Paul Hobson, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, recommends his favourite exhibition of the week.
29 October – 3 December 2011
Hannah Barry Gallery, Peckham, Unit 9i, Copeland Road, Industrial Estate, 133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN.
Open Wednesdays – Saturdays, 11am – 5pm, or by appointment.
Kadar Brock, Lilah Fowler, Christopher Green, Tom Hackney, Nick Jeffrey, Wyatt Kahn, Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq, Rob Sherwood, Viktor Timofeev
POINT. LINE. PLANE at Hannah Barry’s Peckham gallery is a fresh and robust group exhibition which sets out to survey new attitudes towards geometrical composition in non-objective painting and sculpture. Rather than pin-pointing a method or rule the show offers insight into some of the ways in which contemporary artists are approaching geometrical composition. One seam of work explores and tests the space between black and white. Christopher Green’s, ‘1050 in the Key of Grey’ is a work in seven panels, each panel comprises 150 separate pieces tacked together. Made using shaved graphite it is a loving exploration of shade. Another focuses on the influence of digital systems and game playing, where code is used as a means of making up the work. I was particularly taken with the intriguing beauty of Tom Hackney’s chess paintings. The three works in the show map out moves played in three chess games Duchamp played in 1920’s Paris. The artist grids a square canvas and using a record of the game, maps out its progression applying a layer of gesso on the grid position of each piece move by move; the patterns of moves played out in the game begin to come forward in relief. This delicate and quiet exhibition causes the viewer to think about balance, composition and the relationship between geometrical rigour and gestural expression amongst a group of artists searching out a new vocabulary in point, line and plane.
Let us know what you think at membership@contemporaryartsociety.org