RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (14–19 Sept)

Mali Morris RA: Back to Front
Eagle Gallery, until 13 October 2012

Mali Morris RA, 'Curved Corner', 2006. 13 x 18 cm. From this Friday Royal Academician Mali Morris presents a show of her radiant canvases at Emma Hill Fine Art, also known as Eagle Gallery due to its location above the eminently lunch-worthy Eagle pub in Clerkenwell. Mali’s abstract aesthetic is achieved by a process of layering in which wet paint is wiped to reveal the strata of pigment underneath. Both new and older works are on view, alongside a random selection of texts and images that has pinned on her studio walls for inspiration. For an entertaining introduction to the artist, read Sarah Greenberg’s Out to Lunch interview from the last issue of RA Magazine here.

Robert Motherwell, 'Delta', 1982. Aquatint, lift-ground etching and aquatint on German Etching paper. 68 x 80.7 cms (26 3/4 x 31 3/4 ins). Robert Motherwell: Prints from the Artist's Studio
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, until 6 October 2012‏
About a year after its memorable exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s works on paper, Bernard Jacobson Gallery in Cork Street has opened a show of the American Abstract Expressionist’s prints. One of the New York School’s chief theorists, Motherwell was an avid printmaker as well as a celebrated painter, so keen on print media that he purchased an etching and lithography press for his Connecticut studio. The exhibition focuses solely on his studio works, produced by a wide variety of printing techniques but sharing an emphasis on the emotional potential of gestural mark-making.

Aspen Magazine
Whitechapel Gallery, until March 2013
A gallery display at the Whitechapel introduces to a wider audience the groundbreaking magazine Aspen.

Installation view 'Aspen Magazine' at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2012. Photo: Patrick Lears. Courtesy Whitechapel Gallery.

Although conceived by a former editor of Women’s Wear Daily, Phyllis Johnson, the magazine’s approach was anything but mainstream: a mixed media publication, including elements as diverse as psychedelic stamps, Super 8 film and poster art, it featured contributions by visual artists including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg and Peter Blake RA and writers like William S. Boroughs and Roland Barthes. Such an ambitious publishing project proved financially unsustainable and only ten issues were produced, securing the magazine’s cult status.

Karolina Glusiec, 'Velocity', 2012. Hand-drawn animation. Jerwood Drawing Prize
Jerwood Space, until 28 October 2012
Polish-born London-based artist Karolina Glusiec has been awarded this year’s Jerwood Drawing Prize not for a work on paper but an animation, Velocity, whose images are entirely hand-drawn (for a trailer of her work, visit here. This and other shortlisted and commended works are on view until the end of October in the Jerwood’s London Bridge space; the selectors for the prize and its consistently high-quality exhibition include painter Lisa Milroy RA. After October the show tours to Hastings, Bournemouth and Birmingham.

Michael Kidner RA
Flowers East, until 20 October 2012
The early abstracts of Op Art pioneer Michael Kidner RA – who passed away in 2009 – form a show at Flowers East until mid-October.

Michael Kidner RA, 'Untitled', c.1960. Oil on linen. 124 x 151 cm. AFG 48132

Although Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely are the first names that come to mind when one thinks of the optically playful paintings that became popular from the 1960s, Kidner was also an important innovator in this area, participating in the seminal exhibition of Op Art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1965, ‘The Responsive Eye’. Flowers presents a number of works from this period that have never been displayed; a roll of unknown early paintings were discovered in his studio near Hampstead Heath after his death.

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and contributor to RA Magazine

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