A Postcard From London

Dazzle London - three printmakers

Dazzle is a contemporary jewellery exhibition running every year for nearly thirty years at four different venues. Since last year, in addition to jewellery, Dazzle displays work of three chosen printmakers. Few days ago I visited the show at National Theatre in London.

Jakie Field

Jackie Field specialises in unique woodcuts and relief prints. Her recent work focuses on architectural constructions of different glass houses in Britain and Europe. The prints are almost as monumental as the buildings pictured; some of them measure even three square meters. The artist uses limited palette of colours, sometimes just two tones of the same hue, but because they are intensely deep, brilliant colours the effect is stunning. The size of the picture, colour and the amount of detail contained in these prints made me study and enjoy them for long time. I really admire the geometrical perfection and precision with which Jackie Field produced each woodcut.

Davida Smith

Pamela Hare is an artist and printmaker living and working in Islington. Her work is influenced by urban cityscapes, people and man made environment. Her recent work involves photo-screen printing technique, and than each print is hand painted using vibrant colours. My favourite image is Cold Harbour, depicting a sunset over Canary Wharf, yet the colours are so exaggerated it seems that the buildings are on fire.

Pamela Hare

The third printmaker is Davida Smith, whose work is influenced by topography of Rye in East Sussex, where she currently lives. Smith uses etching and aquatint techniques to produce beautiful and very delicate abstract countryside landscapes. It is excellent opposition to the work of two previous artists.

Leonardo

hand-painted
photoetching

Dant on Drink: Drawings about Drinking in Britain

Drinking is the main theme of Adam Dant’s second solo show at the Hales gallery in East London. Dant on Drink: Drawings about Drinking in Britain, as one can imagine, is neither a didactic show promoting healthy leaving nor a guide through new range of deliciously fruity J2O juices. Instead the artist focuses on the nation’s favourite sport, second after football of course (although these two have a lot in common), which is ‘getting hammered’!

The drawings are vast but filled with a great detail and all executed in sepia ink and tempera on paper. At first glance they seem like historical illustrations or some old documents, but closer inspection reveals contemporary subject. In four huge drawings Dant explores the relationship between politics, history, environment and ‘the bottle’. From drunken orgies among royal family members to the total mayhem caused by weekend binge drinkers in the streets of East London. These themes mirror William Hogarth’s British drunken landscapes in his Beer Street and Gin Lane engravings, as well as the carousals of the middle class men in A Midnight Modern Conversation.

My favourite is the Redchurch Street series containing of eight medium-seized drawings, in which artist depicts booze fuelled romps that take place on the streets outside his studio in Shoreditch. It is truly the circus of insane out there! People dancing, fighting, being pushed on shopping trolleys, sleeping in piles of rubbish, having sex in random places with random people, urinating, vomiting, defecating… and dinking even more! Dant’s documentary take on the subject is very objective; the artist doesn’t try to moralise and leaves the final judgment to the viewer.

Looking at these images most of us would say: “yea, yea… been there, done that!”(only those who are unlucky to remember the happenings of ‘the night before’), but still it is quite funny, or maybe sometimes rather scary to see oneself from a different perspective. If you happen to wonder around East London with lots of time on your hands than Dant on Drink is an exhibition definitely worth a visit.