Art
Mixed bag
John McEwen
The Tully Cobbold/Eastern Arts Exhibition (Camden Arts Centre till 28 August) is less depressing than competition art shows normally are. Fewer pictures have been chosen and all are of a reasonably small size. This has made for less dross and more visual relaxation. The only surprise is a small, green, wall piece by Richard Wentworth —a welcome and humorous change from his ethical, battleship greys — but quality is pro-, vicied with some work-outs by the likes of Hoyland, Flanagan and Buckley, the latter effortlessly carrying off a prize with a witty take-off of the style ol' one of the selector's. Howard Hodgkin. Tally Cobbold must be congratulated on avoiding a regional selection and thereby providing a worthy counterpart in the East to the John Moore's competition in the North. Let us hope it becomes a permanent fixture. Alongside In Gallery 2 an excellently presented and selected array of British teapots (also till 28 August) makes the Centre doubly worth a visit. All of them are illustrated in a NO called The British Teapot by Janet Street Porter, due for publication in the autumn bY Mathews, Miller, Dunbar. There is some
thing here for everyone, from eighteenthcentury Worcester to the latest funk.
The Whitechapel Open, open that is to all those living in Whitechapel or thereabouts (Whitechapel till 28 August), takes its civic responsibilities to heart and ends up accordingly the reverse of the ToIly show above: parochial, egalitarian, indeterminate. Nick Serota's intentions in mounting an annual open for the locals are worthy in the extreme, but sociological concern and painting do not mix. The sophistication and enterprise of the 'New Generation' shows were what brought crowds and repute to the Whitechapel, and although the pickings are not so rich today, surely something of the same can still be achieved if excellence is made the sold criterion.
Having said that, it must fervently be hoped that One Degree Over, a selection of Paintings and related work by fine art students who graduated this summer (AIR till 20 August), is not altogether representative of the present postgraduate output, though it would come as no surprise if it was. Here again we see students desperately trying to achieve overnight stardom simply by painting big. The freedom inherent in abstract expressionist art and its derivatives inevitably led to slack teaching and from there to no teaching at all. Talents have undoubtedly been lost through this corrupt interpretation of liberty. Punk art, heralded always by that well-known honey smell of Polystyrene, has been around for some time and is no less debased than punk rock, the only difference being that punk art is unsellable. The stuff on show at AIR is Slightly more sophisticated than that (punk is more evident at the Whitechapel Open), but the same sublime lack of objectivity (and education) abounds. It is very wrong in such circumstances to encourage false hopes in the way the Felicity Samuel Gallery has by exhibiting the work of four postor near post-graduates under the title New Art/New Artists (till 12 August). The work is superficially more sophisticated but no less blindly derivative than at AIR, and the Participants would be wise to take it all with a dose of salt.
Three exhibitions worth a visit close this week, 1959-1962 sculptures of crushed and welded steel by John Chamberlain (Mayor till 12 August) easily withstand the test of time as the sculptural equivalent of the best abstract expressionist painting. What a shame that his work has only once before been shown here. Photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher of pitheads in Europe and the US (Nigel Greenwood till 13 August), Plus their new book of photographs The Framework House of the Siegen Industrial n.egion (Schirmer-Mosel, £16), which further establish the Bechers as the most Poetic interpreters of industrial archaeology. And Maggi Hambling's paintings (Warehouse till 12 August,) not quite in the same league but jolly derivations in the style o. t Francis Bacon nevertheless, always striving for and sometimes achieving expressions of people at their most spontaneous.
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