Katy Moran probably tops my list of “Kick Yourself” missed opportunities. I first saw her work in a warehouse exhibition in Peckham in 2006, set off in one corner of a sprawling group show – three paintings on small oval canvases, thick with gestural marks and globby dollops of paint, each one reminiscent of a Flemish baroque flower painting that had been abstracted, contorted, compressed, concentrated, and then unleashed in a whirlwind of colour. I spent the best part of twenty minutes looking through the people at them. I to-ed and fro-ed about whether I should buy them. They were horrifically tempting. It would have been £1200 for the three, but in the end I just wasn’t in the buying mood.
Now, in 2009, they start at £12,000 each – and I am still to-ing and fro-ing as badly as before. This new show at Modern Art is quite exquisite. Katy works on small canvases, so the paintings are compact and intense, and this recent work is more subtle and complicated than previously. Within a tight arena, there’s heavy emphasis on this brushmark, that sweep of colour, this bleed of paint, how that mark interrupts and obscures this other one… Although hectic and expressive, they’re mightily deliberate and extremely energetic. They also manage to pull off the admirable trick of placing a figurative idea in your mind without actually being explicit about it. That takes subtlety, and no mean quotient of painting ability.
In these works there’s a considerable amount of collage involved too, underlying and underpinning (and to a certain amount figuratively echoing) the brushmarks and their influences. To be honest I wasn’t mad on that, as the paper took away what a canvas really gives to works like these: a sense of wholeness and coherency. But that said, it worked. Look at the images on the gallery website, but don’t expect to get the faintest idea what the work is like – these are real paintings, and really need to be seen first hand.
There was one in particular, a painting which gave me a feeling of positive lust towards it which I normally take as a sure-fire sign that it’s a good buy. I can’t stop thinking about it. Again I’m stopping at the money; again I’ll probably kick myself. I’m not saying which one it is though – just in case…
(It’s probably sold anyway).
A couple of other shows also worth visiting:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if you can break it, then fix it, and make it look good on top, then go ahead – the world’s your oyster. As ever all process, Davenport’s puddle paintings build on the experience of a previous site-specific installation where the paint was left to drip into puddles on a sill below (he’s managed to make that happen flat, basically). Effective first hand, it looks like a neat trick which doesn’t quite wear off even once you know how it’s done (you’ll need to read the catalogue to find out…), and then becomes all about the juxtaposition of colour and electric visual rhythm. A good show, this.
I like Boo Ritson’s work on paper (convenient, as that’s how most of it is printed) – the idea of literally painting onto a model, smothering them in the stuff, then photographing the poor sod so that they look like a sculpture made of pure paint is, well, very sexy to a paint enthusiast like myself. This new series of work (on two sites – part with Poppy Sebire on North Audley St, part with Alan Cristea on Cork St) is a jaunt into Americana with a heavy dose of Pop Art references, visiting the Gas Station and The Diner and, in a development in the work, leaving the white base unpainted to hint at the technique. Maybe it’s the pop schlock, West of East End trailer-trash element that doesn’t resonate with me on this particular body of work, but she’s still a very inventive and distinctive artist, and the shows are well worth seeing (on both sites, mind).
A large solo show for a Korean artist in London will always be worth a look, although I’m not sure to what extent this one in particular really helps promote Korean art’s identity here in the UK. A bit saccharine, a bit graphicky, and the insistent character a bit too Ken Dodd-like for me, without contributing a great deal to the paintings, or the exhibition, as a whole. Jolly enough though for thems that wants it.
