Gallery Vela is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new works by London-based artist, Kate Hawkins. This will be the most comprehensive exhibition of new work to date.

Where?

Gallery Vela

38 Langham Street

London, Greater London

W1W 7AR

When?

Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 6 pm

How much?

Admission is free.

Moustaches are performative. As well as being plays on sincerity they are just plays. A moustache, unlike a beard, performs its presence – it can only come into being by consciously cutting away everything around it. And through acting itself out, it tends to reveal more than it hides. Sometimes a moustache is so parodic and consciously curated, a spectator can forget he or she is witnessing a staged fiction at all. The moment of disorientation between fake and sincere is where the parody becomes the reality. And the ridiculed, the strong. The moustache becomes honest, not a cover-up: it becomes accountable for itself. Accountability, like moustache maintenance, is a fragile thing. There is a fine balance between too much and too little – physically a moustache needs distinctive parameters to be a moustache at all. It is a balance of nerve and skill. Like painting.

Hawkins’ paintings, like moustaches, play with ideas of transparency in their realisation and display strategies. By making the spectator aware of the mechanics of producing and hanging a painting she considers modes of active and passive spectatorship in relation to performance and theatre. Hawkins is intrigued by social rituals as cultural stereotypes and ways in which society increasingly performs its own display. The King Of Hearts Has No Moustache explores these notions through the simultaneous exposure (the making visible of installation techniques) and disguise (the drawing of moustaches) of the paintings on show.

Kate Hawkins lives and works in London. She is currently researching a practice-based PhD at Winchester School of Art. Recent two person and group shows and performances include My Brother is a Hairy Man, George Polke, London, Object Subjects, Silverman, San Francisco, Let’s Be Civil, AND/OR, London, Psychedelica, The ICA, The Pelvic Flaw and IMaterialI, Physical Center, Guest Projects, London

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Where?

Hay Hill Gallery, 5a Cork Street, London W1S 3NY

When?

06.02.2012 – 03.03.2012

How Much?

Admission is free

Represented by Hay Hill Gallery since 2002 and exhibited annually until 2010, Plutenko’s latest exhibition is entitled ‘Evolution’ and as the name would suggest, reflects his personal evolution as an artist.

The majority of the collection centers on paintings from Plutenko’s early career in the 1990’s. However, the inclusion of a selection of his recent works, which date from 2009 to 2010, enables Plutenko to map his personal progression as an artist. Plutenko’s work may appear to emerge from a mix of the surreal and the real, while reflecting old West Indian paintings along with the work of artists such as Salvador Dali, yet his overriding aim is to take the unusual and to make it more so.

Stanislav Plutenko produces vigorous, illustrative works that play on colour contrasts. His original method of painting employs a mixed palette of oil, tempera, acrylic, watercolour, airbrushing and glazing. Plutenko injects his paintings with a sense of sarcasm that is based on reality. While often presented through elements of the grotesque, each painting holds a symbolical underlying theme. Built around a variety of genres the effect of Plutenko’s painting is to reflect representations of the ironic, the sarcastic and the bizarre. A variety of feelings are stimulated in the spectator as each painting is imbued with a small history of life that is replayed through a variety of genre scenes.

Stanislav Plutenko was born in Moscow in 1961. He studied at the Moscow University of National Economy, while taking lessons in painting from private masters. Plutenko created his first works in 1984 and from 1985 to 1990 worked in commercial advertising. In 1991 he joined UNESCO’s guild of graphic artists and was rewarded with the Grand Prix of the ‘Golden Brush’ exhibition in 1997.

In 2007 Plutenko received a rank at the International Academy of Creative Endeavors. The following year he was awarded with an order of ‘Peter The Great’ for his work towards the development of Russian Culture and Arts. In 2009 Plutenko received a Gold Medal named after N. Sats for his ‘outstanding creative achievements in art development.’ Plutenko’s work has been exhibited internationally in Stockholm, Helsinki, USA, Germany and London along with his native Moscow.

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Where?

Hay Hill Gallery, 5a Cork Street, W1S 3NY

When?

6th February – 3rd March 2012

How Much?

Admission is free to the general public.

A collection of literary eponyms, the idea of an allegorical connection between the name and the painting is merely suggestive. As Galileo Galilei once wrote, “Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.! Yavorsky!s latest paintings encourage us to reassess our premeditated assumptions that there is a connection between the name of the subject and the subject itself. In the case of ‘Ganymede’, in Greek mythology the Trojan prince of the same name was abducted by a bird, but as with the Galilean moon, any connections between the name and the subject are purely coincidental. All conjecture regarding the inner meaning of the painting is in the eye of the beholder.

Sveta Yavorsky is a figurative artist who works in the contemporary British trend. Her work rejects academic figurative representation and embraces the semi-abstract method of composition that Malevich termed the “additional element! of painting. Yavorsky scatters particles of local colour with well-defined contours to form purely abstract clusters of elements. These bursts of colour collect into patterned layers and are combined until their superposition is balanced on entirely abstract terms. The human tendency to seek patterns in random data and find figurative fulfilment is subtly emphasised by the artist. However, Yavorsky diverts this process as her paintings reach a closure before the figurative is able to become literal. Yavorsky offers us abstract patterns of colour that merely resemble a spectral figure and so her paintings remain vibrant in a way only found in an abstract composition. She combines and contrasts the spectral allegorical figures with images of animals blended into the background by their realistically rendered camouflage. Through this process Yavorsky achieves a collection of paintings that are a complex and contemporary mixture of the figurative and the abstract.

