April News

Although the breadth of work produced at Great Western Studios is wide ranging and varied there does seem to be a seasonal bent to what is happening at any one time. Spring seems to be painting season.

Catherine Goodman has a show of new works opening at Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle Street. The exhibition runs from April 30th to May 24th.



David Ben White and Justin Hibbs' show, Working Space, at the University of the Arts Gallery on Davies Street W1 opened last month and is ongoing until April 18th.





David and Justin gave an artists talk on April 9th at the gallery which was the same evening as the opening of Yukako Shibata's show Luminescence at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation overlooking Regents Park. Yukako's work combines painting, sculpture, photography and installation with a vocabulary of minimal and recurring forms.



Katy Moran has had a major show at the esteemed gallery Andrea Rosen in New York. Katy's show has pricked up the ears of the New York press and also the blogosphere - alongside the press reviews below you can read what the public thought about it here and here. Katy's work in the group show at Tate Britain has just closed.









Five Great Western Artists are exhibiting together at the crypt of the Parish Church of St Pancras; titled Still Another Place the show features Simon Dawe, Julie Goldsmith, Rachel Schwalm, Paul Vanstone and Felicity Warbrick. The private view of the show takes place on May 1st and the exhibition continues every day until May 29th.



Estelle Thompson's work was in Tipping Point, an exhibition at Purdy Hicks Gallery that was previewed in a previous blog entry. The show was reviewed by Michael Stubbs in Turps Banana, which you can read below.



Winsor Gallery in Vancouver is hosting an exhibition of Emily Young's work. The show runs from May 1st to May 25th.



In Pieces is a group show that has just opened at 39 Myddleton Square, EC1 - the exhibition is dedicated to Christopher Landoni who was a good friend of ex Great Westerners Oliver Michaels and Toby Ziegler the exhibition continues until April 27th.



Lynn Parotti is having a group show in the Bahamas with her sister Holly Parotti. Called Limit the show is at Popopstudios in Nassau and runs until April 28th. Lynn is showing some of her new works based on the fragile eco-system of the salt manufacturing beds on Inagua, an island at the Southernmost reaches of the Bahamas.



The Great Western Studios outpost in Texas (sole membership held by Gabriela Trzebinski) is pleased to announce that . . . Gabriela Trzebinski has fully ensconced herself in the local art world. She has work in an exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery highlighting work made by artists in Houston, she is giving a talk at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and she's giving a talk at the Menil Collection as well.



Zakee Shariff's news is that she has prints (and t-shirts) for sale in Liberty Menswear and she has a newly launched clothing range available exclusively in Japan.

March News

For one fleeting moment, Los Angeles, seemed to be the centre of Great Western Studios life in February. A collision of unexpected coincidences. Sean Alexander had some work in the first show in LA to be put together by Adrian Palengat since Apart traded in life on Portobello (via life on Westbourne Grove) to life just off Venice Beach. If Sean was there then that explains why Alice Tait (soon to be Alexander) was there. Joining the private view for the show were Jo Ratcliffe, Felicity Warbrick and Lizzie Deshayes. The latter 2 being there courtesy of Lizzie's company, Fromental, installing some of their wallpaper.





Later in the month, ex-Great Westerner, Toby Ziegler had a solo show with Patrick Painter also in LA; and the city has also fairly recently been made the home of also-ex-Great Westerner, Sarah Stitt. For Sarah's take on Hollywood life you can read her excellent blog here.

It turns out that Sean's work in the exhibition has been attracting the attention of another ex-pat.



Still on foreign soils, the work of Fromental was featured in the April edition of Elle Decoration in the home of a Milan stylist.



Back in London it is David Ben White month. His work is featured in a 3 man show entitled Planetarium at APT Gallery in Deptford which runs until March 24th.



In collaboration with Justin Hibbs he has also co-curated another exhibition, Working Space, at the Arts Gallery at 65 Davies Street, W1. This group show of 5 artists, including David and Justin opens on Monday March 17th and runs until April 18th; it is open Monday - Friday from 9.30- 18.30 each day.



Mary Grant is heading (north)Westward again for the Art Ireland Fair, and will be exhibiting works that she did when she was last in Kerry.



The ever expanding slew of Art Fairs includes the Affordable Art Fair which is on this weekend (March 16/17) in Battersea Park. Foss Fine Art will be featuring Liza Campbell's dark, comic boxes on their stand.

Also taking place this weekend, but in sunnier climes, is the Transforming Spaces tour in the Bahamas; while I don't quite understand how it works, Lynn Parotti's work will feature somewhere along the way.



Last months Sound and Vision event at Abbey Rd Studios featured work by Kate Gibb and Tommy Penton and was reported in the Independent.



Meanwhile, the second, house and home collection by Toast, once again features Brickett Davda's work. Their classic, muted tableware found a place in April's edition of Country Living.



Lastly a request of assistance:

Westminster City Council is developing a new Strategy for Arts & Culture. A consultation draft can be found on the following page of the council's website.

