Irapuru

Atta Kwami - Untitled 6, c.1999 (detail)

 

Back to the Goodman Gallery so soon after my last visit last month (here), to see another group show entitled Irapuru, the title of which is taken from Laura Lima's large textile work which is the first to greet visitors in the show. The textile piece is named after a district in the Brazilian city of São Paulo which has endured much upheaval under the rule of the military dictatorship of the Fifth Brazilian Republic. Irapuru is apparently also the name of a tiny indigenous Amazonian bird known as the 'Musician Wren' famous for the complex harmonies used in its wide range of songs and is celebrated in poetry, music and song. Lima's amazing textile piece would certainly provide the ideal home for such a bird with its complex (eco)systems of weaving, plaits and knots. I was greatly impressed by the coloured threads chosen and the techniques involved in its intricate construction. It is a cascade of gorgeous layered textures. Texture appears to be an unconscious thread which runs throughout and unites the works in this show irrespective of which media they have been executed in. The accompanying gallery blurb states that "the dual sense of something artistically adept, surprisingly beautiful, and aesthetically accomplished emerging from a place of upheaval and economic scarcity runs throughout the exhibition". Most of the artists are well established however, so economics aren't really a factor in the production of their work. A common geography in the African continent and the exquisite textures contained within the surfaces of the artworks are the elements that bind here. There are the wonderful geometric abstractions of Atta Kwami (1956-2021) featuring soft, painterly brushstrokes drawing their inspiration from his native Ghanaian environment and textiles. You can certainly hear the rhythms of Accra in Atta's painting in the upper gallery, it's an African Broadway Boogie Woogie. Further looser, more 'painterly' textures are to be found in the abstracts of Misheck Masamvu and Clive van den Berg, and even the photography of David Goldblatt and Carrie Mae Weems. There are yet more textures in the striking William Kentridge sculpture Stroke, a spiky black cat caught mid-stretch, arching its jagged back and barbed tail. El Anatsui previously here and here), is represented with another of his large, sublime, metal bottle-top cloths. The example here is a cool aqua green which looks as though it is being consumed by fire from within by contrasting fiery orange and red metal strips. Kapwani Kiwanga's cool, abstract sculpture Shifting Sands is another piece employing different textures smooth transparent coloured glass wedges against grainy sand all encased within an architectural glass column. It all makes for an interesting but harmonious mix of artworks whose practitioners hail mainly from across the African continent.

Laura Lima - Irapuru, 2023

Yinka Shonibare - Hybrid Masks

Yinka Shonibare - Hybrid Mask (Giwoyo), 2023

Yinka Shonibare - Hybrid Mask (Muyombo), 2023

Atta Kwami - Untitled 6, c.1999

El Anatsui - Untitled, 2024

Clive van den Berg - Aquifer (Flow), 2023

Kapwani Kiwanga - Shifting Sands (greens), 2023

David Goldblatt - Sarie Fink doing her hair; she lived with her aunt, who farmed here at Klein Rivier, Buffelsdrift, between Oudtshoorn and Uniondale, Western Cape. 23 November 2004 (4_9528), 2004

William Kentridge - Stroke, 2022

William Kentridge - The World is Leaking, 2023

Misheck Masamvu - Fading Shadows, 2023

David Goldblatt

William Kentridge

William Kentridge

Atta Kwami 

Atta Kwami 

Yinka Shonibare

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

Irapuru

until 21st September

Goodman Gallery

26 Cork Street

London

W1S

Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall

"I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely." - Henry Moore.

Quite literally a little gem of an exhibition this, at the Courtauld Gallery. Its focus is on Henry Moore's Shelter Drawings from the Blitz period of 1940-1941, when the German Air Force bombarded the capital and Londoners sought refuge in Underground stations. The drawings appear to fall into two categories. Those attempting to describe the spaces of the underground, and those reportage-like, trying to depict a sense of the cost of the Blitz on those Londoners who weren't evacuated. Of the former, the thing that struck me immediately about these drawings was the sense of the theatrical. Many looked like ballet/theatre sets or studies for dioramas in which the figures are sculptural, static pawns awaiting their directions. Sculptor's drawings are always interesting in that they appear to be very solid, or convincingly portray a sense of volume in their subject. This exhibition examines Moore's depictions of walls as sculptural structures. Moore chooses to depict the space and the architecture of the tunnels as both hemming in and yet providing safety for those figures seeking refuge. The flat planes of the walls propping up weary figures and the circles and curved wall structures of the Underground tunnels leading off into voids of blackness are convincingly depicted. Being essentially a figurative sculptor Moore persuasively evokes the pathos of his figures plights through gesture, posture and grouping. The skilful use of line and colour also add to the sense of atmosphere and suffering described by the artist. The title of the exhibition Shadow on the Wall is taken from an Edward Sackville West play based on the return of Odysseus, Moore illustrated the published edition. Included in the exhibition is also a small model of a wall relief commission that the artist completed for a Dutch brick factory which he was required to complete in the brick medium, and a small maquette of a seated figure in front of a wall to emphasise the artist's interest in walled structures as foils to his sculpted figures. It is a good little exhibition, and another chance to see some great examples of an artists' preparatory and observational drawing so soon after those which featured in the recent Euan Uglow retrospective (here).

Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall

until 22nd September

Somerset House

Strand

London

WC2R