From Canaletto to Angus Taylor - Rosebank Artfest

Sharmini Brookes 10/08/2017 07:40:02
Sharmini Brookes: Rosebank is for art lovers and I enjoyed wandering from the Exhibition On Screen’s viewing of Canaletto to the Everard Read Gallery sculptures.

The Exhibition On Screen at Rosebank Mall Cinema Nouveau takes us on a tour of over 200 paintings, drawings and prints by Canaletto and some of his 18th Century counterparts which are the basis of the Royal Collection held at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Place and Windsor Castle. The collection was bought by the young King George 111 in 1762 from Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice and a speculative art dealer who targeted the lucrative British market for landscape paintings to both advertise their knowledge of the Grand Tour many had undertaken and to remind them of the places they visited. He quickly moved away from other popular landscape painters of the time to collecting Canaletto because, as he explains to his clients, one can feel the sun in his paintings.

The film takes us to Venice too so we can compare the real views with Canaletto’s interpretation of it and takes pains to argue that while it may seem almost photographic in appearance due to the fine detail and painterly skill of capturing the picturesque textures of surfaces as well as the architectural accuracy of the buildings, Canaletto ordered and designed it to his particular taste and viewpoint, peopling it with characters that were real enough but not necessarily in the scene at the time and moving columns, structures and objects to realise his artistic vision. A sketchbook, showing detailed topographical and architectural drawings backs up the view that Canaletto painted in his studio – assembling the drawings he had made while out and about to recreate his view of Venice – and yet his view of Venice seems ultra-real in the way we remember places we have visited some time ago.

From the ‘Feast of the Ascension in Venice’ to the ‘Regatta at Ca’ Foscare’ to the many views of San Marco square, these paintings are a delight to view. There are also his paintings of London, when he spent time there, of views overlooking the River Thames.

A few streets down from the Rosebank Mall, at the corner of Jellicoe and Keyes Avenue, is the Everard Read Gallery. People say that once you have your work exhibited here, you have made it as an artist. A South African of Scottish heritage, Angus Taylor could be seen at home amongst his monumental sculptures fully togged in kilt and sporran. His exhibition here is entitled ‘In The Middle Of It’ and suggests where he finds himself at this point in time – beyond the first anxieties of a struggling artist at the beginning of his career – his being between the first and third world – between Africa and Europe – and immersed in the challenges of his work.

The first work, ‘Resistance As Nurture’, we see are a series of small bronze figures in various stages of struggle with pieces of stone revolving around within a transparent box in a never ending revolution. It initially reminded me of some of Kentridge’s mechanical art pieces but also of Sisiphus’s eternal struggle carrying his rock up the mountain. Later on in the exhibition, these figures are lined up in a row and we can peruse them in greater detail. Then one notices how the pieces of stone or rock are slowly added on becoming almost unbearable in the middle but towards the end many drop off leaving two pieces that look like angel’s wings or one on the leg looking like the wing on Mercury’s feet suggesting a kind of lightness and freedom. This work, probably, best sums up the title of the exhibition and the artist’s view of where he sees himself.

In the second room are the monumental statues of ‘The Gatekeeper’ with a red Jasper head and another with arm outstretched but what looks like a Graphite head. The bronze is roughly hewn and riveted together with bolts and moulded to form the immense body. There is an attractive quality to the un-smoothness of the texture – it shows the work put into it and somehow makes it more human and less godlike. I notice though that the hands and feet are delicately carved – showing the fragile detail of knuckles and lines and the well-formed nails – a reference perhaps to the refined delicacy of the artist’s hands in making these works.

The stones – red Jasper formed a billion years after the earth was formed; black Belfast Granite, harder than normal Granite because the linkages between the molecules of metal are more flexible and so it is not so brittle; stone with various stages of iron in it or with bits of quartz and silica – are found pieces picked up in Belfast and Rustenburg and are quite beautiful.

The final piece made with strips of metal fills a whole room and is of a man seated on the ground with his legs folded to one side and leaning his weight on one hand. The monumentality of the piece belies the tender vulnerability of this pose. A photograph of the same piece made in stone is shown installed in a public park or garden.

This is an exhibition I was glad to have seen and heartily recommend a viewing. One feels almost exalted at the end of it.

Canaletto and The Art of Venice is on at Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau from Saturday 7 October.

Angus Taylor – In The Middle Of It is showing at the Everard Read Gallery until 2 November 2017.


Sharmini Brookes
Freelance writer
sharminibrookes@yahoo.co.uk
078 477 6938
 
Related Venues:
Everard Read Gallery, 6 Jellicoe Avenue Rosebank Johannesburg