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Where?

5a Cork Street, London, W1S 3NY

When?

6th February – 3rd March 2012

How Much?

This exhibition is free and open to all members of the general public.

The show focuses on a series of paintings developed from drawings of the coastal landscape of County Mayo Ireland, made during a residency in Spring 2011. This visually compelling series of work plays with colour and process to engage the audience with an unfamiliar space. The large-scale oils communicate a sense of awe whilst celebrating an enjoyment of the visual world.

Zoe Benbow has worked extensively with landscapes, mapping and exploring her surroundings and questioning how we see the world and our relationship to it. Her latest series of paintings take reference from the European landscape genre. Their aim is to subvert our traditional perspective by placing this genre in the context of our current environmental climate. Benbow encourages the observer to examine the established perceptions of our place in the world, shifting and unravelling our position as a detached observer. Benbow’s work adheres to the notion that human activities do not only affect the surrounding landscape but are part of it. This echoes the words of Marcus Chown who observes that we are made of the ‘same stuff as the stars’. Zoe Benbow’s paintings aim to challenge our sense of separateness from our surrounding environment.

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Lahd Gallery is proud to announce the premiere of Khaled Akil: The Unmentioned, its latest exhibition exploring the social, political, sexual and religious issues facing Syria.

Where?

Lahd Gallery

92 Heath Street

London NW3 1DP

When?

7th January 2012 to 7th March 2012

Tuesday-Friday 10.00 to 18.00

Saturday 10.00 to 16.00

How much?

Free Admission

Running for eight weeks from 12^th January 2012, Khaled Akil: The Unmentioned is an exciting collection of the Syrian artist’s unique hybrid of photography and paint techniques. The final product is a digital image made up of layers of ancient religious Arabic scripts and symbols combined with photography depicting Akil’s take on the challenges in Middle Eastern society currently.

Khaled Akil is a self-taught artist who is exhibiting in the UK for the first time. He uses social, political, sexual, and most prominently, religious issues as subject matter for his works. His perspectives are influenced by his passion for politics and human rights underlined by his academic studies.

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Where?

5a Cork Street, London, W1S 3NY

When?

24th November – 23rd December 2011

How Much?

This exhibition is free and open to all members of the general public

The show features over 50 painted, graphic and sculptural works including images of warriors and beauties, old men and children, horses, birds and various depictions of genre scenes.  Zorikto has emerged as one of Russia’s most acclaimed young artists, with his work exhibited in 2008 at the Council of Europe and the Beijing Olympics, and his recent series Steppe Story shown for two months at St Petersburg’s Russian Museum in 2009. Along with precise draughtsmanship and vivid colour, Zorikto displays subtle humour and a gift for caricature.

Zorikto’s work is associated with the folk and Buddhist traditions of the Buryat people. Symbols of human existence, the tradition of birth to death all feature as a key philosophy behind his work. His paintings display graphic silhouettes textured with “jewel-like” or “hand-made” precision to create an almost theatrical effect. His success lies in his ability to think over the specifics of life on the steppe (a vast semiarid grass-covered plain) capturing its spatial codes and coordinates, including the organization of daily activity within an extreme environment where temperatures vary from +40C to -40C. Zorikto’s works are pervaded by a relentless sense of humour yet compassionate to the life and suffering of the Buryat. He is equally at home portraying sensuous females – his iconic Mona Lisa Khatun has been dubbed the “Madonna of the Steppes” – or warriors on horseback, evoking Buryats’ Mongol ancestors.

“For me a nomad is a thinker”, says Dorzhiev, ”not some kind of tourist in search of new sensations and a better life. He is an artist, a poet, a philosopher; after all, it’s easier to contemplate in solitude… sooner or later steppe will allow him to meet another nomad.”

Born in 1976 in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia a republic of the Russian Federation on the border of Mongolia. In 2002 Zorikto Dorzhiev graduated “magna cum laude” from the Institute of Fine Arts in Krasnoyarsk (Western Siberia). He has worked as a set-designer for Sergei Bodrov’s blockbuster movie Mongol, and illustrated Isay Kalashnikov’s The cruel Age; he also designs traditional-style Buryat head-dresses.

Well known in Russia where his solo exhibitions have been held in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg as well as the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, Tibet House, New York, private collections (José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission, Guy Laliberté, Cirque du Soleil and so on).            He also has a growing international reputation in London, Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg and in Taipei as well as Beijing. The artist is represented in the UK and around the world by the celebrated Moscow Khankhalaev Gallery since 2005.

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Where?

6 Thomas More Square, St.Katharine Dock, London, E1

When?

Open all day, 29th October 2011 – 29th April 2012

How Much?

