National Open Art Competition
NOA
(£60k) at Somerset House,
the comparisons are interesting
and inevitable, with both shows
continuingto evolve and expand
their remit year on year. The
former, with its declared interest
in figuratively based art, has now
bought in guest curator Sacha
Craddock to curate a show of
contemporary figurative painting
and sculpture she admires
alongside the selected work. No
photography here as yet
however, an element which,
meanwhile, continues to form an
increasingly important part of
NOA’s brief with photographer
Caroline Irby one of the four
selectors. Two nicely contrasting
shows which, between them,
give a good overview of the
current vitality of the, generally
speaking, emerging artistic
scene – ‘must sees’ in short.
Frieze Masters MK3
Founded in 2012 “to give a
unique contemporary
perspective on art of all ages”
alongside its well-established
super-contemporary older
brother, Frieze London,
Frieze
Masters
has quickly made a
name for itself in its own right
while the cross-over of
international audiences from one
to the other – a nice walk across
purchase, prize by sponsors
Odgers Berndtson), the real
attraction beingthe promise of a
solo exhibition at the gallery in
2015. It certainly worked here, all
of us beingsurprised by the
huge range and sheer quality of
the entry as, for example, in
Alison Elliott’s
Visindar –
a
modern-day ‘take’ on Stubbs and
of tremendous vitality.
Cynthia Corbett’s ‘Young
Masters’, beginning in 2009, was
very quick particularly to spot the
youthful trend to ‘modern’ Old
Masterdom, and her judges,
Charles Sausmarez Smith,
Secretary of the RA amongthem,
have selected 30 artists, most
with a particular bent in this
direction, for a shortlist which
looks of crackingquality, if that
by Red Saunders (illustrated
here) is anythingto go by.
Corbett takes great trouble about
exhibitingthe ‘oldmaster-rish’
work appropriately too, one
group from the 30 being
exhibited in the atmospheric
Georgian town-house
surroundings of Lloyds Club in
the City and another alongside
18/19 C. works at Sphinx Fine Art
in Kensington. The Ceramics
Prize looks spot on too, with the
Show Director of COLLECT,
Daniella Wells and collectors
Maylis Grand and Preston
Fitzgerald picking 15 promising
new names, to be shown in the
same spaces at the same times.
Turningnow to the ‘bigguns’,
the
Threadneedle Prize
(£35k+)
at the
Mall Galleries
and the
10
GALLERIES OCTOBER 2014
ANTENNAE
Figuration Revived
While artists tend to be rightly
wary of fashions in critical theory
– it can often seem like a primary
function of art school teaching
these days – there is no question
that the broad-scale shift away
from hard-line modernism,
abstract and conceptual in
character, towards a sort of all-
purpose post-modernism in
which the art of the past
becomes a glorious dip-bag of
eclectic, often historically-based
styles, has really taken root
among the younger generation.
Witness the various intriguing
competitions, both large and
small, that have been opening in
London this month and last.
For fairness’s sake let’s start
with the two smaller, gallery-
based enterprises – the
Curwen
Gallery Prize for Painting 2014
(from 8 October) and the
Cynthia Corbett Gallery
’s Young
Masters Art Prize with, fresh this
year, the impressively titled
Young Masters Maylis Grand
Ceramics Prize. The first of these,
a new scheme and one in which,
as one of the three invited judges
along with Sir Peter Blake and
Anthony Green RA, I must
declare an interest, is aimed
straightforwardly at “artists who
show excellence in the field of
figurative painting and who do
not have representation in
London.” First prize money by
today’s ever-inflating standards
is, at £1,000, comparatively
modest (there is also a second,
Alison Elliott
‘Visindar’ at Curwen Gallery
S
teve McPherson at Landmark Autumn Art Fair
