Saatchi Gallery study visit is a hit

Only about half of the 15 students who visited the Paper exhibition had been to the Saatchi Gallery before. Many, including several who had travelled from outside London and were attending OCA study visits for the first time, expressed their immediate and positive response to the 12 airy, light-filled galleries and to the friendly welcome that we received from staff. Even the weather seemed to be on our side. Hence we were able to avoid the un-mortgage-able coffees on the King’s Road and to enjoy a picnic lunch in the warm sunshine outside the converted barracks.

After an introductory talk by one of the gallery’s education team, we divided into groups of three in order to choose our favourite works and to present them to the others. Given that there were 45 artists in the show, there was a huge variety to choose from. For example, one group became intrigued by Annie Kevans’ seemingly innocent portraits of young children, which on closer inspection turned out to be images of dictators. In particular, they discussed how the curator’s placing of them next to the elaborate paper bouquets by Jodie Carey gave the latter a faded, funerary air as if the two artists’ works were part of a joint installation in a mortuary.

Another group was interested in those artists who used the three-dimensional qualities of paper pulp to question the structural and surface values of traditional sculpture. Among them was Rebecca Turner whose Dumbstruck comprised a large paper ball attached to the wall about three feet from the ground. Its apparent defiance of gravity belied the actual lightness of its materials while seeming to refer to the gravitational ideas of artists such as Richard Serra. Similarly, her fellow UK artist, Rachel Adams’ waxed paper figures imitated the rhetorical values and precious surfaces of bronze sculpture. What was refreshing about both was that there was little sense of irony or pastiche about the works. The fact that they were using imitations of other materials did not detract from the seriousness of the artists’ intentions or imply that they were poking fun at earlier artists.  Hence one student’s comparison of Rachel Adams’ Posturing to Canova’s Three Graces seemed entirely apposite.

In contrast to this, Nina Kachadourian’s Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style represented a deliberate take-off of an Old Master painting. However, it had a rigour and succinctness that was derived from its being composed entirely from materials found on a long-distance flight. What the artist had done was to lock herself in the lavatory, adorn herself with a neck cushion as a headdress and a lavatory seat cover as a lace collar and then photograph herself on a mobile phone. The result was as evocative of performance art and of seventies’ concerns with image and identity as it was of post modernist pastiche.
Equally impressive were Dawn Clements’ enormous pen and ink drawing of scenes from a 1950’s film.Like many others in the show, the artist appeared interested in using traditional materials to transcribe work in other media. The most disquieting of such works were Eric Manigaud’s huge drawings of archival photographs of physically and mentally ill Jewish patients being manhandled by their Nazi attendants. As elsewhere in his transcriptions of aerial photographs taken by Allied bomber pilots, the artist retained the matter-of-fact quality of the photographs as a telling contrast to the disturbing nature of their content.
After the delights of the Paper exhibition, New Order: British Art Today on the top floor turned out to be more of a mixed bag. The group enjoyed Sara Barker’s linear sculpture, which they compared to drawings in space, and works by Rafal Zawistowski but seemed less impressed by others.
Images, in order of appearance:
Nina Katchadourain Lavatory Self Portrait
The OCA student group
Rachel Adams Sculpture
Eric Manigaud Portrait
Rafal Zawistowski Portraits