A selection of 10 exhibitions taking place in the UK in March 2017, including two fascinating exhibitions on ancient and contemporary drawing, and two on pop artists.
1) Creating the Countryside 1600–2017
Having once boasted extensive formal gardens, Compton Verney House now stands in the centre of a ideal landscape designed by Capability Brown. This makes it the perfect setting for a major exhibition asking how art has shaped the British people’s peculiar relationship with landscape. The exhibition features works by Gainsborough, Claude Lorrain and George Stubbs as well as contemporary work by Anna Fox, Sigrid Holmwood and Grayson Perry.
Showing at Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 18 March to 18 June 2017.
Paul Reas, ‘Constable Country, Flatford Mill, Suffolk’ (lightjet print, 1993).
2) Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now
This impressive touring exhibition surveys five centuries of fine draughtsmanship, making use of works on loan from the collections of the British Museum. The artists on show range from the modernists Mary Martin and Bridget Riley to the old masters Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Their works are split thematically, rather than chronologically, into five sections which describe the different uses of drawing: “The Likeness of a Thought”, “Brainstorming”, “Insight and Association”, “Development and Decisions” and “Enquiry and Experiment”.
Showing at The Ulster Museum from 10 March to 7 May 2017.
Details from Mary Martin, ‘Permutation’ (Black ink over graphite with white gouache, 1965) and Michelangelo, ‘A Nude Seated Figure’ (Black chalk, c.1508-12).
3) Blackpool Art Fayre at Grundy Art Gallery
The Blackpool Art Fayre will include work from the Blackpool Art Society, from the recently-opened Abingdon Studios, and from local schools, alongside the pick of an open submission for artists with a FY-postcode. This year’s event will be held at Grundy Art Gallery, a civic and cultural hub for Blackpool which opened in 1911.
Showing at the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, from 28 January to 18 March 2017.
4. The Place Is Here
‘The Place is Here’ focuses on artists who were concerned with race, identity, colonialism, or nationalism during the 1980s. Many of the artists featured were associated with the Black Arts Movement in the 1980s, though the curators of the exhibition are keen not to group together disparate schools, or indeed to define the art here gathered in any way. Instead, the exhibition is ‘conceived as a kind of montage’, with works displayed under four loose groupings: ‘Signs of Empire’, ‘We Will Be’, ‘The People’s Account’ and ‘Convenience Not Love’.
Showing at Nottingham Contemporary from 4 February to 30 April 2017.
Lubaina Himid, ‘A Fashionable Marriage’ (1986).
5. Traumata: Bourgeois / Kusama
This exhibition features sculpture, paintings and works on paper by Yayoi Kusama and Louise Bourgeois. Expect stark and confrontational sculpture which analyses the somatic experience of time, memory and motherhood. Don’t expect to be comforted.
Showing at S|2, London, from 23 February to 13 April 2017.
Yayoi Kusama, ‘Increment in the Spring’ (left, 1986) and Yayoi Kusama, ‘Town’ (right, 1952).
6. Drawing Biennial 2017
This exhibition features more than 200 works on paper by contemporary artists with an interest in draughtsmanship, all of which are on A4-sized supports. The exhibition will take place The Drawing Room, the only public and non-profit gallery in the UK and Europe dedicated to contemporary drawing. Unusually for a publicly funded exhibition, the term will conclude with an online auction over the last two weeks, the proceeds of which will be used to support the Drawing Room’s ongoing programme.
Showing at Drawing Room, London, from 2 March to 26 April 2016.
7. Robert Rauschenberg
This selection of work by Robert Rauschenberg spans six decades of the artist’s career, during which he pioneered expansive forms of painting and sculpture, and even had a drawing sent to the moon. Featured are some of Rauschenberg’s ‘Combines’ – artworks which incorporated everyday or unusual objects which the artist picked up in his daily life.
Showing at Tate Modern from 1 December 2016 to 2 April 2017.
8. The American Dream: Pop to the Present
This exhibition follows one strand of contemporary American printmaking as it winds its way through successive movements (Pop, minimalism and photorealism) from 1960 to the present day. It features work by Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and your man upstairs, Robert Rauschenberg.
Showing at the British Museum from 9 March to 18 June 2017.
Jasper Johns, ‘Flags I’ (1973).
9. Revolution: Russian Art 1917 – 1932
The exhibition includes a wide selection of Russian art from the first fifteen years after the 1917 revolution, from Sergei Eisenstein’s pioneering films, to the abstract compositions of Malevich and Kandinsky. It also pays attention to the emergence of Socialist Realism, the powerful propagandist art form which was the only style to survive into the 1930s. Perhaps the star attraction is a full-scale and historically-accurate recreation of an apartment designed for Soviet-style communal living, which helps contextualise both the art and the propaganda.
Showing at the RA from 11 February to 17 April 2017.
Andrey Golubev, ‘Red spinner’, (cotton print, 1930).
10. House Work
This exhibition focuses on the idea of the home (as opposed to the house) from 1920 to the present day. Safety, familiarity, boredom, conflict, privacy, family; all of the connotations of home life are explored by artists such as Cy Twombly, Grayson Perry, LS Lowry and Marc Chagall.
Showing at Victoria Miro, London from 25 January to 18 March 2017.
The image at the top of this article is Andrey Golubev, ‘Red spinner’, (cotton print, 1930), currently being shown at the RA as part of the exhibition ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917 – 1932).
