I’m one of the six selectors for this year’s ING Discerning Eye show, alongside Will Gompertz, journalist, critic and Director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum; Adebanji Alade, President of The Royal Institute of Oil Painters; Nina Murdoch, award-winning painter; Gabrielle Blackman, one of the UK’s leading interior designers; and Carol Leonard, collector and recruiter for top executives in London. Each selector chooses at least a hundred small works, from both invited artists and the open call, which had over 3,000 entries.
My section has 123 works by 55 artists – 70 from 20 artists I asked to submit, 53 by 35 artists drawn from the open call. I’ve written 50-odd words on each work to give some context to my choices. It’s a good chance to make discoveries. Here are four works from the open call by artists of whom I was previously unaware:
Christopher Madden: ‘Overthrowing the Oppressor’, 2023 (top)
I’m not surprised that ‘Overthrowing the Oppressor’ was made by an artist who is also a cartoonist. Yet, as Christopher Madden himself says, it isn’t so simple. Were the nails hammered in by another hammer? In that case the nails are not a metaphor for the oppressed rising up against their oppressor, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that they’ve empaled. And it has art chops, calling to mind Man Ray’s iron with nails (‘The Gift’, 1921), Yoko Ono’s ‘Painting to Hammer a Nail’, 1961, and the whole nail-driven oeuvre of Gunther Uecker, not to mention African fetishes.
Joanne Makin: ‘Selfie’, 2024
The twist in ‘Selfie’ is that it isn’t a selfie, but a painting of the artist – I assume – makin’ a selfie. That suggests that someone else took a photograph – also a non-selfie, then – from which Joanne Makin made her attractively blurred image. And that effect makes us wonder if it’s a painterly decision, or reflects badly on the technical ability of the photographer of the source image…
Samantha Beck: ‘Harvest Moon’, 2022
Inspired by the sea-battered steel groynes on Southwick beach, the Brighton-based artist Samantha Beck draws with rust. Her title, ‘Harvest Moon’, doesn’t just operate visually, but takes us back to the tidal source – and, specifically, to the autumnal equinox, when the full moon rises above the horizon much faster than usual.
G R Biermann: ‘snow+concrete 14’, 2022
German-born conceptual artist G Roland Biermann works across multiple media, often focussing on transformation. That is presaged in the sculpturally presented photograph ‘snow+concrete 14’, as we assume the snow will melt. Perhaps there’s an implication that we will be stranded on an unsustainable ‘concrete island’ (to borrow from JG Ballard) once global warming has run its course.
ING Discerning Eye – 15th – 24th November 2024, the Mall Galleries @ingdiscerningeye
