An exploration of the human figure. Bristol

Transcription

1 An exploration of the human figure Bristol

2 Published by Simmons & Simmons LLP Simmons & Simmons LLP, 2016 All rights reserved ISBN Front Cover: Angus Fairhurst, Man Abandoned, 1996, 3 lightboxes with photographic transparency, Edition 3/3 Acquired 1998

3 An exploration of the human figure Since ancient times, artists have visually recreated and re-evaluated the human body. Consequently, it has been used for medical and scientific investigations, as an educational tool and as an allegory for something other than itself. Representations of the body are not merely works of art but can also be read as social documents; paintings and sculptures are direct vehicles of history. To a certain degree all art embodies crystallized history, allowing its cultural values to be portrayed through the iconography of art. Anne Abichou, The Oxford Companion to the Body The collection of pictures in the Bristol office of Simmons & Simmons brings together works by different generations of artists collected over the last 30 years. The collection is unified by its subject matter the human figure. Jacopo Dal Bello is a graduate of The Cass School, London Metropolitan University, 2014, currently living and working in London. Hailing from the Veneto region of Italy, Dal Bello draws heavily on the contemporary artistic traditions of that country, in particular the Arte Povera and Art Informel movements. The large triptych from the artist s graduation show references Hans Bellmer and Francis Bacon in its exploration of forms which depict less than the ideas they convey. The suggestion of limbs prompts the viewer more to notions of movement and energy than towards their physical shape. Stephen Campbell is the best known of the four Scottish born artists in this collection. Natural Follies at Bee Junction is classic Campbell. His subject matter has been described as focusing on the surreal ridiculousness of the English gentleman, with almost Bertie Wooster type scenarios. A number of his paintings (for instance The Dangerous Early and Late Life of Lytton Strachey in the Tate collection) show slightly old fashioned looking men dressed in tweed suits. This incongruity, even darkness, is also present in the work of the other three Scots. Kavka by Ian Hughes is a marginalised figure whereas Male Study by David Hosie is an image of youth, hope and optimism in a context of guilt and destruction. Margaret Hunter studied at the Glasgow School of Art and under Georg Baselitz at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin and Scotland. Themes and symbols evolve through her work as she explores a choreography of gestures that express states of mind or particular feelings. The graphic, physical nature of her art comes from an instinctive approach to the human body and an intuitive sense of freedom fostered by her interest in primitive art and expressionism in general. Angus Fairhurst graduated in 1989 with a BA Art, from Goldsmiths. Whilst in his second year at Goldsmiths, Fairhurst, along with Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas, participated in the famous group show Freeze, which took place in 1988 in London s docklands. Freeze helped launch a generation of artists who became known as the Young British Artists. He continued with his career as a successful multi-media artist until the time of his death in 2008 at the age of 41. Unlike the better-known Hirst and Lucas, Fairhurst was difficult to categorise. He worked in various media, and exhibited photography and video as well as painting and sculpture. Identified by the cognoscenti as the art world s secret weapon, he was considered brilliantly inventive, witty and provocative and an acknowledged source of ideas for all the young London artists. The lightbox triptych Man Abandoned has back views of the artist, naked, jumping up and down in London Wall in the City of London. Robert McLeod s photographs of pairs of young people in Bangkok s Siam Square were commissioned for a book celebrating the 80th birthday of the King of Thailand in The artist twisted the arms of passers by who were flaunting all of the capital s prevailing fashions to pose for portraits in his temporary studio in a mall s car park. The epic photograph of Michael Landy and his family outside his parents suburban home (transported to the Duveen Galleries in Tate Britain) documents Semi-detached, a major site-specific installation made in 2004, which takes as its focus the artist s father, a former tunnel miner incapacitated by an industrial accident twenty-five years previously.

