dIGITAL iNTERIOr

Review:  An English Interior – John Kindness

 

I went to see this exhibition at the Foundling Museum.  John Kindness was inspired by the engravings of William Hogarth and Dudley D. Watkins’s ‘Desperate Dan’ comic strips.  There was original artwork shown by both these artists.  Hogarth is significant to the Foundling Museum because he was one of the original supporters of the Foundling hospital which took in children whose mothers could no longer look after them. 

 

The exhibition featured hand painted wallpaper which gives a feeling of originality as no one image can be the same.  This gives John Kindness’ work as sense of exclusivity. He uses subtle colours in muted tones, dark blues and browns. I think these colours reflect the underlying sense of sadness felt in these paintings.  The colours were based on an early English wallpaper fragment in the V&A museum.  Dull colours were used so as not to tax the eyes.  I liked how the border brought two very different ideas together, lace patterns and rubbish, to create something more abstract.  The border is important because it is a regular pattern against the irregular images giving something for the eye to focus on.

 

Hogarth’s pictures were a social commentary on the people of London.  Kindness, work is more comedic, less serious and isn’t as personal to him as the people of London was to Hogarth.  Kindness demonstrates originality to put these scenes on wallpaper, just like Hogarth was experimental in his engravings. Hogarth links to Desperate Dan as an early version of satirical art much like an early form of a comic strip.

 

Kindness uses a round painting technique with circular strokes, not linear.  His images are quite graphic in style and content.  He doesn’t paint any detail on the faces this takes away from the person’s identity.  It could be argued that it is dehumanising them and by doing so makes some of their violent actions, especially in the Desperate Dan inspired works, seem less serious.  Kindness’ pictures tell a story they remind me a bit of some frescos I have seen depicting a monk’s life in churches in Italy.

 

by Hannah Leddy

 

ArChItEcTURE

Architecture Trip Review

 On Saturday, 8^th of November, we went to see two exhibitions, both based in London.  The first one we’ve seen was ‘Place/No Place’, by an architect Anish Kapour, at RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects).

Kapour’s architectural models offer a rare insight into the artist’s collaborations with architects and engineers. This exhibition was an entirely different experience, compared to what I have seen before. New shapes, figures and the way architect plays with colours satisfied my eyes. Models were presented in very unique & different way, which was really impressive.

My favourite model was the ‘Tail Pavilion’ (2006). Both – the figure and the colour were very notable and different.Anish Kapour’s models varied from 1982 – 2008, which was very significant in terms of how ideas have changed and the style has stayed the same.

Anish Kapour has really inspired me to be more experimental with my model-making techniques and I would really recommend anyone to go and see how architectural ideas could be expressed in so many different forms.The other exhibition we went to see, was ‘London Towns: Shaping Polycentric City’, based at New London Architecture centre. It was probably more like a big demonstration, rather than an exhibition.

It was really unique & interesting, because we had had an opportunity to look several years further and see London in future. It looked like London is turning into completely different city, with those amazing buildings.‘London Towns: Shaping Polycentric City’ was a very impressive and definitely worth seeing.

bY Gabriel Grigorjevait