FAD Magazine

FAD Magazine covers contemporary art – News, Exhibitions and Interviews reported on from London

Paul’s ART STUFF on a train # 122: ‘Let’s Get Together’

billinham hoorses
Richard Billingham: ‘Horses’, 2011

Company mergers have long been routine in the private sector, and in the public sector scene I work in by day, collaboration is now very much the name of the game. Successive governments have made local authorities smaller, split off their functions, and then reduced their funding to the point at which they’re forced to work together to survive. Why shouldn’t some of the same logic apply during tough times in the art world? Just so, Anthony Reynolds’ has moved from having his own separate space to a strategy of sharing the space of other galleries. First up, his retrospective of Richard Billingham’s landscape photographs in the lower of Annely Juda’s two floors, which comes with the added advantage that the long, airy room suits them better than his own former space would have done. As for the work, one could complain that these quiet vistas (‘Panorama’, to 28th Aug) would never have made Billingham famous the way the documentation of his parents did when ‘Ray’s a Laugh’ emerged in 1996 – or one could be pleased that his previous success has generated a wider audience for these subtle pictures in unusual elongated formats. Exploiting such contingencies as ageing film stock and wind moving the trees to atmospheric effect, they feel like photographs taken as studies for paintings, only for the artist to find that they already achieved the painterly effects planned.

billingham blur
Richard Billingham: ‘Untitled’, 2014

Most days art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in London. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?

Categories

Tags

Related Posts

Alexis Hunter: ‘The Model’s Revenge I-III’, 1974 - Set of three silver gelatin prints, 41 x 51 cm

Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Richard Saltoun

I first met Richard Saltoun some 16 years ago, when he was dealing from Savile Row together with Laurent Delaye (who now runs his gallery from Ramsgate) prior to setting up on his own account in 2012

Trending Articles

Join the FAD newsletter and get the latest news and articles straight to your inbox

* indicates required