Galleries - October 2013

than its home town, with a show at the Royal College of Art from 25 October to 7 November. Chich- ester will then see it later in Nov- ember with a Pallant House show of just the prizewinners in Dec- ember. With a nicely eclectic panel that included critic Brian Sewell, painter Barbara Rae and photo- graphy gallerist Michael Hoppen, it will make for intriguing viewing. Miniature Revival For too many people the miniature in art still tends to imply only the portrait miniature. In which case get down to the Mall Galleries when the Royal Society of Min- iature Painters, Sculptors and Gra- vers is holding its 117th Annual Exhibition (15-27 October) and where you will find it now means a lot more – landscapes, animals and still-life as well as portraiture – and none bigger than 4.5 x 6in! Around 700 of them in fact, all indicative of the revival in this area and due, not least, to the energies of president Elizabeth Meek. Small really is beautiful. Wright Stuff Two opportunities to view Lisa Wright’s work present themselves this month – her paintings are short listed for the Threadneedle Prize at the Mall Galleries in Lon- don while related drawings are at Millennium St Ives. Since her last exhibition two years ago her focus has evolved radically. Her per- spective on childhood has lost its figurative work drawn from the ranks of The Art Collective, a group that the gallery’s founders worked at until quite recently. The other new spaces are rather further flung geographically; Edin- burgh, where the former Mid- lands-based Sutton Gallery has relocated right into the heart of the city’s art scene, Dundas Street no less; and Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds, where Australian-born gallerist Celia Lendis has made such a mark over the last few years that she has the confidence to open a second new contem- porary space bang next door. Sutton are starting with a show from Ayrshire-born, London based abstract artist Philip Maltman and a John Moores Prize shortlister in 2010 – a distinctly interesting painter working with subject matter as various as Tudor History, James Joyce’s notebooks and his own garden. Meanwhile Lendis is holding a major show, across the two galleries, of Sophie Ryder’s sought after wire sculptures, paintings and drawings – a coup indeed! Up Up and Away Starting life 16 years ago as the Chichester Open Art Competition, the National Open Art Compe- tition, as it has been known since 2007, has, with over £60,000 total prize money, steadily developed into just about the richest art prize in the UK. And now this year, to match its national ambitions, it is opening in London first, rather 10. GALLERIES OCTOBER 13 ANTENNAE Green Shoots . . . Always a busy time for gallery openings; even so, I don’t remem- ber the start of an autumn season with quite so many exciting new developments for some years – the recession, in the art world at least, seems well and truly on the backfoot. First up, is the opening of the Serpentine ’s second venue, the Zaha Hadid-designed Serpentine Sackler Space in the old 1805 gunpowder store on the north side of the Serpentine Bridge. This will essentially deve- lop the existing programme and a great deal more besides with a wide range of commissions and events alongside gallery shows. Then, in Mayfair, a focal point now for Russian collectors, Russian gallerist Elena Shchukina has opened a space close to Gros- venor Square where her first show is young sub-Saharan figurative painter Onyeka Ibe. The other London openings, meanwhile, are in areas not so usually associated with gallery-going – Oil & Water in Wandsworth Town and Thomas & Paul in Little Venice. They both make a lot of sense though; Oil & Water takes its place among a nice mix of independent galleries, restaurants and cafés in Old York Road with an attractive selection of work by a dozen younger painters and printmakers, while Thomas & Paul pioneer an already stylish area which has, hitherto, been curiously lacking in serious gallery activity, with a well chosen programme of abstract and

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