Guest Blog by Alison McIntyre
Thursday 2nd February – Sunday 15 April Leeds Art Gallery
The Gary Hume exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery is well worth a visit, especially if you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps. I’d seen Gary’s gloss paint on aluminium paintings in newspaper articles and photographs and admired the flat, bright and clean images, so I was excited to see them in the flesh/paint.
They did not disappoint. What I had not realised was how much subtlety and detail from the paintings was impossible to capture in a photogragh. The picture ‘Four Feet in the Garden’ is a great example as it is being used on much of the publicity material for the show, where the image is a black background with lilac outlines of feet that merge together into one shape. On seeing the painting from a distance it looked very similar to the printed version, but when I walked much closer to it details of toes and toenails began to appear as did two large blobs of black paint in the black surface; could they be eyes? Maybe. The legs and feet become much more defined and I appeared as a reflection in the painting too (I also got an impressive triple reflection in the Snowmen sculptures downstairs!). I suddenly felt much more engaged in the painting and intrigued about whose feet they were, whose eyes they were (if they are eyes but who is to say they aren’t), why were they in the garden and why was most of the garden black anyway? I don’t have any answers to these questions but I suppose that’s not the point really, I just enjoyed being stimulated to ask them.
Water Painting is probably my favourite painting in the show, in this instance you don’t have to move around in the same way to fully appreciate it, but it just keeps on giving the more you look. Beautiful outlines of faces and bodies that do almost seem to slide off the painting as if water were being poured on them. It just grabbed my attention and didn’t want to let go.
I also enjoyed that the titles of the paintings gave them just a little bit more depth and interest, sometimes making me laugh, without being pretentious or irritatingly obscure.
The press release I was given talks about ‘beauty threaded with melancholy’, Sarah Brown, Curator of Exhibitions at Leeds Art Gallery said that the large red barn doors made her think of Fisher Price toys she had as a child, the whole collection of paintings and sculptures made me feel joyful and calm. I think all our responses are valid and interesting; there’s no right answer, just thoughts and feelings that sometimes don’t translate very well into words.
Whatever your response I think you’d be hard pressed not to feel a little more joyful after visiting this exhibition, but please comment, I’d really like to know what you think…
I went to see this exhibition yesterday and felt somewhat underwhelmed, don’t get me wrong there are some nice paintings in the exhibition just as a whole the show felt disjointed and more like a selection of whichever Gary Hume works they could lay their hands on.
Strong points lay where the works become much more abstract, here the high gloss surfaces where able to draw you in much deeper. The one exception to this where all the ‘door’ paintings, this however may have just hit the right buttons for my love of the minimal.
Worth a look if your near but just due to the scale of the exhibition not worth a big journey alone. If you like bright, large and shinny abstract painting this is your show and for everyone else if you don’t go expecting a lot out of it I’m sure you will come away with something.
I out and out love this exhibition in all its shiny glory! I think there’s real humour in Hume’s work: he can paint whatever he wants (including risqué subject matter, making the exhibition a potentially poor choice for first dates) since everything becomes palatable in high gloss. When you view one of the paintings, the high shine means you’re both in it and outside it, and this is another neat little joke- if you don’t understand it, or if you don’t like it, too late because you’re inside it.
My favourite painting in the show is ‘My Aunt & I Agree’ 1995/2010 which is the colour of French macaroons with some gold thrown in for good measure. The painting depicts hands, big and small, with a scattering of snowflakes. I think this painting has a tangible, nostalgic, happy/sad Sunday afternoon warmth about it; it made me want to sit in the sunshine (might have to get out of Yorkshire I know…) for afternoon tea, or watch the Antiques Roadshow.
I think there’s a lot to be found on the surface of these paintings, without worrying too much what’s ‘behind’ them. They are gorgeous, glossy and giving and I’m thrilled they’re in Leeds. It’s true that the exhibition is a smallish one, however I think that the work has the power to help viewers fight the gloom and turn that frown upside down.
UPDATE: I returned to Leeds Art Gallery yesterday to pay the sculptures on the ground floor more attention – I neglected to mention these in my original comment, having got over excited about the paintings. The sculptures include American Tan VI (2006-2007), shiny bronze legs with a cheerleader pom pom rendered in metal and another in the same series in white with pink ends, a little too reminiscent of pieces of raw meat. Next to this second piece there’s a painting on the wall of tanned legs high kicking, in creamy confectionary colours straight out of Elle Decoration.
There is a third sculpture called The End of Fun (2004), which must be a relative of the snowman paintings. The piece consists of two tall, black, imposing objects, each of which are made up of 3 spheres piled on top of each other. The looming sculptures lean in towards each other and I like the tension between them. The title makes me imagine this artwork is representative of a relationship that’s gone on a bit too long and where both parties have begun to tire of one another- the fun has gone, which sounds somewhat depressing, but the idea of these cold, clunky, static objects making me think of human feelings makes me laugh and is another of the melancholic, clever jokes in Hume’s work.
Thanks Allison for your insight in. To hume’s beautiful work and to repeat the finish’s aesthetic is beautiful.