Galleries - April 2013

to coincide with this, the Corke ArtGallery in Henri’s native Liverpool is mounting a major show of his work, entitled ‘Painting and Poetry 1960-2000’ – all part of a revival, it seems, for this still somewhat neglected poet/painter. Print Plethora With the London Original Print Fair well established in its Royal Academy base (25-28 April) – make sure you get to see contemporary print and studio specialists Pratt Contemporary’s stand there with its latest examples of the work of Anna Maria Pacheco, Alison Lambert and Marcus Rees Roberts among others – this month is usually a good time for specialist dealer shows around town. Pick of the bunch, to my taste, is that devoted to the Grosvenor School Linocuts at Osborne Samuel , ‘The Cutting Edge of Modernity’. Director Gordon Samuel was an early enthusiast and scholar of this remarkable group, formed by Claude Flight in 1925, and has seen their prices rise to quite astonishing levels in recent years – £50-60,000 now for a top example. An exhilarating and stylish mix of Italian Futurism and Art Deco, the work of its four principal members – Flight, Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power and Lill Tschudi – exudes a positively European sense of the wonders of contemporary living. No wonder everyone’s after it . . . A Man of (P)Arts While the English laud their eccentric artists such as Spencer or Lowry, Scots are wary of their own mavericks, who are either driven away like Craigie Aitchison or overlooked as with James Cowie. It is therefore a welcome occasion to announce a new Cowie show ( Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh from 18 April) which should be an exhilarating and fulfilling experience for those not too familiar with his distinctive and complex approach to the challenges of modern figure painting. One of an outstanding group of figurative artists who emerged from Glasgow School of Art in the 1920s, Cowie used his subsequent career as a teacher to develop his art by drawing on his students and family as his recurring subject matter. Thus many of his paintings are populated by adolescent schoolgirls in an intense Pre- Raphaelite mode, who seem to be awakening to their nascent sexuality. Such paintings with their enigmatic psychological narratives are echoed by Cowie’s equally mysterious still lifes from his later period when he adopted his own distinctive approach to Cubism and Surrealism. Cowie, a superb draughtsman, took an unfashionable academic approach to his practice and so another special attraction to this exhibition will be the display of his masterly drawings. Bill Hare do something that really helps artists to continue to develop their work constructively (which is all they really want to do anyway). Their solution? To select from 300 electronic applications just three emerging younger artists and to offer them £10,000 bursaries, coupled with a year-long mentoring relationship of critical and professional development from three senior artists. Fabian Peake, Marcus Harvey and Mali Morris were the mentors, Anthony Faroux, Susan Sluglett and Sophia Starling their protégées. The results are on show at the Jerwood (to 28 April) while the excellent booklet tells a really encouraging story of mutual respect and learning. The way to go? Poetry & Art Please Regular readers will recall recent notices about the progress of the upcoming Adrian Henri Poetry in Art Prize being launched at this year’s Wenlock Poetry Festival. Well, it has now up and come, with the exhibition of the final selection displayed at Much Wenlock’s enterprising Twenty Twenty Gallery (6-20 April), at the opening of which will come the announcement of the first winner of the £10,000 First Prize. A sneak preview of the 30 finalists’ images for the catalogue shows such an encouraging entry that one is led to hope for a second show soon. Nicely timed 9. GALLERIES APRIL 13 from left: J ames Cowie ‘A Scottish Policeman’ 1941 oil on canvas, private collection, Scotland at Bourne Fine Art Elwin Hawthorne ‘Cumberland Market’ oil on canvas, at Abbott and Holder Cyril Power ‘The Eight’, at Osborne Samuel Steve Eliot ‘Blackmoor, Last Night’ at Reading Art Fair Susan Sluglett ‘Stag’, 2012 oil and charcoal on canvas, at Jerwood