Art For Thought

Over the past month I have had the pleasure of traveling to Istanbul, Turkey. As part of the plans of exploring this enchanting city, there was also attending the opening of ONE Akaretler on the 13th of September, an exhibition of emerging Turkish artists set an elegant neighbourhood of the city. The exhibition was curated by Begum Guney and Yagmur Dogan in collaboration with the Shopigo art platform.

My reason for going was the participation of Isabella Lolita Amram, one of the fantastic artists that was in the exhibition ‘Intuition Goes Before You’ that I had curated in August in Soho. Together with other talented young artists, Isabella’s works had their own section that took over a large space. The chosen works were some of her oil pastels on paper, beautifully executed and framed. As per her canvases, her works on paper reflect her gestural and intuitive practice, based around astrological landscapes and abstract portraits.

It was a great to occasion where I was also happy to discover new talent - some names along the one of Isabella stood out such as Mutlu Aksu, Begum Mutevellioglu, Sena, Bengisu Bayrak and Emir Yasin Yagmurca.

The exhibition was on for three weeks, but the works of the artists are since then available for longer through the Shopigo platform online.

Once back from Turkey it was time to catch up on exhibitions in London, other than curating ‘Echoes of Belonging’ in Covent Garden for Daa Art.

One of the shows I was excited to see was Lydia Hamblet’s solo presentation at Pictorum Gallery in Marylebone, on until the 20th of October. 

Lydia’s work differ greatly in size, from diptychs to smaller canvases and works with distinct level of detail and experimentation - yet her gesture on the canvas is ever-present and recognisable. Her paintings delve into topics of weather, doing so by evoking though-provoking responses to her abstract landscape works, where the audience interprets what it sees, from trees to faces to symphonies of colour.

As part of the exhibition, there are also some works on paper and studies Lydia made before starting on the canvases, a step that is crucial to the work. In the exhibition there are books and poems craftily included, from which the artists draws inspiration. The title of the exhibition for example, in fact reflects on Richard Mabey’s 2013 book “Turned Out Nice Again: Living With The Weather,” which talks about the merging concepts of science and art. 

Throughout Frieze week onto mid November, Alison Jacques opened their inaugural exhibition at their new location on Cork Street, a solo by artist Sheila Hicks. Through installation and sculpture, the work plays between texture, colour, form and size.

The tactile component is the most prevalent. The material and fibres used such as wool, cotton, silk, stimulates the viewer to explore the artwork not only from a visual point of view but explore it from the sense of touch as well, despite of course not being allowed to.

The star of the show is the incredibly large-scale installation that becomes one with the space taking up the entire second room of the gallery, as seen in the picture above. The take-over of spaces is fundamental to Hicks’ practice, as she states that her “[…] great pleasure is that [she] feels the works and the space become one; they are involved with each other, inextricably linked”.