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Plenty of wonders to be discovered in Addiscombe’s Art Space

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The latest free exhibition at the Croydon Art Space in Addiscombe offers a snapshot into the works of the London Group successors of Walter Sickert, Barbara Hepworth and Paul Nash. KEN TOWL squeezed himself in among the size-constrained artworks

Small wonders: Tisna Westerhof’s No Particular Place To Go is unframed embroidery

I am standing in the back room of a compact Croydon terraced house listening to David Redfern’s potted history of the London Group as context for understanding the latest exhibition at Croydon Art Space.

Small Wonders features works by 50 artists. It is a diverse collection, reflecting 50 unique styles and almost as many disciplines, including ceramics, collage, drawings, embroidery, lithography, photography, screenprint, sculpture and video, and featuring materials that range from beeswax to building sand.

Despite all this diversity, it is, however, still a collection.

Two factors make it so. Firstly, all 50 artists are members of the London Group, so that the exhibition works as a snapshot of its current state. Secondly, and in order to facilitate this in the three small rooms of 41, Lower Addiscombe Road, the works measure no more than 30cm by 30cm – 1ft by 1ft in old money.

What’s a Greek earn, Ern?: Stathis Dimitriadis’  lekythos

Well… almost. A few of the artists went slightly over, so the brief was altered to accommodate this. Now “all works can be no bigger than 1,000cm²”.

The London Group has quite a history, peppered with names that should ring the bells of many an Inside Croydon reader. Formed shortly before the outbreak of World War I, its first exhibition was in 1914. Walter Sickert was a founding member. In the 1920s, many of the Bloomsbury Group, those who, according to Dorothy Parker, “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”, were members of the London Group as, in later years, were the sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

Unlike the Royal Academy of Arts, the august organisation that they were set up to rival, the London Group does not have Burlington House, nor anything like it in which to house their exhibitions. This is where Paul Hall, the owner and curator of Croydon Art Space comes in.

Hall has made it his mission to bring the finest of fine art to Croydon, and so his current collaboration with the London Group represents a symbiotic relationship: the art gets a home and Lower Addiscombe Road gets to house the art, which is good news for Croydon.

The exhibition has only just opened (it runs until December 19, good timing if you are on the lookout for original Christmas presents) and already one work has sold. Ian Parker’s untitled acrylic on MDF seems to greet you on arrival at the gallery. However, it boasts the tell-tale little red dot on the information panel below it. It appears to have been well-priced at £250.

Mixed media: Hudson Buoys by Paul Tecklenberg

The mixed media of Paul Tecklenberg’s Hudson Buoys works to stunning effect, and is one of several three-dimensional pieces that (literally) stand out in a collection based on surface area. Its concrete casts of plastic water bottles subvert the title of the piece and provide provocative backdrops for the silver gelatine photographs of Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge printed on them.

Likewise, Martin Darbyshire’s Eternal Rhythm stands out from the gallery wall, looking something like a primitive cyberpunk surreal telephone. You almost want to wind it up and speak into the ceramic speaker and call Planet Earth. It is made of “pinewood, glazed stoneware and found objet”. The last of these is, of course, usually rendered objet trouvé because, in the rarified world of art, French sounds cooler than English. Interestingly, if you Google objet trouvé, you get directed towards the lost property department of the French state rail company. Life can be mundane, even on the Champs Elysées.

Digitally manipulated: Sandra Crisp’s emoji-deconstructed 4.2

Another notable piece is Stathis Dimitriadis’ glazed lekythos (oil flask) with the grafitto-etched slogan patris – thriskeia – oikogeneia (homeland – religion – family). It is a simple, beautiful piece. What’s a Grecian urn? In this case £560, if it sells.

There are, of course, several two-dimensional works.

A couple, two very different pieces, particularly caught my attention. Sandra Crisp’s emoji-deconstructed [4.2] a digitally-manipulated image on acrylic (29cm x 34cm), and Peter Clossick’s oil painting Jane Reading (32cm x 29cm).

But it is all rather subjective, isn’t it?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (“Get it out with Optrex”, as Spike Milligan said in one of his poems) and all that. In fact, the beauty of this collection is in its very diversity. Put simply, there is something for everyone here. So go along, because we all deserve to see nice things.

Croydon Art Space is tiny, and this exhibition is likely to attract many, so you need to book in advance.

More by Ken Towl:

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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