From David Bomberg to Paula Rego: The London Group in Southampton

Marcel Hanselaar ~ Ritual, 2013, oil on canvas

Having said I wouldn’t be blogging much over the next few weeks, I am now going to blog…

About five weeks ago, the week the last Ofsted inspection finished, we moved offices at work and are now based in the Civic Centre. This meant going from a brand new building to one which was built in the 1931 and as it’s listed, has many of the original features (possibly including some of the plumbing…). It also houses the city art gallery and it so happens that our office is right next to the gallery and conservation studios. There is art just on the other side of the wall, literally. How tantalising. We often see works of art being taken from the conservation studio into the gallery too (oh cruel tormentors!). I am most definitely on the wrong side of the wall.

It does mean however, that I can sneak off for ten minutes every now and then, to visit a particular work. The current exhibition (From David Bomberg to Paula Rego: The London Group in Southampton), which I have yet to see properly, has a painting by one of my favourite artists, Marcelle Hanselaar. Ritual (above) is a wonderful piece by which I am much taken. I've been to visit it several times and the more I look at it, the more I like it. The central figure, light and colours are so atmospheric. I can't pretend to know what it means... I can only have a rough guess. I would very much like to know the painter's ideas behind this particular painting.

I will blog about this show again probably - it also has a Paula Rego aquatint. It's on until 1 November so plenty of time to go and see it. The art gallery opening times are a bit rubbish though (I can feel another rant coming on...); Monday to Friday 10am to 3pm and Saturday 10am until 5pm, closed Sundays. For a gallery which has such a fabulous collection to shut at 3pm in the week and close on Sundays is such a waste - but there we are, another thing we can thank Cameron and his budget cuts for. Yours, disgusted of Southampton.

Influences 3 - Marcelle Hanselaar

Self-portrait of Yesterday ~ oil on canvas, 2012

I first came across Marcelle Hanselaar's work some years ago in an article in Printmaking Today (I'll find the issue number and post it for anyone who wants to track it down) and saw some of her etchings at Originals shortly afterwards (or was it the RE Summer show...). I'd been quite captivated by the tiny reproductons but seeing the actual etchings was a very different experience; the powerful rawness, was quite stunning. I spent some time in front of them and found it quite hard to tear myself away.

Le Petit Mort 10: Notes From an Incomplete Journey ~ etching and aquating, 2005

Stormwarning ~ etching and aquatint

She is in the same camp as Paula Rego for me; dark, violent narratives in which people (quite often she herself) and strange creatures coexist in nightmarish scenarios. Dogs seem to figure frequently in a rather Jungian Shadow-type way. Bizarre, macabre and faintly comical.

Open Sesame ~ etching and aquatint

Le Petit Mort 6: Notes from an Incomplete Journey ~ etching and aquatint, 2005

Etching and aquatint

In this short film, Hanselaar talks about her relationship with the medium, in particular oil paint. She talks about the intimacy which develops over time (she says it took twenty years for her to really get the measure of it) and one gets the sense that it would be impossible to separate her from her art and vice versa. The interviewer asks 'Who is Marcelle Hanselaar?' She replies, 'I have have no answer to that but I paint about that.'


Marcelle Hanselaar - Postcard From The Edge from Beats Shots on Vimeo.