Mixing it Up: Painting Today - Canadian influences in contemporary painting
Installation view of Mixing It Up: Painting Today at Hayward Gallery, 2021. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Rob Harris
This week, I had the pleasure of attending Mixing it Up: Painting Today at Hayward Gallery, situated within the concrete walls of the Southbank Centre in London. Featuring 31 international artists of all ages living in the UK, across a prodigious selection of paintings that differ in subject matter, scale, and style, the exhibition offers an overview of how artists engage with this age-old medium in order to portray our contemporary epoch. Of particular interest to me is how the tradition of painting permeates borders, and especially how Canada is situated within the context of contemporary painting in relation to the UK.
The exhibition takes place across two stories, with some paintings larger than the largest wall of your average London flat. Most paintings are grouped together in proximity by the artist, along with noticeable stylistic similarities. Upon entering the space, visitors are immediately confronted with large-scale canvases portraying figures in motion and recognisable scenes of nature and home. As you walk along the recommended route, your eyes feast on the delightful combinations of hues and tonalities, the strokes and the textures that differ from one painter to another, as if you were hearing different voices tell different stories using the same combination of words and letters. My first cohesive thought upon finishing my tour of the first floor was that it was apparent that representational painting was in vogue. The second floor presented a good helping of abstract art, but a good majority of the exhibition as a whole consisted of representational paintings.
Lydia Blakeley, Pointers, 2019, in Mixing It Up: Painting Today at Hayward Gallery, 2021. © Lydia Blakeley 2021. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Rob Harris
Throughout the past centuries, artists have fought against the rigid rules of representation in painting, with abstract art reaching its height of popularity in post-war America. For a long time, abstraction had an air of “contemporary” to it. But as I made my way through the artworks of the first floor, it seemed to me that each selected painting was at once rousingly new, taking on layering techniques and subject matters that were unmistakably from our present era, and manifestly representational in a way that recalls the storied history of painting.
Piquing my interest was Lydia Blakeley, an artist originating from Blackwell, UK whose works take inspiration from everyday life in England to create engaging compositions on canvas. She has been twice the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (once in 2018 and again in 2020), a Canadian award founded and continuing to run in Montreal. Although open to young artists from around the world to contribute to their development, the Foundation strictly supports artists who create representational art, working with traditional techniques in order to earn mastery over their craft. Lydia has previously said in an interview that the award had been life-changing, especially at the beginning of her career, in order to help set up her studio practice after graduating.
Allison Katz, Slippy, 2017. Acrylic and rice on canvas, 68 7/8 x 49 1/4 inches (175 x 125 cm).
In addition to Lydia’s work, standing out with her unexpected use of rice to texturise her large-scale paintings was Canadian artist Allison Katz, whose paintings can also be seen at her solo exhibition in Nottingham Contemporary. Other Canadian influences in the exhibition include the support of Stephen Friedman Gallery, a gallery founded by the influential Canadian art world figure of the same name. Among its cohort of impressive artists and estates, the gallery represents Lisa Brice and Denzil Forrester, both of whom has several works shown in the exhibition.
The exhibition is on until 12 December, and it’s well worth an hour or two of your time in order to absorb the vast array of artworks on display. And if you’re planning on attending sometime in the coming days, you might also want to try and get your hands on tickets for Future Rites, a live interactive VR dance performance formed through Canada-UK collaborations, including director Sandra Rodriquez who was part of the UK-Canada Immersive Exchange programme.