Our pick of this week’s art events: 1 - 7 August
Our pick of this week’s art events: 1 - 7 August
RA Recommends
By Sam Phillips
Published 1 August 2014
From the beginnings of colour photography in Russia to the powerful and poetic portraits of artist Celia Paul.
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Primrose: Early Colour Photography
The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until 19 October 2014
The Photographers’ Gallery charts the course of colour photography in Russia from the 1860s to the late twentieth century, including on its walls early tinted images, photomontage works and 1960s street photography. As interesting as the genres and techniques are the subjects – from soldiers and Stalin’s funeral to post-war students – which collectively condense a history of the country.
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The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768–80
Queen’s House, London, opens 7 August 2014
You may have read about the campaign to save for the nation two paintings by George Stubbs RA of Australian animals: Portrait of a Large Dog (Dingo) and The Kongouro from New Holland (Kangaroo). Now they’ve been acquired by the National Maritime Museum, both works can be included in the new Queen’s House show – opening Thursday – about the art produced on 18th-century explorers’ far-flung voyages.
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Today's Specials
Pace, London, until 6 September 2014
Food glorious food is the subject of a group exhibition at Pace, the contemporary art gallery that resides in the RA’s Burlington Gardens building. From photographs by Roe Ethridge that draw influence from editorial and advertising images to Keith Coventry’s kebab machine in bronze, and Sarah Lucas’s photograph Chicken Knickers (1997), where poultry becomes pudendum, gastronomy and its paraphernalia is shown to be highly symbolic.
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Terry Frost
Zimmer Stewart Gallery, Arundel, until 25 August 2014
Next year sees the centenary of Terry Frost RA’s birth, and Tate St Ives has just announced a major show celebrating the Academician’s abstraction to coincide. If you can’t wait until 2015, visit Arundel’s Zimmer Stewart Gallery this month, which displays a wide range of his paintings and prints, including early figurative work, just after the Second World War, in which we see the artist already untethering himself from representation and starting to concentrate on the sublime conjunction of abstract shapes.
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Last chance: Rachael Champion and Celia Paul
Hales Gallery, until 2 August 2014 and Victoria Miro, Wharf Road, London, until 2 August 2014
Finally, two exhibitions to quickly flag up to you, before they finish this weekend. First, we recommend an immense installation by RA Schools alumna Rachael Champion, which, in the shape of industrial architecture, brings together the man-made material of pebbledash with small pools or organism-rich algae. And second, a show by the British painter Celia Paul, known for her powerful and poetic portraits. The exhibition at Victoria Miro’s Islington space also features small-scale, evocative landscape and cityscape works.
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Sam Phillips (@SamP_London) is Editor of RA Magazine.