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 Brighton Art Fair Is Best One Yet |
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Friday, September 19 2008 @ 12:19 PM BST
Author: Dan. Views: 78
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Brighton Art Fair has returned to its home at the city's Corn Exchange � and the 2008 show might just be the best one yet.
The finest artists in an eclectic collection are painters.
Natalie Martin has produced a stunning series of tightly cropped paintings of interiors, almost photo-realistic but with just enough painterly ambiguity to be truly enjoyable. Photo-realism gives away its secrets too easily, but these dark, mysterious paintings of forgotten corners and lost places would be constantly engaging.
Christopher Noulton pulls off a similar trick. His series of paintings are reminiscent of Thomas The Tank Engine illustrations, or the pages of old Ladybird books. They feature art deco architecture, 1950s vehicles and a cast of odd characters, and many allude to paganism, with the Green Man, Whicker Man and straw dollies all appearing. A certain sell-out.
Worthing artist Maggie Tredwell would sit well alongside either of these artists, with her series of very neat, almost architectural paintings of ordinary places; shops, cafes, burger bars and Airstream caravans.
There are of course plenty of much looser, abstract or expressionist painters.
In a sea of rather forgettable abstracts, Sam Lock's paintings really
stand out. Like Martin, he is interested in the crumbling corners; what
look like abstracts are more like close-up studies of walls with
crumbling plaster and peeling paint. Again, they manage to remain
engaging where too much abstract painting is just decorative.
Stephen Palmer has a very different style, with paintings that are
loose and lively. They are landscape paintings, but with bold
brushstrokes that suggest the view is temporary and must be captured
quickly. They are very English and capture the place perfectly.
Siobhan Tanner has a similarly lively style, but her work focuses on dancers moving through brilliantly lit interiors.
Sarah Young, best known as a printmaker and illustrator, is exhibiting
a collection of delicious paintings, very different but very
distinctively her work. Her usual motifs � carnival, circus, magic and
mysticism � are given a full-colour treatment which lifts them from the
more limited colour palette of her prints.
Freya Cumming uses a limited range of colours to full effect, in a
series of almost-pop prints that draw on her work as an illustrator.
Screenprinted buildings, cut out characters and layers of texture and
pattern create a grown-up, subdued version of Lauren Child's work for
children.
Mark Perronet takes a very different approach to print, with bold,
trashy, urban prints that effectively take graffiti sticker and stencil
techniques into a gallery setting.
Sam Chivers is also best when he's producing work for the street; while
some of his work is a little indulgent, his screenprinted posters for
indie bands are excellent. If you ever saw one on a wall, you'd steal
it.
Similarly Julian Sutherland-Beatson produces alright paintings, but his assemblages are far more interesting.
Steve McPherson also works in assemblages, making sets and finding
collections from hundreds of plastic objects found on beaches.
Particularly impressive are his collections of loosely themed objects
supported by text descriptions.
And while photography will always take second place in a show dominated
by painting, Rye-based Peter Greenhalf handprints black and white
photographs from film negatives. It's a wilfully old-fashioned
technique but Greenhalf shows that photography can be a craft as much
as an art.
And while most of the show is about flat work on paper or canvas,
recent graduate Chris Knight deserves a special mention. His small,
white birds have escaped and are roosting around the venue, sitting on
the top of exhibition boards or clustered around a dovecote in the cafe
area. Watch out for them; they are a light and witty touch in a
generally serious show.
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