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Barbara Howey, Poison idyll - woodland pool, 2022 oil on board 51x41cm
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Entwined: Plants in Contemporary Painting is at
Huddersfield Art Gallery until 28 January 2023
This engaging exhibition, which might sound like a show of still-life watercolours, is packed with ambitious painting, much of it on a spectacularly large-scale.
The first picture to confront the visitor is, in fact, a
watercolour (by Juliette Losq), but it is an astonishing 2x2.8 metres and portrays
a dense scene of graffitied urban dereliction being reclaimed by nature.
One of the refreshing aspects of
this exhibition is that many of the paintings are accompanied by short texts by
staff and associates of Kew Gardens (one of the exhibition’s sponsors) which
offer both personal responses and expert accounts of what we are looking at; (so
much more rewarding than the usual mandatory ‘artists’ statements’!) In the case of
Losq’s picture we are informed about ‘pioneer’ plants and how they are adapted
to take advantage of and flourish in such abandoned urban spaces. The writer, Alex Monro,
concludes: “I really like this picture as it shows the inevitable fate of all
our built creations: at some point in the future, this is how everything will
look before finally being completely swallowed and consumed by nature.”
The key invitation of this
exhibition is close looking – at nature and at painting. The detail in large works
(1.3x1.1m) by Hannah Brown, for example, is astonishing: we gaze into a
Devon hedgerow, impressed by the richness and complexity of the natural growth
as well as the evident concentration and skill of the painter. Judith Tucker
also takes us into a complex and beautiful world, the seemingly exotic habitat of
‘pioneering salt marsh plants’ studied in the gloriously named ‘Humberston
Fitties’.
On a much smaller scale (30x21cm),
but equally engaging, is a sequence of paintings
by Helen Thomas. Cleverly presented on top of low plinths we look down to images of
fragments of the ground caught as it were ‘in the break of a stride’, as the
artist puts it, making visible the overlooked ground literally beneath our feet.
While the above mentioned take a
broadly ‘photo-realist’ approach, other artists offer more painterly,
stylized approaches. Barbara Howey’s pictures are lush both in terms of the plant
life represented and the handling of her medium with sinuous line and exuberant
colour; Michele Fletcher’s sensuous almost abstract immersion in flower and
leaf ('A peculiar glow’) is gorgeous. Graham Crowley, on the other hand, while
equally painterly, almost perversely, paints a dense and complex garden jungle
in an acid yellow monochrome. The result is other-worldly: slightly sinister
and threatening but thrilling, too.
The curators – Judith Tucker,
Barbara Howey (both also exhibitors) and Grant Scanlan have put together an
excellent show featuring 18 artists (see poster image below for full list). Given the increasingly urgent threats to our ecology it
couldn’t be more timely or pertinent; but, rather than heavy handed preaching,
the proposition here is straightforward and direct: look at nature (and art):
marvel at it, value it, cherish it.
Juliette Losq, Proscenium, 2018 ink and watercolour on paper, mounted on canvas, 200x280cm
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Hannah Brown, installation view; left: Pound's Lane 1, 2022 oil on linen, 130x110cm
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Judith Tucker, Dark marsh: darkening reed, 2022 oil on linen, 120x160cm
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Helen Thomas, installation view, paintings: acrylic on board, 30x21.5cm
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Michelle Fletcher, A peculiar glow, 2022, oil on linen, 90x100cm
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Graham Crowley, installation view; right: A love of many things 4, 2020, oil on canvas, 114x137cm
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Harvey Taylor, Leaves in Essex, 2019, oil on canvas, 70x90cm
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Julian Perry, Benacre birch 1, 2015-22, oil on canvas, 244x184cm
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