Posts filed under 'Exhibitions'
My portrait of Alan Garner which I actually finished back in March gets its first outing today at the Grosvenor museum ( 27 Grosvenor Street 01244 402455 )in Chester. It’s part of the 50 th year celebrations since Alan’s book The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was published. There are a number of events from 18th September to 28th November 2010
I also made a one hour film to accompany the painting which is a kind of video diary documenting the process of making the painting. It’s the first film I’ve made and as an keen documentor an enjoyable process and hopefully record.
September 17th, 2010
The Smithsonian Institue in Washington D.C has recently opened a new exhibition called Americans Now . Quite an apt title because it says exactly what it is on the tin. It features 2 of my paintings which are in the Smithsonian collection , portraits of Cormac McCarthy , who is often refered to as America’s greatest living author, who , quite by chance I met when I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico through my gallery over there and painted his portrait. The other is of Murray Gell Mann whi is a Nobel prize winning scientist.
Looks like a great show with pieces by Chuck Close and Bill Viola. It’ on from August 20th 2010 – July 10th 2011 if your in Washington and have got half an hour.
follow the link for more information; http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/americansnow/index.html
September 17th, 2010
We went to the dinner and ceremony for this years BP Portrait Award , about 2 weeks ago now. It was a bit more of a subdued affair this year with all the goings on in the Gulf of Mexico. It is, undoubtedly terrible what is happening to the wild life and environment out there but BP have also been excellent sponsors of art at the Tate, British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and in my experience at the NPG they have nurtured, encouraged and inspired a generation of figurative painters over the past 20+ years.
I was sorry that Mike Gaskell came 2nd for the 3rd time. Another excellent piece. The intimacy in his small portraits almost hint at a new level of realism, they are quite astonishing when you see them in the flesh. I have attached some of my favourites from this years show including Mike Gaskell’s, Mary Jane Ansell, Alan Coulson, Nathan Ford, Thea Penna and Carlos Muro’s beautiful 4 way portrait which strangely has the feel of a Marcus Harvey painting when you seen the mark making up close.
July 6th, 2010
I went tothe “Party” exhibition at Walsall Art gallery last week to celebrate 10 years in busines. It was a fantastic turnout to silence its critics over the years. In fact looking at this photo it looks like a biblical turnout. It’s still as popular as ever and it’s a great show to celebrate called “Party”. I’ve got a small piece in from the Kitty series and there’s some great pieces by Gilbert and George, Paula Rego and a lovely one by Graham Dolphin -( I went to art college with his brother).
Here’s my wife Anne and her sister at the opening.
March 1st, 2010
It’s been 10 years since Te New Art Gallery, Walsall opened its doors to the public and they’re having a party exhibition to celebrate. Should be a pretty cool series of events I think and an accompanying exhibition with some pretty big name artits in like Peter Blake, Martin Creed, Gilbert and George, Chris Ofili, Paula Rego, Sam Taylor Wood, Juergen Teller and Gavin Turk. I’ve got a piece in the show too and they’ve asked all the artists to do a birthday card for the gallery which will also be exhibited alongside the rest of the Party themed work. Here is my card which is a “Party Tape”, the kind of thing we used to take to house parties back in the student days or give to people you really liked. I think there is quite a growing nostalgia for party tapes in the digital age.
( Click on the image for a closer look at the track listing)
December 29th, 2009
Here’s the last picture that I did for the show. It’s a portrait of somebody that I met in Times Square about 5 years ago. I wanted to try the loose background technique to give the portrait a context and I think city scenes work particularly well so I combined the two. This one is in acrylic and it’s painted on MDF board which I cut into a circle with a jigsaw. Portraits can work extremely well in a circular format or can also look a little kitsch but hopefully it captures something of the meeting 5 years ago. I was particularly pleased with the clapped out NY cab to the right of the image. This piece is also in the show at Plus One Gallery which runs until Saturday 7th November.
November 5th, 2009
It’s been a week or two since I blogged because Anne and myself have recently moved and my internet has been down for 2 weeks which was both liberating and ostracising. Anyway, back up and running now so I just wanted to thank everybody that came to the opening night of my show back in October, I know that many of you travelled quite a long distance to come to the opening so I really appreciate all of your efforts because it’s quite easy to park your arse infront of the TV. Thanks also for Plus One for staging the exhibition in their beautiful Chelsea gallery and all the help and support they gave me, I’m delighted to be in their stable.
Here’s a few shots of the opening night.
November 5th, 2009
I will be having a solo exhibition in London at the Plus One Gallery in Chelsea. The Private View will be on the evening of Tuesday 13th October and the exhibition will run until 7th November 2009.
It will be a portrait based exhibition featuring new and recent portraits from America and Japan and a few British portraits too.
Click on the image for more details about the exhibition.
if you would like more information please contact me on andrew@andrewtift.co.uk or the gallery on info@plusonegallery.com
September 16th, 2009
I made and entry on my blog in January saying that I had done 2 portraits on postcards after the NPG approached artists to do so for their fundraising gala on 3rd March which I think they were selling for £200 . I can now reveal which 2 were mine.
They are about 8″ and the first is a B/W painting of a woman I met in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo and the second is a drawing of a dear friend of mine, Ken Billingham who also features in the next entry.
(If you click on the image they should enlarge)
March 5th, 2009
The Smithsonian Institution are currently exhibiting my two paintings of Cormac McCarthy and Murray Gell-Mann which they recently purchased in an installation of new acquisitions at their museum/gallery in Washington D.C. It’s a pretty long run and goes on from 2nd February – 15th November 2009.
If you click on the following link it should take you to their museum blog an their is quite an extensive piece about the exhibition.
http://face2face.si.edu/
February 8th, 2009
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