Galleries - May 2013

14. GALLERIES MAY 13 too, because I once taught on that course . . . Caving “Once I’m hooked on a particular spot I want to return again and again. The natural landscape, the way it is structured and the way order is created out of chaos, these are the things I find most compelling.” With her obsession with a small patch of the landscape incessantly studied in every condition of light, weather and, in her particular case – working in the caves of the North Cornish coast – tide, Sarah Adams works within a very honourable English landscape tradition that stretches back to Constable and beyond. Her new exhibition at the Maas Gallery shows her reaping a rich reward for her tenacity, with the work continuing to grow in its monumental grandeur and richness of colour, a development carefully traced in a new book on her work by Andrew Lambirth. Extra Lichtenstein You will have seen the show so now you may well feel impelled to own a Lichtenstein of your own. If so a trip to Olyvia Fine Art In St James’s should do the trick with a really excellent cross section of his prints from 1963-1997 – some 34years! Or just to find relief from the crowds at Tate Modern’s blockbuster . . . N U Estuaries & Art A remarkable project at the Abbey Walk Gallery in Grimsby this month, where artist/curator Linda Ingham has gathered a really distinguished group of experimental landscape artists – Susan Derges among them – as well as loans from the Arts Council, to explore “through the window of the North East Lincolnshire landscape” our relationship to the landscape, not just as a place to live but to mine, excavate and exploit, and also to gain spiritual benefit. Given its chosen ground, the Humber Estuary, with its long industrial and fishing past, this is rich territory, and this ambitious show is just the start of a two-year project of events and exhibitions. Very impressive. Group Loyalty There’s a nice story behind the Group 93 show at the Jane Fuest Gallery in Alresford which marks the 20th anniversary of a group, set up in 1993, by a number of the artists – painters, printmakers and sculptors – who had enrolled five years before on the West Surrey College of Art’s first mature students programme. Such ideas have now become common practice in art schools with beneficial results for all students but, in those days, this was pioneering stuff and, as this show makes plain, with important creative consequences. I know, Northern Light Matthew Draper calls his latest exhibition ( Lemon Street Gallery , Truro, from 18 May) ‘Northern Light’ – indicating that he continues to be fascinated by the rich and varied character of the Scottish landscape, where transient weather conditions are as important to the artist as permanent geology structures. His subjects are drawn from a number of trips carried out over the past five years – covering such inspiring sights as the soaring Cuillins of Skye, the Firth of Forth’s indomitable Bass Rock and the nocturnal illuminations of Edinburgh. Through his supreme mastery of his adopted medium of pastel, Draper creates absorbing images that enthral the eye and enlighten the imagination. Bill Hare Frink Fest After our Modern British feature on p11, more wonderful work from that remarkable post-war generation with a show of the much-loved sculptor Elisabeth Frink at Beaux Arts (London) to mark the 20th anniversary of her untimely death in 1993. The exhibition also celebrates the publication of Annette Ratuszniak’s massive catalogue raisonné by Lund Humphries – some 400 works illustrated in all, many of them previously unpublished and a huge contribution to the scholarship. THUMBN IALS R oy Lichtenstein ‘Blue Floor’, at Olyvia Fine Art. Matthew Draper ‘Momentum’, at Lemon Street Gallery.