The show’s title comes from the late  abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell, who said

Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.

The earliest work was made in 1918 by Liubov Popova, a commanding figure in early Abstract Expressions. She was born in 1889 in Russia, showed with Malevich at the age of 26 and died of scarlet fever in 1924, aged 35. I want, I want, I want.

the latest work in the show was made this year …

by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão (b. 1964).  Azulejão (Moon) is one of Varejão’s celebrated ‘cracked tile’ works reference the history of Portuguese Azulejo tile work and the disturbing legacy of Brazil’s colonial past.

Every decade gets represented in Surface Work, which takes place across Victoria Miro’s two London galleries.  While bluechip names like Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin are all here – mainly at Miro’s Mayfair gallery – plenty of lesser-known talents, both old and young, get wall space.

Take African-American activist and artist Betty Blayton (1937-2016) who championed the arts in Harlem and was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem (which is currently getting a massive new David Adjaye-designed headquarters).

Alma Thomas’s (1892-1978) untitled painting below was painted in 1971 and inspired by the Apollo moon landings. Thomas was the first African-American woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1972.

I love reading the snippets about these artists almost as much as looking at their work.  British abstract artist Sandra Blow (1925-2006) used  things like tea, sawdust and sackcloth in her work. American Howardena Pindell (b. 1943) opted for  glitter, talcum powder and perfume. Japanese-Brazilian Tomie Ohtake  (1913-2015) painted while blindfolded. Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo  (1929-1989) is best known for her painting The Rose, a one-tonne, ten foot tall painting made up of layers and layers of oil paint applied to canvas. It was so heavy that it had to be removed from her apartment by a forklift truck.

Fast forward to now, American superstar Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) transforms chickenwire and glitter into something floating, lovely and slightly puzzling.

Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road space shows the younger, more affordable artists. Run don’t walk to Hoxton as this show closes May 19th and not all of the glorious works are sold, like this exuberant work from relentlessly inventive British painter Fiona Rae (b. 1963)…

Rae is a Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools, one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768. Of this work, she says:

I’m inventing characters…  who exist only as abstract paint marks, but who might be wearing crowns, clouds, arrows, dresses, shoes, hats, feathers, stars… I think of these paintings as having a relationship to the way one presents oneself to the world; the way one might use costume and props as bits of language to hang off the body.’

Hungarian-American Rita Ackermann (b. 1968) painted this. I love the whirlpools of pink and red.

As Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) once said,

‘A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.

 May, 2018

This article also appeared in The Women’s Room Blog and Almost Essential London

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For Faith in Shopping by Grayson Perry,

City Gent by David Harrison

and Study for Eternal Movement by Idris Khan

Sale proceeds will go to support Little Sparta, the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay.

Not a shopper? Culture and entertainment more your gig? Then read this in-depth article in Indagare about what’s hot in London now. Some highlights:

A million lights will twinkle along a new mile-long path at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew,

Winnie the Pooh will go

Bump, bump, bump

down the stairs and over to the Victoria & Albert Museum

and an Instagram-friendly, crazy, light installation by artist Alan Kane will take over the front entrance of Tate Britain Lights, Christmas, Action gets switched on at Tate next Saturday (Dec. 2). Happy Ho, Ho, Ho-ing!

November, 2017

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I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I experienced Pope-Lock, I checked out Dia Beacon, a fantastic museum 52 miles north of Manhattan in Duchess County. Perched above the Hudson river in a former  Nabisco box printing factory, Dia is as pretty on the outside as it is stunning on the inside.

The sprawling, light-filled museum – where rooms exhibit the works of one great artist at a time – can be peaceful and meditative or a great place for kids to run free. Joseph Beuys, Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin are just a smattering of the Dia artists exhibited. Here I’m looking rather petite next to Ken and Richard Serra’s Torqued.

This room is dedicated to John Chamberlain.

And this one to Michael Heizer’s “North, East, South, West”.

Get an art twofer and visit Storm King, a 500 acre sculpture park 14 miles south west of Beacon. Go see works by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Andy Goldsworthy and more this autumn. Candy pink sculpture below by artist Lynda Benglis.

Somehow we missed Storm King and ended up in a  cafe dedicated to  Doctor Who fans instead. Who knew?

Back in Manhattan, I sidestepped the gridlock and went underground, taking the N  train from Columbus Circle down to 14th Street. A one-way ticket costs about $3 with trains appearing every five minutes. Goodbye gridlock! From there I  walked to David Zwirner‘s gallery on 19th street  to see the vast and  varied  Wolfgang Tillmans’ show.

The German artist uses state-of-the-art tools showing images previously impossible to capture, like what a wave looks like snapped at 1/4000 of a second. The depth of detail possible in digital photography boggles and fascinates. However, I still prefer Tillmans’ quiet still lifes. Filament is one of my favourites.

