Summer Exhibition 2015

Overheard in the Small Weston Room from a couple contemplating 'Remembering the Treason Trial' by South African artist William Kentridge HON RA:
'So what does it represent to you, in your mind?'
'The Tree of Life?'
'Right.' Pause. 'And…?'
'Well… there's the scale of it.'
'And there's dramatic stuff mixed up with everyday stuff, and a whole lot going on. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to get you to tell me what you see…'

There is certainly 'a whole lot going on'. This year's Summer Exhibition is a riot of colour: the Wohl Central Hall has been daubed a 'rich turquoise', Gallery III a 'vivid magenta' and the Lecture Room 'sky blue'; and, as ever, there is an embarrassment of riches. It is not easy picking out three favourites from a strong field, but I would say my choices for this year (in reverse order) are:

3.  Daydreaming (Oil)
     Lucy du Sautoy

A smudge of landscape streaked with droplets of water in sharp focus, as if looking out of a train window after a shower. It is an unusual perspective for an oil painting, and the grey sky and damp-looking greens seem to lull you into a sort of rainy-day reverie.

2.  Looking South (Woodcut)
     Pine Feroda

Another landscape: this time of dark jagged peaks thrusting out of the sea against a misty pink and purple horizon. It is an intense, dramatic composition – but not brooding: I love the way the ripples and waves catch the shimmering light. The title is intriguing – looking south from where? From some Nordic fastness, or a Patagonian peak? I would later learn that Pine Feroda are a collective of five woodblock artists based in north Devon, so perhaps the work was inspired by the rugged Devon coast.

1.  Somerford Grove Adventure Playground in Tottenham (C-type print)
     Mark Neville

A boy with close-cropped fair hair leans against a counter and pulls a little moue. All around him is the chaos of a typical junior school, with kids waiting to be allowed out into the playground for break. The light that falls on him seems to accentuate his pallor; his other classmates appear to be of mixed heritage. An interesting social commentary? I would later learn that this was one of a series of portraits commissioned by the New York Times for a photo essay entitled 'Here is London', and that the scene depicted was of an after-school club!

Honourable mention to Paul Hosking for 'Mimic (Black)', a visually arresting work in and of itself, made all the more interesting by the reflection of the room within it; Sir Anish Kapoor RA for his untitled acrylic cube with mirrored sides and a row of bubbles suspended within, refreshing as an ice-cube on a summer's day; and Emily Allchurch for 'Babel London', an amusing, contemporary take on Breughel's Tower of Babel.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2014

I'm surprised I haven't paid more attention to the National Portrait Gallery's annual photographic portrait prize. The last time I went was five years ago; having some time to spare this evening, however, I decided to drop in to view the 2014 exhibition - and I am glad I did.

The 2014 exhibition marks the last one judged by Sandy Nairne as director of the National Portrait Gallery (Nairne has announced that he will step down later in the year).  Over 4,000 submissions were received, and whittling them down to the 60 on display must have been a daunting task.

The top three prizes awarded by the panel for 2014 went (in reverse order of merit) to:

3.  Braian and Ryan
     Birgit Püve
     (Third place)

Two ash-blond twins, nine year old Braian and Ryan, crouch in the garden at their great grandmother’s house in Saue, Estonia. Braian, the younger twin, stares moodily at the camera, his arms crossed over his knees; while Ryan, the elder, looks up less guardedly, holding a large hen between his legs.

2.  Skate Girl
     Jessica Fulford-Dobson
     (Second place)

A waif of a girl, dressed in a shimmering blue hijab, holds a skateboard almost as large as she is tall. Her little fingernails are painted orange, and her toes (which peek out of a pair of dusty sandals) are painted blue. The photograph was taken in Afghanistan. 'What I loved about this girl,' explained Jessica Fulford-Dobson,'was how immaculately dressed and composed she was. The skate hall is a dusty, noisy place filled with laughter and yelps of excitement as the girls skateboard freely up, down and around with their robes and scarves flying.' There is something in the little girl's expression that suggests a masked restlessness - I assumed this was an eagerness to get back to the fun of skateboarding, but I would later learn that she was in fact rushing for the school bus home.

1.  Konrad Lars Hastings Titlow
     David Titlow
     (First place)

The top prize for 2014 went to David Titlow for his portrait of his infant son. The child, aged nine months, stretches out his stubby fingers to touch the nose of a little black and white dog. I love the look of wonder on the child's face and the dog's slightly perplexed expression at the encounter. The shot was taken in Rataryd, Sweden, the morning after a midsummer's party: a hazy Nordic light bathes the scene, and a couple of empty cans of beer are still visible in the foreground. 'The composition and backlight was so perfect that I had to capture the moment,' commented Titlow.

My personal favourites also included:

• a portrait of  Freyja Haraldsdóttir, MP and disabled rights activist, outside Parliament in Reykjavik, Iceland, by Gabrielle Motola;
• Felix, a portrait of a tousled-haired boy being nuzzled affectionately by his pony, by Tracy Howl; and
• Ann-Christine Woehrl's powerful portrait of Christine and Moses (pictured below), from a series on the lives of women who have survived acid attacks.

Summer Exhibition 2014

'I never used to like still lifes, but increasingly I find them quite pleasing.'
'Yes… nice colours. Shall we move on?'
'Shall we?'
'Let's.'