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5 Pete Nevin s exotic and colourful animals act as ciphers for the human figure. They are like sentinels, keeping watch. These paintings are among the earliest pieces in the Simmons & Simmons collection made and acquired in 1986 when Nevin was represented by Vanessa Devereux Gallery. The artist is now a professor of art in Jakarta, Indonesia. The workers and watcher in Suzanne O Driscoll s works on paper joined the collection in Despite some of them wearing hard hats, the people in these scenes from everyday life are from a time before the 1980s, living and working in a small intimate world, a rural idyll. For Martin Westwood, commerce and its effect on daily life is a constant theme. The banality of corporate culture and the deadening effects of its streamlined and automated systems are at the heart of his practice. Slick business brochures, industry magazines and commonplace mass-produced objects from the office environment provide him with the raw materials for his complex and multi-layered work. For Glass Ceiling 2, 2000, delivery note paper and map pins are removed from their regular habitat and recycled as background for the recumbent figure. Shizuka Yokomizo uses photography to uncover a dialogue between public and private realms. Her series Strangers ( ) centres on a momentary confrontation between observer and observed. At its core it is a collaboration of sorts: Yokomizo sends her subjects an anonymous letter proposing they stand in the front window of their home at a specified date and time, at which point the artist arrives outside, sets up her tripod and camera, exposes her film, and then leaves. The subjects are instructed to turn on all their lights, wear their usual clothing, and remain still or if they choose not to participate, to signal this by drawing their curtains. Artist and subject never meet. Stuart Evans 3

6 Jacopo Dal Bello Quattro momenti su tutto il nulla (173, R and Hölderlin) 2014 Triptych: Acrylic, oil paint, gloss paint, pencils and prints on prepared canvas 210 x 180 cm, 210 x 140 cm and 210 x 220 cm Acquired 2014

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8 Stephen Campbell Natural Follies at Bee Junction x 69.5 cm Etching with aquatint on paper, Edition 25/50 Acquired 1990

9 Ian Hughes Kavka x 50 cm Etching on paper, Edition 2/15 Acquired

10 David Hosie Male Study x 36 cm Pencil on paper Acquired 1989

11 Margaret Hunter The Juggler x 100 cm Acrylic on canvas Acquired

12 Angus Fairhurst Man Abandoned x 40 x 10 cm each 3 lightboxes with photographic transparency, Edition 3/3 Acquired 1998

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14 Robert McLeod Three days in Siam Square x 40.5 cm each Ten C-type photographs, Edition 1/10 Acquired 2011

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16 Michael Landy Semi-detached Lisa, John, Ethel, Maureen and Michael Landy x cm C-type print, Edition 1/6 + AP Acquired 2005

17 Peter Nevin Grandeur x 57 cm Mixed media on paper Acquired 1986 Brief Encounter x 63.5 Mixed media on paper Acquired

18 Suzanne O Driscoll Under Watchful Eyes 1988 Mixed media on paper 29 x 37 cm Acquired 1988 The Catch 1988 Mixed media on paper 39 x 53 cm Acquired 1988 Watermelon Man 1988 Mixed media on paper 39 x 53 cm Acquired 1988

