calendario eventi  :: 

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7/6/2009

Two exhibitions

Haunch of Venison Yard, London

East Galleries

Keith Coventry
Painting and Sculpture. Part II: Works 2002-2009

Haunch of Venison London is delighted to announce the second of a pair of exhibitions that constitute a retrospective for the acclaimed British artist, Keith Coventry.

Taken together, the two exhibitions reveal the breadth and consistency of Coventry's work from the early 1990s to the present. While the first exhibition in 2008 focused on the iconic Estate Paintings, White Abstracts and History Paintings which established Coventry's reputation in the 1990s, Works 2002-2009 will include an extraordinarily wide range of work, much of it overtly figurative, including major new works that have never before been exhibited.

Coventry habitually works in series and the exhibition will showcase several important new groups of work. Echoes of Albany (2004-2008), is a series of more than 40 paintings which address the history of the mysterious Albany apartments, located next to Burlington Gardens, and are painted in the style of Walter Sickert's controversial Echoes. Alongside depictions of the great and good - including Byron and Gladstone - Coventry subtly inserts contemporary scenes of prostitution and drug-taking, thus undermining this cornerstone of British society.

In contrast, the Anaesthesia as Aesthetic (2007-2008) series depict the apartments of early twentieth century Parisian art collectors in a reduced palette of flat colours. While the walls, furniture and floors of the interiors are painted in green and yellow, the works of art that inhabit the rarefied interiors are painted as sky blue silhouettes. In accordance with contemporary psychiatric theories these colours were used to treat the victims of shellshock in the aftermath of World War I.

White Slaves is a new 11-part painting which features arrays of acronyms used by prostitutes, painted in the colours of the flags of former Soviet Bloc countries. The exhibition will also feature Coventry's Black Paintings after Raoul Dufy, Broken Windows and a selection of new sculpture. Coventry will also exhibit for the first time a major new group of paintings of the head of Christ, based on Van Meegeren's notorious early twentieth-century forgeries of Vermeer, rendered in the palette and style of the German Expressionist Emil Nolde.

Following on from recent important acquisitions by Tate and the Arts Council the exhibition promises to cement Coventry's status as one of the most consistently inventive and provocative artists of his generation. It will be accompanied by a major publication on the artist from Haunch of Venison.


Mezzanine Gallery

Elias Sim
Tärät-Tärät

Haunch of Venison London is delighted to announce Tarat-Tarat, an exhibition of installation, painting and sculptural works by Ethiopia's most prolific contemporary artist, Elias Sime.

Tarat-Tarat, meaning story-story, reflects both the artist's retelling of poignant events experienced or observed as well as the integral role of storytelling within Ethiopian culture.

Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Sime studied during the Derg era of Stalinist-style rule within Ethiopia. At the beginning of the current decade, Sime began exhibiting works inspired by his travels throughout rural Ethiopia, and anthropological research of local culture. The resulting exhibitions were subtitled 'Anthropological Contemporary Art Exhibitions', of which Tarat-Tarat presents several examples.

Sime has always experimented with a variety of mediums regardless of their market value. Materials used in the floor pieces include goat skin, traditionally used to store grain or honey, stitched with plastic strings, part of Sime's reaction to the extinction of natural material from our daily use.
The wall pieces exhibited in Tarat-Tarat are a combination of yarn stitches and button stitches sewn on canvas.

The mud and straw figures coming down the stairs of the central atrium of the gallery are a mixture of televisions frogs and monkeys - a whimsical commentary on the modern world and Sime's belief that objects contain the stories of their previous owners.

Elias Sime interprets stories from an imaginative point of view, and his work contains many poetic clues. Where sometimes the physical materials used are the source of inspiration for Sime's compositions, at other times the composition inspires the artist to search for specific materials that will best express his ideas.


West Galleries
Adrian Ghenie: Darkness for an Hour
15 May - 25 July 2009

For further information and images please contact:
Claire Walsh Call +44 (0) 20 7936 1296 or email cwalsh@brunswickgroup.com

Haunch of Venison
6 Burlington Gardens London W1S 3ET
Hours:
10.00 - 18.00 Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri
10.00 - 19.00 Thu
10.00 - 17.00 Sat
Admission free

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