For me, this year's Summer Exhibition is not so much about still lifes as it is about landscape and portraiture – and the various techniques of printmaking. It is immediately apparent, gushes the Exhibition guide, why the Print Rooms of the Summer Exhibition are so popular. More than any of the galleries, they exemplify the Exhibition's democracy by presenting a rich survey of contemporary printmaking in all its forms. This year, Galleries I and II have been hung by artist-printmakers Professor Chris Orr MBE RA and Emma Stibbon RA. Orr observes that the Summer Exhibition offers excellent insight into emerging trends in printmaking, while Stibbons points out that prints, being generally more affordable than unique works of art, offer great opportunities for building up a wide collection.

My top three picks for this year are all prints. They are, in reverse order:

3.  Winter Hedge (Archival pigment transfer print)
     Boyd & Evans

A tree surges out of the mist in the middle of a hedge. In this muted landscape, drear and grey, I like how the bare branches seem to explode into the frosty air, lending a strange sense of dynamism to the piece – a distant promise of spring in its simple, sturdy form. As it turns out, its pendant piece 'Spring Hedge' hangs nearby, depicting the same tree triumphant in the luminous green of new foliage under a bright blue sky.

2.  Leicestershire (C-type print)
     Mitra Tabrizian

A half-demolished factory stands in the middle of a concrete courtyard wet from recent rain, its brick and tile interior exposed to the elements. Beside it stands a tall and weathered chimney stack. The colours seem faded: worn reds and smudged whites squeezed between grey ground and grey-blue sky; and the still and sullen emptiness reinforces the overall impression of desolate urban decay.

1.  O Jogo Bonito (Photograph)
     Hermès

My favourite work in this year's Exhibition is of the 'beautiful game'. Here, against a backdrop of dramatic peaks and drab apartment blocks (barely visible through the mix of sea spray and smog), is a beach full of bronzed bodies of all shapes and sizes engrossed in the game. Above their heads, as if suspended, are a flight of footballs – like a host of hovering planets, each one catching a glint of sun. I love the way the picture encapsulates what I imagine to be the crazy, creative chaos of Brazil!

Honourable mention to Ben Johnson for 'Sala de Dos Hermanas', a quietly beautiful black-and-white study of Moorish arches; Gavin Turk for 'Totem', a mesmerising image of a puff of smoke rising against a dark background (or possibly ejaculate in water, thought one wag who must have been spending too much time in the bath); and to Peter Abrahams for 'Approximate Precision – Scourers 4', with its used scourers stacked two-deep on a white surface (I thought they looked vaguely edible, but this was clearly not a sentiment shared by the lady next to me who shuddered and said, 'Ugh – I hate them, they always look "grot"!').

Some parting words of wisdom from Tom Phillips RA: 'Waste not the remains of the day'!

Matrimandir

They called her 'The Mother'. I find her intriguing, Mirra Alfassa: this intense Frenchwoman of Sephardic origin who ends up running an ashram in southern India.

It was Alfassa who oversaw the establishment of Auroville in 1968 – a settlement which, according to its charter, 'belongs to humanity as a whole', is dedicated to 'unending education' and 'constant progress' and is a 'site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity'. I am sceptical of utopian endeavours in general, but find myself sympathising with the ideals behind the foundation of Auroville. In 1954, Alfassa wrote:

There should be somewhere on earth a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weaknesses and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasure and material enjoyment.

One of the key focal points in Auroville is the Matrimandir (pictured above). I had assumed this was a shrine to Alfassa, and in a way I am not wrong: the Matrimandir is a shrine to the Mahashakti – the universal Mother – of which Alfassa was regarded as an incarnation.

I have missed the shuttle to the Matrimandir, so will have to walk.
'Just as well it's a nice day for it,' quips the Aussie chap who hands me my free pass for an 'outer view'. (Access to the inner chamber is restricted and requires a prior booking which I have not made.)

Alfassa was 93 at the time of the groundbreaking in 1971 and never lived to see the Matrimandir completed. What would she have made of it, I wonder? It is certainly imposing, but when I get there all my irreverent mind can see is an oversized pineapple.

I suspect I am not quite ready to join the community of Aurovilleans!

West Lake of Hangzhou

'You shui shou,' nudges the Chinese lad to his mate. Our sampan ferryman rows on stoically, unamused, his broad weather-beaten face focused on his task. I peer through the freezing fog at the ripples that skim the grey surface of the lake – hardly the sort to portend the stirring of some great creature of the deep. These schoolboy pranks…

It is colder than I expected, in the rickety sampan in the middle of the lake. The small table in front of me is covered with a lace cloth patterned with an apple and a pear and outlandishly outsized strawberries. I could do with a steaming cup of tea, but all there is is a glass of water with a yellowing cigarette extinguished in it.

Somewhere ahead of us, just discernible through the mist, is an artificial island with three pools for mirroring the moon.

一湖、二峰、三泉、四寺、五山
One lake, two peaks, three springs, four temples, five mountains
六园、七洞、八墓、九溪、十景
Six gardens, seven caves, eight tombs, nine streams, ten views

So the saying goes.

Where do the three pools come in, apart from being one of the ten celebrated views of the West Lake?

Or the pot-bellied pagodas, for that matter, that have now heaved into view: squat little things on the surface of the water – each one as round as, well, the moon. In the mid-autumn, they would light candles in the pagodas and hide them behind screens. The glow through the circular windows would reflect on still waters, creating the impression of a sea of floating moons dancing amidst the reflection of the harvest moon.