Exhibition

New Works | Bruce McLean, William Tillyer, Marc Vaux

4 Jun 2021 – 3 Sep 2021

Regular hours

Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
11:00 – 16:00
Monday
10:00 – 18:00
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00

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Bernard Jacobson Gallery

London, United Kingdom

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  • Piccadilly Circus/Green Park
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Representing Central London Galleries for London Gallery weekend, Bernard Jacobson Gallery is opening an exhibition of new works by Bruce McLean, William Tillyer and Marc Vaux, and hosting an audio-visual / live-action presentation by Bruce McLean, “A Field of Cauliflowers Etc.”

About

Bernard Jacobson Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of recent works by Bruce McLean, William Tillyer and Marc Vaux. During the past year, artists throughout the world have used these unusual times to re-examine their practice and find inspiration in the new every-day life. As a tribute to the long-standing relationship of the gallery with these three artists, the presentation will focus on their experiences over the past year, embracing the spring colours and a return to nature.

Nature and the universal unity of all matter is an abiding theme for William Tillyer. These are not simple representations of nature, however. Tillyer’s art is imbued with the inherent tension of ‘creating’ landscapes, demonstrated with almost monastic economy in the ‘conceptual’ works from the 60s.

As seen in Three Green Fields with Two Clouds (2020), Tillyer deploys his vision of the English landscape through the means of wire, paint and tension, using the paint as a surrogate to the vigour experienced in nature. In these new architectural constructions, the artist pushes the paint through the tensioned wire panels with the same inevitability as the coming of spring, or the force of gushing water breaking through a dam, emerging from the artwork plane to meet the viewer; a real tableaux vivant.

The Mulgrave Scroll paintings on view in the lower gallery bring a panoramic element to the paintings, reminiscent of Ivon Hitchens and George Braque’s late paintings, they also refer to Chinese scroll paintings.

The dominance exerted throughout the paintings in the exhibition reveal Tillyer as a contradiction in many ways. He is both a painter in the romantic tradition of British Landscape painting, as well as a Historian, immersed in the conceptual progression of seeing and understanding.

Similarly concerned with sensory faculties, Marc Vaux’s low relief Oval paintings (2020) are an attempt to get away from the traditional restrictions of the horizontal and vertical, the works – mounted on a circular hanging device – can be installed at any degree of rotation, making possible infinite and dynamic ways of experiencing the work.

The oval form and its complex relation to the colour-edged, raised, angular forms which populate the interior of the works and the gently glowing reflection of these colours into the white background surface, give the works a feeling of being forever unsettled, always on the move to other relationships of colour and form. A tireless investigator, Vaux examines the possibilities and qualities of reflected colour and light.

While we get transported to the geometric world of Marc Vaux, and to the North Yorkshire Moors by the romantic landscapes of William Tillyer, Scottish artist Bruce McLean allows us to retreat in our personal quiet interiors and look around.

Allusive of his most recent exploration of the garden theme in Future Garden Works - based on the Spanish gardens very familiar to the artist - the series Twig Arrangement in front of Garden Arrangement reveal McLean’s enduring interest in sculptural ideas. These are paintings of paintings hanging in his living room.

In the foreground, the twig arrangement appears to reference the bold cut-out shapes of Henri Matisse, but the modern master’s act of laying colour to canvas is instead deconstructed and subverted – a piece of aluminum foil attached to the painting becomes a leaf or petal in in one case drops onto the tabletop.

Bruce McLean’s new paintings will be accompanied by an audio-visual live-action presentation titled ‘A Field of Cauliflowers, Etc.’ during which the artist will interpret anecdotes and stories taken from his recent biography ‘A Lawnmower in the Loft’.

LONDON GALLERY WEEKEND

The exhibition is concurrent with the first edition of the London Gallery Weekend, a peer- led initiative representing a future-facing art landscape which embraces the community and mutual support of a diverse London gallery network.

Having emerged from an idea over lockdown in London - during which time new connections were forged online between art dealers and gallerists - the grassroots initiative brings together a rich program of exhibitions by leading contemporary artists, alongside other public programs, late openings and performances.

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Marc Vaux

Bruce McLean

William Tillyer

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