Access to the Installation if free

Hay Hill Gallery has the pleasure to present 6 Thomas Moore Square, situated by St Katherine’s Dock, with an exquisite mosaic sculpture by international artist Marialuisa Tadei. The octopus is the first instalment of art works to be placed on one of Land Securities prestigious London estates.

‘Octopus’, featured in Art London this year, has received high recognition by Art critics.  Created in 2011, the Octopus spans over 5 metres by 5 metres and reaches 156 cm in height. It is made entirely of hand-cut mosaic glass on a concrete and stainless steel frame, as is Tadei’s signature style.

Marialuisa Tadei has an impressive career and is fast becoming a heavy weight in the art world, having already participated in the Venice Biennale this year and in also in 2009. Tadei has also exhibited along side artists such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Marc Quinn to name a few.

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Marketplace by TW Quinn. oil on panel. 22 x 16 inches

A solo exhibition held in celebration of the artist’s 93rd birthday.

WHERE -
Petleys, 9 Cork Street, W1S 3LL

WHEN - 
November 16 – December 03

FREE ADMISSION

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Where?

The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London
WC2N 5DN

When?

9 November 2011 – 5 February 2012

How Much?

With timed ticket entry where you must enter the exhibition at the Sainsbury Wing during the half hour time slot on their ticket and completing the final part of the exhibition in the Sunley Room which must be visited last. It looks as though the NG is planning on quite the crowd when it comes to the latest exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci.  Bringing together the largest ever number of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings, it will include international loans never before seen in the UK.

While numerous exhibitions have looked at Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor, scientist or draughtsman, this is the first exhibition to be dedicated to his aims and ambitions as a painter. ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’ will display more than 60 paintings and drawings by the great artist, as well as pictures by some of his closest collaborators. Nearly every surviving picture that he painted in Milan during this period will be exhibited. These include the ‘Portrait of a Musician’ (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan), the ‘Saint Jerome’ (Vatican, Rome), ‘The Lady with an Ermine’ (Czartoryski Foundation, Cracow), the ‘Belle Ferronnière’ (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and the National Gallery’s own recently restored Virgin of the Rocks.

The portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, painted in 1488–90 has been acclaimed as the first truly modern portrait. The sitter’s twisting pose and nuanced expression convey her inner life, mind, soul – and what we would now call psychology. Cecilia was renowned for her beauty, wit, scholarship, and poetry. Still in her teens in 1489 when she became Ludovico’s mistress, the painting of her portrait allowed Leonardo to demonstrate how a painter could capture a beauty that time would destroy. He portrayed Cecilia holding a white ermine, an enigmatic feature that has multiple meanings. It may be a visual pun on her surname since the Greek for ermine or weasel is ‘galay’. It could also stand for her lover, Ludovico Sforza, since he had been awarded the order of the ermine by the King of Naples and was known as ‘l’Ermellino’ as a result. The ermine was also written about by Leonardo as a traditional symbol of purity and honour.

More than 50 drawings relating to the paintings will be exhibited for the first time. Highlights include 33 sketches and studies from the Royal Collection. The many Leonardo drawings owned by Her Majesty the Queen were probably purchased during the reign of Charles II but were rediscovered by chance only in 1778, when writer, Charles Rogers wrote: ‘Mr Dalton fortunately discovered the album of drawings at the bottom of a chest at the beginning of the reign of his present Majesty [George III]’. UK collections are rich in drawings by Leonardo – and other graphic masterpieces will be lent by the British Museum, the Courtauld Gallery, the Fitzwillam and Ashmolean Museums and the National Galleries of Scotland. From further afield come drawings from Paris, Florence, Venice and New York. The exhibition will include all the surviving drawings which are connected to the ‘Last Supper’ and the ‘Madonna Litta’, which will be lent by the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

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Crocodiles Suspended, Nicola Bealing

Nicola Bealing’s long-awaited exhibition is irresistibly high-spirited. Bursting with colour, wit and unbridled painterly-expression – from flamingos and fish to floating floral heads – her paintings provide the perfect antidote to the gloom of a wintry recession.

When:
9 November – 11 December

Where:
Cadogan Contemporary
87 Old Brompton Road
SW7 3LD

Admission:
Free

Nicola Bealing’s new beguiling series of work confirm that her stellar reputation can only grow stronger.

As one of Cadogan Contemporary’s most exciting artists for over 20 years, we are very much looking forward to Nicola’s upcoming exhibition.

The paintings chuckle with the wild ideas of a creative character, filled with narrative of a dark, satirical world.

Never one to shy away from serious subject matter she confronts it with mirth, pushing the boundaries of reality into fantasy. Sometimes tongue in cheek, sometimes more subtle, Nicola Bealing clearly had great fun creating this series of captivating paintings.

The artist’s love and fascination with colour is evident in this exhibition, full of the bright, bold and vivid. Her painterly ability cannot go unnoticed; lines and points of detail sit in harmony with the chaos and movement of their entirety. The works capture a broad audience, described by Laura Gasgoine as, ‘spontaneous eruptions of painterly high spirits’.

This exhibition will ignite a curious twinkle in your eye.

C A D O G A N
C O N T E M P O R A R Y
87 Old Brompton Road
London SW7 3LD
0207 581 5451

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