Art Breakfast | Mayfair Gallery Tour | The Dover Street Arts Club

Art Breakfast | Mayfair Gallery Tour | The Dover Street Arts Club | Art Review | London

This morning James and I attended The Arts Club Mayfair gallery tour hosted by Amelie von Wedel and  Pernilla Holmes. 

We started off with breakfast at the club which is on Dover Street and a short talk from Amelie about what current trends are in the art world and then a brief look at what The Club is exhibiting at the moment. 

We then went on foot to our first gallery which was showing "Kazuo Shiraga" musat Lévy Gorvy, 22 Old Bond Street W1S 4PY.  Kazuo Shiraga is a Japanese artist born in 1924, his big canvases are smeared across with thick clumps of paint leaving some of the canvas raw. He achieves this by dangling from the ceiling and swinging using his hands and fingers for painting.  This stemmed from his groundbreaking performance piece in 1955 called "Challenging Mud" in which the artist used his entire body to manipulate the mud if it was thick paint. 

The second gallery was Carl Kostyál, 12a Savile Row W1S 3PQ where they were showing pieces from a young British artist: "Henry Hudson: Sun City Tanning" Henry had created huge pieces behind glass which were purely made with plasticine. Henry who was originally a performance artist wanted to start making pieces to sell but when he realised how much oil paint was he bought plasticine instead. Plastercine which is oil based mixes like paint when it is melted down and he then applies to the canvas and layers it. They are masterpieces to look at.

The third stop was "Maria Lassnig A Painting Survey, 1950-2007" at Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row W1S 2ET. This was a museum type exhibition from female artists who have been previously overlooked. They say that she is the missing link between Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. She was originally an abstract painter and transitioned into figurative work, she mainly uses herself as a subject. Each painting is painted with 24 hours so that she can capture her current mood.

The last stop was Skarstedt, 8 Bennet Street SW1A 1RP to see "Double Take. A re-framing, re-staging and re-presentation of appropriation in photography from the 1960s to the present day" Here there was a really interesting selection of photographers, a lot inspired by advertising to the more present-day photographers inspired by the web and Instagram.

I enjoyed the art tour so much this morning and can not wait for the next one.