- Venue
- Oxo Tower Wharf
- Location
- London
I was seduced into visiting the current show at the Oxo Gallery by a poster on the South Bank, advertising Heather Leitch’s exhibition. A collection of mainly architectural and urban landscape paintings entitled London Town it promised a rich interpretation of the city. I was interested in how the artist had interpreted the urban spaces. The poster portrayed a painting of St Paul’s cathedral rendered in blue monochromatic tones giving a feeling of twilight in the city. The composition was one that is often photographed; figures milling and winding together in a stream of tangled shapes keen to make the crossing over the Millennium bridge towards the towering St Paul’s beyond.
Upon viewing the actual painting I wasn’t disappointed. Freely flowing brush strokes created a sense of rushed movement in a busy, but also strangely calm iconic urban space, further enhanced by the monochromatic tones.
Unfortunately in my opinion most of the other work did not live up to this standard. As I wandered round the gallery the curation of the work was strangely mixed. Cities and countries jumbled together with nothing to link them or to allow the work to flow. As I looked further I got the distinct feeling that many of these works were regimentally copied from photographs. Nothing wrong in that I hear you say – something every artist will do. Looking further at the work I would surmise that the camera used has been one that has caused barrel distortion and converging verticals in the photograph. I hear you repeat again, nothing unusual in that. But what has gone awry here is that the artist hasn’t used her skills to interpret the photograph as if she were still standing in the same spot, creating an image that doesn’t jar, an image that we as humans believe we see, even if the buildings do converge. Neither has she used her artistic skills to enhance the viewer’s experience, to perhaps fulfill the dream of what we might have felt we saw. No, the cameras faults have been religiously copied and they haven’t even been copied correctly. In one particular image entitled Times Square, New York, the converging verticals seem to converge ‘off true’ with one part tilting or bending in the opposite way to its neighbouring building! On asking the artist, (who was sitting in the gallery at the time I visited), whether she paints from photographs she confirmed she does. She explained it gives her a chance to capture the people that are so quickly moving on & rushing by, especially in the large cities. Her sense of tangible movement within crowds and bodies in flux in an urban space are well captured and depicted. She does not need to concern herself of that, in fact I would suggest this tangible sense of human movement portrayed within her work – of bodies in flux, is her strongest point.
I also take issue with the Internet blurb for this show; it states that Heather ‘has a passion for cities, documenting their unique cultures and environments ‘. We have here a show full of the usual interpretations of famous iconic cities of the western world, Including, New York, Venice and London. The cafe culture portrayed exists just the same for each city. This show is not, in my opinion concerned with any unique cultural life of various towns or cities which goes on behind the facade placed in front of the tourist – behind the cafe culture. These are decorative images of the decorative facade placed in front of tourist, hiding the often grimier back street life which underlies and forms the belly of every culture. These images are of tourists and for tourists and they don’t tell me anything more than this.
Finally if you are going to go to the trouble of hiring a prestigious space to show off your work, then treat your work as though it is precious, in fact it doesn’t matter whether it’s the Oxo Gallery or an empty shop always treat your art as though they are your most treasured objects, are they not anyway? If not then there is something wrong!
Don’t belittle your work with scrappy bits of thin paper as I saw here, seemingly hastily cut out and stuck to the wall with blue tack. The paper not even cut square. The scraps so thin I could count the folds and fingermarks in the sticky tack behind. I only hope this was some temporary measure as the correct labels had gone missing, even so, I think it would have been far better to have left the work untitled and printed out a sheet of paper with all the information required.
Many people may enjoy this work, I hope they do. Personally I would like to see Heather exploit her talent in emulating the sense of rhythm of the throngs of humans as they make their way home at night such as is demonstrated in the monochromatic style of painting of St Pauls that first drew me into view her work.