Zwirner assistant Cristina Vere Nicoll is co-curating a group show with Tatiana Cheneviere that opens tonight (Oct 2) in Chinatown. If you’re feeling  spry and curious, head on down to 177 Canal Street. Cristina is pictured below with recent RISD graduates and co-founders of MX Gallery, Adrien, Tom Mc Farlin and Shelby Garrison Jackson.

Need an art break? Check out this view from CX’s roof terrace. Tonight.

October, 2015

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I promise Vasconcelos, a cross between Jeff Koons and Louise Bourgeois, does not do boring. This is the woman behind ‘The Bride’, the 2005 Venice Biennale 20′ high chandelier made  from over 25,000 tampons. Johnson & Johnson love her.

She’s the third artist (and the youngest and only female) after Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami to be given free reign at Versailles. Vasconcelos wanted to put that  infamous chandelier in Marie-Antoinette’s room but the top chiens at Versailles rejected the idea.

At least she was able to get the pink feathered helicopter approved for landing in one of the state rooms. Her 2012 Versailles show became the most visited show in France in fifty years.

So if you happen to be in London in August (I know, fat chance of that) and sent your hang glider to the dry cleaners, may I suggest you drop into Phillips on Berkeley Square and check out her exuberant show, ‘Material World’.

Vasconcelos typically takes everyday objects or materials with a feminist theme (lace, crochet, ceramics, and of course, tampons) and creates something beautiful and surprising out of them. She takes masculine subjects and feminises them, removes the sting. She blends visual delight with the conceptual.

Quite a pretty urinal, if I do say so.

Vasconcelos’s London-based agent Michael Hue Williams is pictured here with his daughter Lucca in front of the Valkyrie, ‘Material Girl’.

 She’s the real deal. If we don’t mess up she’s going the whole way. Like Jeff Koons. She’s going to be a superstar, says Hue-Williams.

She combines craft quite unashamedly, brazenly in high art. Materials are her paint.” 

Interesting fact: Vasconcelos started out as a karate expert. At one point she ran a karate-groomed, female posse of nightclub bouncers in Lisbon.

Today she has 55 people working flat out, alongside her, in her vast Lisbon studio, getting ready for upcoming shows in Korea, Rio and Rome (latter  is a group show in May with Koons and other art heavy weights).

I want to see her go to America. We have had phenomenal success all over for her, but not yet in America’, says Hue-Williams.

Julia and like-minded readers, I sincerely hope this blog didn’t put you to…

July, 2015 

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We three adventurers met at Paddington Station at the civilised hour of 11am, caught the express train to Castle Cary arriving by 12:30. The views from the train are lovely although we spent most of our time chatting and disturbing our neighbours. Never again will I book the ‘quiet car’ with Deezip in tow.

At Castle Cary we were met by the friendliest of  taxi drivers, David Guy, and whisked off to Hauser & Wirth. Castle Cary is a sleepy, rural station so I recommend booking David in advance (tel 01963 351 015). Swiss global art dealers  Iwan and Manuela Wirth have created quite the cool, arty hangout in the middle of gorgeous Somerset near where they live. Already more than 100,000 people have flocked here since it opened last July.

First things first- we needed the loo. How many loos inspire selfies? That’s how hip this place is!

Then we went outside and enjoyed Dan Graham’s S-Curve, a steel and two-way mirror that did wonders for our figures.

Enough looking at our reflections, the time had come to look beyond ourselves at non-reflective walls. I confess that I have many envies: I wish I could cook, paint my own fingernails, touch-type. The list is long. It just got longer – I want a barn. Correction. I want this barn.

I also wouldn’t mind owning one of Chinese artist Zhang Enli’s ‘Four Seasons’ with its vibrant images of water, leaves and trees. Nature comes inside.

A closeup:

We then strolled through the 1.5 acre Oudolf Field designed by Dutch gardener Piet Oudolf. He has designed both the Highline and the new Whitney Museum’s gardens in NYC amongst other high-profile projects. Perched at the top of Oudolf Field is Chilean artist Smiljan Radic’s white fibreglass pavilion.The Radic Pavilion was first unveiled as the Serpentine Gallery’s 2014 Pavilion.

Here’s a view from my favourite folly.

All this looking at ourselves and beyond can work up an appetite. So to the Roth Bar & Grill we went. It was designed by Bjorn and Oddur Roth, son and grandson of German artist Dieter Roth.

We met up with two creative, bohemian friends who have places nearby and told us what to order – buffalo mozzarella to die for, hamburgers delish, garden salad from the garden, sea bream brilliant and the Bloody Mary’s bloody good. In fact, they said, everything on the menu is good.

After lunch we had a quick espresso At the Chapel, another hip spot in nearby Bruton. Who did we spot there but stunning blonde Burberry model and actress (Endless Love) Gabriella Wilde with her heavily tattooed musician boyfriend Alan Pownall and baby son Sasha Blue. Sorry no pics – we’re too cool for that.

Reality and David the cab driver were calling. Time to head back to London. We almost missed our train when Deezip got distracted in the just-opened,  chic antique shop next to the train station – The Factory.

Oh Somerset, take me back

April, 2015

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