We welcome your comments on the draft. There are consultation questions at the beginning of the document for you to respond to. The deadline for all responses is 20th March 2008. Please send comments to cfergusson@westminster.gov.uk with the words ‘Strategy Consultation’ in the subject heading.

February News

The London Art Fair came and went last month - Great Western Studios artists that I saw at the fair but missed off last months preview included Estelle Thompson at Purdy Hicks and Jan Coutts on Quantum Contemporary's stand.

Emily Young filled the role of featured artist of the fair with her monumental piece howl sited outside the venue and according to the Islington Gazette, the local chatterati are clamouring for the work to be permanently sited there.



The White Cube press department swung into full action last month to promote the show of Darren Almond's work at their Hoxton Square site. With the might of the gallery behind him the press was wide and far-reaching. Breathe deeply . . . there were articles in . . . Art Review, Time Out, the Independent, Vogue, Evening Standard and a very favourable review by Adrian Searle in the Guardian.













The concurrent show at Parasol Unit on Wharf Road is on until March 30th. Alongside the exhibitions there are no less than 3 catalogues/monologues on Darren hitting the bookshelves. Terminus is available from Amazon, and the other 2 are available from White Cube and Parasol respectively.

Jeremy Dickinson has an exhibition of New Paintings opening at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo. The show runs from March 8th until April 5th.



In lands not quite so far away Olivia Musgrave currently has a show with Jorgensen Art in Dublin. The show opened on February 12th and runs until March 1st.



Laura Green was triumphant in the Artsway Open exhibition coming away as the winner with the promise of a solo show there later this year. She has also been shortlisted for the Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize in Barcelona.



Brickett Davda's work is still the darling of the interior stylists - their bud range was first designed back in 1998 and still crops up in glossy magazines with amazing frequency.





The Untitled Gallery are once again featuring Faye Haskins' work in a show at the Adam Street Members Club, which lies just off Strand. Don't pick me up on this, I'm right, the road is Strand not the Strand - check out wikipedia if you don't believe me. Anyway . . . although the show featuring Faye's work is already up and in full swing the private view is on February 19th.

The private view for Rachel Schwalm's inaugural show at Beaux Arts on Cork Street took place at the end of January - textile/design wonderwoman Neisha Crosland bringing a dash of celebrity to the proceedings. Rachel's show is up until February 23rd and has an accompanying catalogue.



Sophie Smallhorn's work for the new offices of Body and Soul in Clerkenwell is featured (and bastardized for their graphic design inspiration) in this months onoffice magazine. A niche publication - but a niche that occasionally comes up trumps.



At the city out post of Jake Miller's East End Approach Gallery is a group painting show which includes a number of Neal Tait works.



Lastly, David Ben White is taking part in a 3 man show titled Planetarium at APT gallery in Deptford. The show opens on March 6th and runs until March 26th.

January News

The New Year news starts with a further look back at Open Studios - Sam Robinson, studio archivist extraordinaire, took the pictures below.















Not documented in quite the same way was the Great Western Studios carol sing-a-long held in December. It was quite a night - I don't suppose many other staff Christmas parties could boast being serenaded by Jonny Borrell, the bassist from the Libertines and Bronagh Gallagher from the Commitments - this isn't to say that they outshone the resident studio choral talent, which was both broad and largely unexpected.

The London Art Fair Opens later this week at the Business Design Centre in Islington. The show will include work by Rachel Schwalm on the Beaux Arts stand, Cristina Rodriguez on the Art Movement stand and David Worthington on the Crane Kalman stand.



Outside the fair will stand Howl, a new piece by Emily Young, who is represented inside the fair by the Fine Art Society.



Rachel Schwalm also has a solo show with Beaux Arts opening at the end of January in their Cork Street gallery. The show opens on January 30th and runs until February 23rd.

Darren Almond has two major solo shows opening on the same night this week. At Parasol Unit his show, Fire Under Snow, runs from January 18th through to March 30th. His show at White Cube, in Hoxton Square, is titled Moons of Iapetus Ocean, and runs from the same date until February 23rd.





A slew of reviews will no doubt follow and will appear here in the next newsletter - in the meantime, ahead of the pack, you can read about his White Cube show, courtesy of The Times, here, and a short entry from the Guardian Guide below.



A group show at Tate Britain, as part of the Art Now programme, will feature work by Katy Moran. Titled Art Now: Strange Solution the exhibition opens on February 1st and runs until April 13th.






Purdy Hicks Gallery has work by Estelle Thompson in their current group show, Tipping Point, alongside paintings by Estelle are works by Agnes Martin and Barry Thompson among others.



Giles Phelps and Chris Burridge, aka Slipmode, have been very busy boys. They have been working with Albion Brand Comnmunications on a multi-client project for 3, Skype and Hutchinson which featured on 600 still advertising sites across the country together with some animated sites as well.



They have also been working on a 20 minute documentary film about, local superstar photographer, Jürgen Teller for Specialten.



Faye Haskins has a solo show with the Untitled Gallery at the Adam Street Club which runs from February 4th until March 2nd.



Finally, Blue Curry, is in a group show (setups, situations, solutions) at Popopstudios in the Bahamas until February 10th . . . if you happen to be in the area.