7/10/2014
Two exhibitions
Art First, London
Will Maclean has explored the world and brings a universal thematic relevance to his practice. Louis Maqhubela developed a distinctive artistic language of his own.
Will Maclean
Gleaned and Gathered
Will Maclean has a flawless Scottish heritage which underpins his art, though like his ancestors and countless fellow Scots, he has explored the world and brings a universal thematic relevance to his practice. His powerfully metaphorical art is based on the histories and mythologies of those who live and work by the sea. With a profound interest in Scottish and Highland culture, his handling of the vast subjects of navigation, fishing, whaling, emigration and exploration, has a reductive, poetic language that can be understood across many cultures, and which over five decades, has acquired a distinctive quality that is uniquely his own.
Accompanying the exhibition is a publication with an essay by Andrew Patrizio, Professor of Scottish Visual Culture, Edinburgh College of Art.
Also published in relation to the exhibition is A Catechism for the Laws of Storms, a collaboration between John Burnside and Will Maclean. The book is accompanied by a separate edition of richly inked prints, and is available from Art First.
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Louis Maqhubela
New Work
Louis Maqhubela was born 75 years ago in Durban, South Africa. His life under apartheid, against many odds, reached a moment of triumph when in 1967 he was hailed as the first black painter of distinction, winning first prize in the national Artists of Fame and Promise exhibition in the Adler Fielding Gallery. A bursary to Europe, further awards and successful exhibitions resulted in his eventual departure for London, where he has lived in voluntary exile since 1976.
This veteran South African painter blazed a trail, breaking away from the conventions of ‘township art’, to form a personal engagement with modernist abstraction. He developed a distinctive artistic language of his own – lyrical, spiritual and intensely expressive.
Several return trips to a newly democratic South Africa after 1994, and for his landmark retrospective exhibition in 2010, have had a powerful effect on Maqhubela. Formal references to Ndbele wall painting or to Zulu earplugs and youthful memories of rural and urban life, have re-entered his visual language, to great effect. There is evidence of this in recent works, such as the large canvas, Ostrich Dance, though the profound humanism and inner joy of his purely abstract painting remains a distinguishing feature.
Image: Will Maclean, Taxonomy of Tides, 2014, mixed media construction, 123 x 108 x 9.5 cm
Art First
21 Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8DD
Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Friday: 10am – 6pm, Saturday: 12pm-5pm, & by appointment