19 Martin Westwood Glass Ceiling x 110 cm Delivery note paper and map pins Acquired

20 Shizuka Yokomizo Stranger x 127 cm C-type print, Edition 1/5 Acquired 2000

21 Stranger x 127 cm C-type print, Edition 1/5 Acquired

22 List of works Jacopo Dal Bello Quattro momenti su tutto il nulla (173, R and Hölderlin), 2014 Triptych: Acrylic, oil paint, gloss paint, pencils and prints on prepared canvas 210 x 180 cm, 210 x 140 cm and 210 x 220 cm Acquired 2014 Stephan Campbell Natural Follies at Bee Junction, 1985 Etching with aquatint on paper, Edition 25/ x 69.5 cm Acquired 1990 Angus Fairhurst Man Abandoned, lightboxes with photographic transparency, Edition 3/3 58 x 40 x 10 cm each Acquired 1998 David Hosie Male Study, 1989 Pencil on paper 41 x 36 cm Acquired 1989 Ian Hughes Kavka, 1988 Etching on paper, Edition 2/15 50 x 50 cm Acquired 1989 Margaret Hunter The Juggler, 1988 Acrylic on canvas 137 x 100 cm Acquired 1990 Michael Landy Semi-detached Lisa, John, Ethel, Maureen and Michael Landy, 2005 C-type print, Edition 1/6 + AP 122 x cm Acquired 2005 Robert McLeod Three days in Siam Square, 2007 Ten C-type photographs, Edition 1/10 51 x 40.5 cm each Acquired 2011 Pete Nevin Grandeur, 1986 Mixed media on paper 75 x 75 cm Acquired 1986 Pete Nevin Brief Encounter, 1986 Mixed media on paper 80 x 63.5 cm Acquired 1986 Suzanne O Driscoll Under Watchful Eyes, 1988 Mixed media on paper 29 x 37 cm Acquired 1988 Suzanne O Driscoll The Catch, 1988 Mixed media on paper 39 x 53 cm Acquired 1988 Suzanne O Driscoll Watermelon Man, 1988 Mixed media on paper 39 x 53 cm Acquired 1988 Martin Westwood Glass Ceiling 2, 2000 Delivery note paper and map pins 170 x 110 cm Acquired 2000 Shizuka Yokomizo Stranger, 1999 C-type print, Edition 1/5 108 x 127 cm Acquired 2000 Shizuka Yokomizo Stranger, 1999 C-type print, Edition 1/5 108 x 127 cm Acquired 2000

23 The Simmons & Simm ons Art Network Different studies have placed the average time people spend looking at individual art works in galleries and museums at anywhere from 17 seconds to as little as 3 seconds. Looking at art in the corporate environment is a bit different. A work can resonate in a new way after 2 or 3 hours shut in a meeting room with it. A piece s meaning can evolve for someone who passes it in a corridor every day for months or even years. Love it or hate it, spending that much time in front of an artwork means there will often be dialogue with it. It can make us listen to it, and think something in response, and look again; it s an intriguing phenomenon to have an ongoing, evolving relationship with something that is itself unchanging. That said, artwork hung in any living environment, be it domestic or working, can become wallpaper and simply fade into the background. This can even happen when the work is by Tracey Emin, or Chris Ofili, or Jake and Dinos Chapman, and so in 2012 the Art Network was born to raise the profile of the firm s collection of contemporary art and to provide more opportunities for partners and staff to engage both with it and the wider contemporary art world. Since then, the Art Network has gone from strength to strength to the point where we now have over 150 members receiving regular updates of activities around the collection, such as new acquisitions, re-hangs and exhibitions, as well as invitations to tours and events both within and outside the firm, and information about pro bono opportunities within the visual arts such as the Lawyers Volunteering for the Arts and Law for the Arts programmes. Since 2013, we have achieved several notable firsts, including the first staff-curated exhibition Are you sitting comfortably? and the first selling-show by an external gallerist for partners and staff. Recently, we had our first offsite excursion a tour behind the scenes of the Government Art Collection and several more visits to galleries and artists studios are in the pipeline. Network members are writing about the collection in greater numbers than ever before, both for exhibition catalogues and for art cards to be displayed alongside the works throughout our offices, many of which contain touching, personal responses to those works. Our private art collection is more accessible than ever due to the dedication, enthusiasm and knowledge of members of the Art Network who have trained to become tour guides. In the last couple of years we have greatly increased the number of tours given to groups from outside the firm, including popular client entertaining events, sold-out allocations for Open House London and the City of London Festival, and lots of groups from art institutions and colleges. Our friends outside of the firm can read about these events and all our other activities by visiting our dedicated art website, by following us on Twitter, or by signing up to our external mailing list all of which are maintained by members of the Network. Jon Sharples and Chris Lewis Co-Chairs of the Simmons & Simmons Art Network 21

24 The Simmons & Simmons contemporary art collection