Arts Events

THOWING SHAPES

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27 October 2010

By Michael Holland

Throwing Shapes is a two-site exhibition that highlights the core of what abstract painting is about.

At the Café Gallery site Vanessa Jackson (aided by Alasdair Duncan)has created a large-scale wall painting that initially excites and gets the pulse racing, but then has a calming effect as you walk around, taking it all in, thinking of the shades and shapes and wondering where the lines go that disappear behind slabs of colour.

Jane Barnes of CGP told me that it took two weeks to paint and that the masking tape for the straight edges was put on freehand.  A fact that stunned me when I saw, close-up, the precision of the lines.

More abstract for me is the fact that as the work has been put directly on to the gallery wall, it will eventually be painted over for the next show and become just a memory in people’s minds.

At Coleman Project Space, a selection of oils and acrylics by Duncan and Jackson, plus Clare Goodwin, further the abstract theme though with smaller scale works.

The most interesting piece for me was Birds, a looped film by Kilian Rüthemann, in the Shed Space.  At first I thought it was merely a film of birds flying across a clear sky with various shapes super-imposed on the screen, but then you see the birds pick up the shapes, alter them and place them elsewhere. I became mesmerised both by the stillness and quiet of the work and by the magical movement.

I’m not sure how long I watched it for but did not recall any realisation of the film starting again, as it flows from start to finish to start again.

Cafe Gallery, centre of Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA
020 7237 1230 ~ www.cafegalleryprojects.org
Coleman Project Space, 94 Webster Road, London SE16 4DF.
020 7237 9120 ~ www.colemanprojects.org.uk Until 7 November 2010. Thursday – Sunday from 12 – 5pm.

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