Gallery V
Frederick Cuming RA, February Clouds Camber. Oil on canvas, 140 × 140 cm Photography: John Bodkin, DawkinsColour
Gus Cummins, responsible for the arrangement of this gallery, admits to beginning a hang ‘with no idea about the end result, and then noticing how somehow everything comes together. I think I’ve managed to achieve the appearance of a spacious hang here, even though I’ve managed to accommodate a large number of works. And all are works that appeal to me, are entertaining, or have quality of one kind or another. There’s too much work around these days that’s painfully worthy but does nothing for the guts or the spirit.’
A painting that does, at least for Cummins, is Oliver Akers Douglas’s Cuckoo, a grey impastoed landscape. It took Cummins by surprise: ‘It’s not the sort of thing I usually like,’ he says, ‘but this is weird, unsettling.’ He also finds ‘extraordinary alchemy’ in John Pickering’s small sculptures, which look like three-dimensional realisations of mathematical formulae. Quite different is Leaf by Anne Kyrrö Quinn, a composition made from folded felt which has then been stitched. ‘The effect is almost kinetic,’ says Cummins.
