What: KEITH COVENTRY’S PAINTING & SCULPTURE PART II: WORKS 2002-2009
Where: HAUNCH OF VENISON, 6 BURLINGTON GARDENS, LONDON W1S 3ET
When: 8 JUNE—15 AUGUST, DAILY
How (much?): FREE ADMISSION
WHAT THEY SAY: Works 2002-2009 will include an extraordinarily wide range of work, much of it overtly figurative, including major new works that have never before been exhibited. Coventry habitually works in series and the exhibition will showcase several important new groups of work. Echoes of Albany (2004-2008), is a series of more than 40 paintings which address the history of the mysterious Albany apartments, located next to Burlington Gardens, and are painted in the style of Walter Sickert's controversial Echoes. In contrast, the Anaesthesia as Aesthetic (2007-2008) series depict the apartments of early twentieth century Parisian art collectors in a reduced palette of flat colours.
WHAT WE SAY: Five of Haunch of Venison’s exhibition rooms on the first floor are re-painted to host Keith Coventry’s works. One would feel as if one were promenading in a stately home. There is, obviously, a theme, and the coherence of the works, for each room. There is a collection of Jesus and his apostles in red, pouty lips; and there is Echoes of Albany, a series of mysterious paintings reminiscent of a vintage comic book layout, depicting the amorally orgasmic subculture, the good and the bad of the 18th century. Setting aside the social criticism in Coventry’s works, we are thrilled by his subtle manipulation of colours, whilst Coventry’s pictorial narrative evokes the sense of curiosity, of voyeurism.
VERDICT: Ignore the queue at Abercrombie & Fitch and head for Coventry’s. Then, you’ll realize there is a (much better) world elsewhere!
What: ELIAS SIME’S TÄRÄT-TÄRÄT
Where: HAUNCH OF VENISON, 6 BURLINGTON GARDENS, LONDON W1S 3ET
When: 9 JUNE—15 AUGUST, DAILY
How (much?): FREE ADMISSION
WHAT THEY SAY: Tarat-Tarat, meaning story-story, reflects both the artist's retelling of poignant events experienced or observed as well as the integral role of storytelling within Ethiopian culture. At the beginning of the current decade, Sime began exhibiting works inspired by his travels throughout rural Ethiopia, and anthropological research of local culture. Elias Sime interprets stories from an imaginative point of view, and his work contains many poetic clues. Where sometimes the physical materials used are the source of inspiration for Sime's compositions, at other times the composition inspires the artist to search for specific materials that will best express his ideas.
WHAT WE SAY: An abstract retelling of Ethiopian culture, Sime’s exhibition brings something positively foreign to London’s art scene. Try the pygmy TVs, monkeys and frogs—all made of clay and straw—that swarms Haunch of Venison’s magnificent staircase, or the polychromes of yarn-and-button-stitched paintings in the Mezzanine gallery. There are stories, though diverse, behind Sime’s works, and as we may predict, they are not necessarily happy ones: the disappearing culture, the modernization, and the overt nostalgia. Sime believes in the transcendental role of the art, and by re-using non-traditional and uniquely Ethiopian materials to create his art pieces, Sime bridges the cultural gaps between Ethiopia and us.
VERDICT: Authentic, diasporal quirk.
Check out both exhibitions at Haunch of Venison, London.