EXHIBITION
11 May - 16 Jun 2024
Jock McFadyen: Made in Hackney 2
Made in Hackney 2, was a show of landscape paintings made in the artist's studio at London Fields.
Most paintings in the world are made inside, locked away from the subject, as were cave paintings 40,000 years ago. A good thing, as many of McFadyen's works measure 2 x 3 metres or more and would be impossible to cart over fields to do the plein air thing, although the pictures in this show are not huge and most are small enough to hang in a house. Canaletto also worked indoors, those gondoliers and clouds wouldn't have kept still for him. But McFadyen's pictures depict British territory, urban and pastoral, and sometimes they depict nothing much. Empty vistas and beaches hang with fleeting images of the built environment viewed from a train travelling at 100mph and others depict Scottish wilderness with a smidgen of city lights peeping in from the wings.
On this island the sea is never far away and neither is the city.
Venue:
The Grey Gallery
4 Helmsley Place, London Fields, E8 3SB
