As a teenager I was fascinated by the work of Richard Estes and others of the American Photo-realist movement of the late 1960s. My favourite artist of the movement - although he rejected the photorealist label was Robert Cottingham - with his his focus on the typography of American cinema facades and store-fronts. Richard Estes was another, creating iconic images of the photorealist movement based on the exterior reflections and gloss of American architecture. Estes's work is the latest to turn up in the surprising itinerary of Damian Hirst's Newport Street Gallery. Estes works speaks essentially of the American vernacular including imagery as iconic to that experience as Greyhound buses, diners, aluminium phone booths and the railway bridges supporting the transport infrastructure of the city. In this exhibition as the title - Voyages - suggests, Estes expands both his experience and visual vocabulary, travelling to a series of European destinations, inspired to capture in paint cities and landscapes on this side of the Atlantic. The strongest works here are the paintings in his signature style of various aspects of the city captured in the reflections of huge plate glass windows. The paintings appear to be all surface, with no underlying narrative or apparent meaning or significance apart from that imposed by the viewer or critic. Although one could argue for weight of meaning in the ambiguous dualities seen in the layering of reflected shopfront exteriors against their interior content, or the lives of the lonely looking individuals captured by Estes in his diners, or glimpsed through the windows of Greyhound buses. Walking through this exhibition I found that the paintings invited comparisons with other American (and European) artists. In the figures frozen in diners I saw comparisons with the existential loneliness of city life and the drudgery of the daily commute in those of Edward Hopper (here), and the produce laid out in a bakery store window with those luscious window-framed cakes of Wayne Thiebaud, and lastly in the view of Venice the Venetian cityscapes of Canaletto. It was the first time that I had seen Estes's landscape paintings, and I didn't think they were as successful as the cityscapes. They didn't have the huge sheets of glass to reflect back views, creating interest through the abstract refractions and repetitions of the imagery within the picture plane. The landscapes are interesting though in that they have made Estes' slightly adapt his painting style, adopting a slightly looser, perhaps more "painterly" style in his mark-making in certain artworks. Perhaps he could take this further and create more emotive landscapes like those of painter Harald Sohlberg (here), who adopted a more poetic approach in his landscapes. Estes, I guess though, has to remain true to his style. This photographic style does Estes a disservice at times with some paintings appearing so mundane at times that they resemble everyman's personal holiday snaps, or are reminiscent of pictures from brochures like those of the holiday company Saga, advertising cruise holidays. It is good however, that Estes has, albeit belatedly, at last scored his first major show in the UK.
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