young Contemporaries faction with a laytex, kapok and in this student show. One is that really
at the Whitworth Art Gallery, cloth sculpture called Afterbirth. off-the-wall blotto nonsense which
Manchester, December. England was a little more subtle only students are capable of
There was a surprising amount of calling his painting A Housewife producing. Like Wendy Freeman's
good stuff in the Northern Young Who's Had Enough. It was a (Leeds) stick figure of wood whose
Contemporaries granted that it was, gruesomely whimsical portrayal of a gaping mouth opened down on to a
for the most part, derivations, copies woman with a gun to her head, a torso made of a paint-bespattered
and combinations. What there was smile on her face and an amusement canvas, titled Hysteria Vomits The
(and the judges chose a pretty park in the background. Hurler's Wall. Robert McDonald (Leeds) also
representative assortment of what colour etching of a woman with a fell into this company with his
was submitted ; the proportions were black eye, Woman Beaten About The fantastic pencil drawing of figures on
not entirely accurate but on the Face Because Of Her Negative camels in an Egyptian landscape
whole what you see is what they got) Attitude Towards Life, was very nice with the pyramids in the background
was a lot of funky-fetish stuff, a lot of and funky. looking like they had been painted by
naive primitives and a goodly amount Realism was well represented. John McAllister Gray (Hull) the L.A. Art Squad. Elizabeth Bell
Interior with Table 1973
of what we Americans call English There was the old-fashioned hand (Leeds) was another. She was
painting, in the form of combined painted variety— James Horton's represented with two works, one in
Richard Smiths, John Hoylands and Good Friday (London : Royal film, a little rigid but nice short of
John Walkers. College of Art), photographic— lan dancing teaspoons. But where she
Using the names of the schools as Robinson's Mug Shot (Canterbury), really showed her true colours was in
they are listed beside the artists' airbrush — John McAllister Gray's a small sort of Patrick Caulfield-gone-
names to draw conclusions about Interior With Table (Hull) and primitive painting of a head of a
what kind of work comes out of which Dutch master—Timothy Clough'sA disgusting kid with his mouth open
school is not advisable. Ian Piece of Enamel Ware and Study and a domino painted floating around
Stephenson, one of the judges, From A Pair Of Braces (Chelsea). on the other side of the canvas. It was
pointed out to me that several painters Personally I preferred Michele titled Rotten Teeth and I don't know
listed as from Chelsea were at the time Bacciottini's (London : Goldsmiths') what it was about or if it was any good
of thejudging in late October just Autoritratto of a male head h-la- but it was just the thing to keep that
beginning there as graduate students Chuck Close painted inside a Roy miniature Rothko on the other wall in
and the works in the exhibition were Lichtenstein Mirror. You can talk its place. After all, one of the purposes
probably executed in another school about derivations all you like but you of this exhibition is to allow the
or over the summer between schools. don't find combinations like that students to see their work in the
The three most obvious pros were every day. context of the real world, in
Graham Crowley (Royal College of As for sculpture, there was no large conjuction with their
Keir Smith (London: Chelsea)
Art), Stephen Day (Manchester) and steel stuff in the Tony Caro tradition Untitled 1973 contemporaries, and here they get to
Robert Smith (Manchester). and very little light or kinetic see their work hung side by side with
Stephen Day showed a large black sculpture. There were a lot of small painted black with bands of red the greats, represented by proxy as it
and white painting, Untitled, whose boxes, one filled with miniature, which formed triangular shapes. It were.
sources were Cubism and ladders and one with a piece of a was a lot more complicated and made The trouble with work like
Constructivism. It looked hard to beat table leg in a Magritte-like setting, a lot less total visual sense, but was Freeman's, McDonald's and Bell's is
but he managed to make himself look both by Geraldine Pilgram (Leeds), still much more interesting than his that it is harder for people to deal with,
weak with a small pencil and ink and another by Diane Davis (Leeds) Untitled 1973 for which he won a outside the art school context, and as
drawing of the same sort : except it with a neon sign inside spelling prize. It was listed in the catalogue as it is also harder to make outside that
lacked the punch of the painting. 'Echo' set in front of a mirror, shades mixed media ; the piece looked like context, it rarely survives.
Graham Cowley showed a very tough of Bruce Nauman. Robert Russell a wooden construction of primary There is a final kind of work,
canvas of grey ground covered with (London : Royal College of Art) shapes painted grey and recalled typified by Penelope Jane Cooper's
smallish sharpish squiggles of green constructed a long, low lattice- early Robert Morris. (Newcastle University) Crows 1811
and red (Untitled). A good study of like wooden structure. It was Brian Thompson (Newcastle and John Beresford Elliott's (Lind on :
how small markings of colour work to unexpected and the scale was unusual, University) also showed two pieces. Chelsea) When One Speaks Of
charge an otherwise neutral ground, it rather resembling a piece of a model The first Landscape/Sculpture was an Danny's House One Is Understood
was a rather old-fashioned abstraction aeroplane. Keir Smith (London : ambitious resin and steel To Mean A Unit Of Which The Parts
and one of the few large works wh ich Chelsea) showed two large sculptures device resembling a trough with Are Men. Elliott had four fibreglass
was distinguished by any Untitled 1972-3, made of painted clamps on the sides. The second boxes hung in a row on the wall.
understanding of scale. Finally Robert steel, canvas and acrylic, consisting of Stone Sculpture was a knock-out, a What they looked like was litho
Smith's (Untitled) painting and three parts, a square and a rectangular pile of sandstones stacked on a stones with chipped edges, the same
collage was a beautiful combination of piece, connected by a bar. The entire wooden platform and held together size, the same grey colour and
a background which looked a little configuration hung ona diagonal with a large steel brace. chipped the same way old litho
like the side of a clapboard house, on against the wall. The surface was There are two other types of work stones get chipped. Cooper's piece
which were set three overlapping looked like greasy etching templates.
geometric shapes in a vertical drift. It They were overlapping pieces of
was basically about figure and ground varnished plastic sheeting hung from
and physical and illusionistic wooden bars (like knitting bag
protrusion and recession but it was so handles). Apart from Elliott's debt to
subtle and painted in such beautiful Eva Hesse and Cooper's to
vegetable greens you didn't even Dorothea Rockburn, both pieces had
care, it was just good to look at. that feeling students' work sometimes
John Christopher Monks has of being made from what is around.
(Liverpool) is worth mentioning for a Not, in these two cases, physically
collage drawing, Greek Souvenirs : on constructed from these things but
the left hand was a sheet of a Greek made from what is visually available.
newspaper with a colour The work peripherally acknowledges
photograph of a piece of ancient school and its utensils. It is this kind
statuary andin the right was an oil of work that is really important,
pastel drawing of the statue in the finally, no matter what it looks like
photograph. now, because it is involved with a
Using the ever popular theme of certain kind of thinking or a way of
woman were Lynda Hurler (Leeds), seeing which is sure to produce
Stephen Phillip England (London : interesting art in the future.
Chelsea School of Art) and Penny Linda Cathcart
Eastwood (Leeds). Eastwood
represented your more militant Robert Russell(London:RoyalCollegeofArt) Internal R 1973
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