- Venue
- dalla Rosa Gallery
- Location
- London
Does it seem like the art world is obsessed with how BIG something is these days? Whether it’s the auction price; the reputation of the artist; the size of the gallery; or the art work itself; big seems to equate with better. Or perhaps it’s just me, having been told twice in the last few months by exhibition selectors that my work needs to be bigger I’m aware that size counts. So it was with great pleasure that I visited a small show, in a small gallery, which had wonderful small works by artists I’d never heard of.
I have been on the mailing list of dalla Rosa Gallery in Clerkenwell for awhile, having first spotted them at a London Art Fair in 2013. The email about this group show caught my eye so when a friend asked if I could join her for a London gallery day this show was high on my list. We managed to see 5 galleries, with 4 out of the 5 having big work/artist name/gallery space but the 5th at the dalla Rosa was by far my favourite of the day.
I had not come across the work of Jessie Brennan before, though she has shown a bit and has quite a few awards listed on her CV. I was immediately drawn towards her series of studies for what I now know is a much larger work entitled ‘A Fall of Ordinariness and Light’, part of her commission for Progress at The Foundling Museum. Her three detailed and beautifully rendered pencil drawings showing a playful take on a progressive crumbling of a ’60s housing estate were captivating. I just love it when an image pulls you in and keeps you wanting to look at the detail here, the pattern there, though I’m more than partial to this subject matter. I’m sure the larger works are just as powerful, due to their size, but these small studies gave a focus to her observations in a rather intimate, personal way.
The other two artists Terry Greene and Benjamin Bridges are painters and both showed work of a more abstract nature using a peeling back or breaking down of the picture surface. Terry’s eye catching paintings use stripes and muted colours reminiscent of Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series, a long time favourite of mine. Terry’s are much smaller which lets you get close to the rich textural quality emanating from the canvas. Benjamin Bridges’ oval paintings hung high created a lively colour play, like refracted light bouncing across the wall.
This small but perfectly formed exhibition in a domestic scale gallery on Clerkenwell Road is well worth seeking out, it’s on until the 14th Feb so get there if you can.
