The 2914 National Open Art annual exhibition has opened at Somerset House. The competition with £60,000 of prize money aims to “nurture creative talent from both emerging and professional artists, providing a truly open and fair platform for artists to exhibit, sell and promote their work“.
Given that the exhibition is housed in one of the most important civic buildings of the 18th century in the heart of the great city of London, I looked for artworks that said something about cities, among a wide array of work covering different subjects.
At the entrance to the exhibition is Gavin Turk’s neon sculpture Port (Red). “Port is a surreal gateway: a spiritual journey through the imagination. It is a key to unlocking ideas of the infinite…..It simultaneously references Duchamp earlier work ‘11 Rue Larrey’ the door that is never open or shut.” A good start; a work of optimism?
In the Embankment Galleries, several artists reflect on the cities and buildings in decay or after war or destruction. Gina Soden’s photographs Chemical Plant and Villa reflect her interest in abandoned buildings and inviting the viewer to engage with the history, the beauty and perhaps even the romance of the decaying structure or building. Chrissy Eastwood’s Aftermath from her series of photographs records the sadness of the empty buildings remaining in Chernobyl today, while Chris Shaw Hughes detailed work reminds us of the destruction of much of London during the Second World War with his charcoal drawing View from St Pauls (London 1945). Leah Fusco also provides charcoal drawings of substations that hint at the energy needed to maintain our cities and civilisation and the link with the natural landscape.
Marcus Lyon shows the cities of Dubai and the township of Cape Flats from a different perspective with two works from his series EXODUS which explore significant movements of people and transport arising from globalisation in the modern world.
In contrast Nicola Bealing hints at the futility of some human activities in her works Gleaners, who appear to not be successful in gleaning anything, and Infested Carpet. “I make figurative, large scale oil paintings. My current work focuses on the construction of an image through the repetition and accumulation of a single motif. I enjoy an element of dark humour in my narrative work – and the sense that the protagonists are engaged in a futile enterprise that is on the brink of going badly wrong.”
One of the most intricate works is Rogan Brown’s paper artwork “Outbreak”, a piece he describes as an exploration “of the microbiological sublime.” Taking over four months to make, it shows the smallest structures found within the human body: cells, microbes, pathogens, and neurons, some contained, but some escaping…. what disaster would strike our cities if this happened?
These are just a selection of the works reflecting on our cities and civilisation. The exhibition has many works in a variety of media and a variety of subjects, which you can only appreciate by going to see them for yourself.