Galleries - April 2014

statuesque. His own loved ones fill the frames, staring steadily out at the viewer. Gwen’s works are less commanding but more intriguing. Whereas Augustus’ are composed with thick colours and confident lines, his sister’s drawings and gouaches have abstracted shapes and visible strokes. Her subjects are frequently strangers and in the Browse & Darby selection, the faces are often turned away, giving both them and the works a marked evasiveness; these qualities make her more retiring in tone than her brother. Augustus and Gwen’s works read well against one another, and it is well worth a trip to the Cork Street gallery to confront his works full on and to puzzle out the implications in hers. Frances Allitt beforetheart@gmail.com Augustus John ‘Robin’ oil on panel,15 x 12¾ ins Gwen John ‘Pink Flowers in a Pink Vase’ oil and gouache on paper, 7 ¾ x 5 ¾ ins 42 GALLERIES APRIL 2014 KITH & KIN Gwen and Augustus John Currently at Browse & Darby , the works of Augustus John (1878- 1961) and his sister Gwen (1876-1939) provide delicate renderings of lives in the early 20th C. The exhibition, which runs until 10 April, shows images that the Welsh siblings sketched and painted in the 1910/20s. In Europe and America where the two worked, usually separately. These were years of total war, technological development and Modernism in literature and art. But the works of the Johns at the gallery are intimate vignettes – from cats to lovers, from public transport to poverty – that occupy stubbornly individual places in the history of art. Also, though alike in size and intimacy of subject, their works are distinct from one another. Augustus has a real taste for the important, and among his pieces there is hardly a nude that is not classicized nor a beauty that is not 15 / 16 ART Leeds to London Ian Kiaer: Tooth House ( Henry Moore Institute , Leeds) is not an exhibition but an insight into objects and the effects they express on the mindspace of the artist. Not for enjoyment unless you like mental gymnastics, but if you are prepared it will take you down a path where the artist sees magic and your philosophy of its interpretation will jostle your attention. Ian Kiaer told me there is no ‘key’ to the exhibition, but there is a book which I came to last and is a part of the project. If you are going to make the most of a visit without the benefit of the artist to talk to, buy the book, start from the front and stop before you get to the catalogue at the end so you see no images. Read Keisler’s tract and the discourse before it. Do this in the City Art Gallery cafe next door – it’s worth the visit. Go back to the Institute Gallery space and there you begin. I found a topologist, a modelling mathematician at work, exploring planes, angles and intersections, with objects impressed and imbued with images physical and implied, layered, folded and embellished with more layers, illuminated with studio surfaces and occupying the space with intersections and abstraction. Think beyond the planes, get out of the box . . . Irrevocably out of context Ian Kiaer’s work would be largely camouflaged by the everyday, but context is the firm link with Haim Steinbach at the Serpentine Gallery , London. The Serpentine presents a view of a lifetime’s progress through constructs in the context of their placement. ‘Once again the world is flat’ is not so much a retrospective but a perspective view of mathematical harmonic work from the 70’s, through the redeployment of vinyls used as a palette and post-historically re-assigned to the antique. Finally the whole event explores and gives us collections within collections, curated by an artist curating other curators, abstracting their own collections within this one collection. Found words and objects are re-contexualised and hum in this great setting . . . Paul Hooper Haim Steinbach, ‘ basics’ 1986, plastic laminated wood shelf, polyester, plastic and foam ‘Parabears’ in cotton camouflage uniforms, felt hats; vinyl and metal bear, 76.2cm x 134.6cm x 31.8cm, courtesy of the artist