RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (31 May-6 Jun)

Posted: 31 May 2013 by Sam Phillips

Gary Hume / Patrick Caulfield
Tate Britain, 5 June – 1 September 2013
Waddington Custot Galleries, 5 June – 29 June 2013
And a reminder that Tate Britain’s exhibitions of Academicians Gary Hume and Patrick Caulfield open on Wednesday. Both should be special shows in their own right, but are also complementary – Tate is offering a joint ticket, to encourage them to be seen in parallel. Simon Wilson compares and contrasts the two in the recent issue of RA Magazine, available online to read here.

_{Patrick Caulfield, 'Perfume Jar', 1964. Acrylic on board. 36 x 84 in / 91.4 x 213.4 cm.}

Caulfield showed regularly at Waddington Custot Galleries on Cork Street during his career, and the gallery has taken the opportunity of the Tate exhibition to present a concurrent survey of 40 works this summer, also opening to the public on Wednesday.

Sheila Hicks
Alison Jacques Gallery, until 29 June 2013
For over fifty years Nebraska-born Sheila Hicks has redefined weaving as an artistic practice, twisting ropes, linens, threads and cords into not just tapestries but sensuous large-scale sculptures that hang from floors and walls or rest on plinths.

_{Installation view of 'Sheila Hicks: Pêcher dan la Rivière', 24 May - 29 June 2013. Courtesy Alison Jacques Gallery. © Michael Brzezinski.}

The Met, MoMA, Stedelijk and Pompidou hold her works, which are notable for their wonderfully varied texture, scale and colour (Hicks was a student of Josef Albers). This week has seen her first UK solo exhibition – so long overdue – on display at Alison Jacques Gallery in London’s Fitzrovia.

_{Brownfield Estate nominated by Owen Hatherley (The Guardian). Photography by Theo Simpson.} Lesser Known Architecture
Design Museum, 4 June – 22 July 2013
An alternative guide to London’s architecture is on offer at the small free exhibition at the Design Museum that opens on Tuesday.

The Southwark venue has asked architecture critics to spotlight buildings in the city that should really have more attention given to them.

The ten chosen are shown in photographic form in the show and an accompanying publication, in which the critics explain why their structure should be considered part of the canon.

Highlights range from rough diamonds such as Tower Hamlets’ Brownfield Estate to the Gothic grandeur of Nunhead Cemetery.

_{Tim Rollins and K.O.S, from the series: The Origin of Species after Darwin. © the artists, courtesy Maureen Paley, London.} Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Maureen Paley, 4 June — 14 July 2013
Since the early 1980s, the artist, activist and educator Tim Rollins has been collaborating with members of K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), a rotating group of Bronx-based students categorized as economically or socially ‘at risk’. Rollins integrates art lessons with reading and writing classes.

The resulting art objects the group makes take the form of drawings, photographs, sculptures and paintings, inspired by source material studied from figures such as Shakespeare, Strauss, Darwin and H.G. Wells. The latter’s Time Traveller (1895) is the starting point of the group’s latest exhibition, on view at Maureen Paley, London, from Tuesday.

_{Geoff Uglow, 'Rupert B', 2013. Oil on linen. Size: 48 1/8 x 59 7/8 in. 122 x 152 cm.} Geoff Uglow
Last chance: Connaught Brown, until 1 June 2013
Although it easy to criticise art fairs as art overload, there are always discoveries; a recent one for me was Geoff Uglow, shown by Connaught Brown at the January’s London Art Fair.

Tomorrow is the last chance to visit his solo show at the gallery, around the corner from the Royal Academy.

Uglow’s signature semi-figurative style sees unguent-like layers of oil spread thickly in just two colours, but with the dark foreground and light background blurring and swirling into each other before the eye.

The works in the series on show take the shape of the English Oak as their starting point. If you don’t have time to make it down there, check out their online catalogue here.

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