Painting Now - Tate Britain

The Painting Now exhibition is one that I enjoyed very much, showing the works of five contemporary artists. Starting with Tomma Abts, the paintings are neither figurative nor abstract but are more concerned with showing the process of the artist as none of the pieces are planned beforehand and result simply by instinct and letting the paint be the guide. By layering and making marks, Abts creates pieces that explore depth, volume and space. This was followed by Simon Ling who paints urban landscapes that appear to be crumpling and swaying. Ling, who often paints en plein air, captures the seemingly ordinary and overlooked parts of urban London, in what could be almost a kind of expressionist manner.

'Zebe'- Tomma Abts

Untitled- Simon Ling

The artists the stood out the most to me were Lucy Mckenzie and Gillian Carnegie. Mckenzie has a more conceptual approach compared to the other artists in the exhibition, which she combines her skills demonstrated through the tompe l'oeils and marble effect painting in 'Loos House'. In her triptych 'Quodlibet XII, XXII and XX- have been subtitled Objectivism, Nazism and Fascism respectively, Mckenzie paints what seem to be proposals for interiors, pinned on a board with paint samples, marbling effects, architectural drawings and furniture pictures (with the odd copy of an Ayn Rand book of a leaflet about socialists. Mckenzie invites the viewer to explore how a person's ideologies and character can be identified through their houses/interiors, how they are seen on the surface, through their fashion statements, their brands as well as their interiors. One might question Mckenzie's role in the exhibition because she is not a 'painter' in the sense that it is the ideas in the her work that matter rather than the material itself. However, she is still incredibly skilled in her craft and revives trompe l'oeils which have not been seen in contemporary art in a very long time. Gillian Carnegie is also a highly accomplished painter who's sleek, glossy, monochrome paintings are strangely geometric. One of her works that I found to be most intriguing depicts a group of houses, painted in the same slightly dull, monochrome palette, with a kind of glaze as if seen through a thick layer of fog. It's almost dreamlike- both heavy and weightless at the same time.

'Nazism' - Lucy Mckenzie

Gillian Carnegie's depiction of the Holly Lodge Estate