Art Exhibitions on your Doorstep!

KidsArt is proud to have been invited to the press openings of a number of art exhibitions, so we have prepared a review of some exhibitions in and around London which you may wish to visit over the summer. KidsArt is running trips to The Saatchi Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, and the National Gallery to visit the exhibition “Making Colour”. All the exhibitions reviewed are fascinating, stimulating and thought-provoking days out for adults and children, and have “added value” for children, eg, fountains to play in at the Saatchi Gallery, and gardens at Perry Green (Henry Moore).

Pangaea - Saatchi Gallery

Pangaea was a super-continent that existed 300 million years ago which included nearly all the of the earth's land masses today. Pangaea split into Laurasia (broadly North America, Europe and Asia) and Gondwanaland (India, Africa, South America and Australia). The exhibition comprises art from modern day Africa and South America so perhaps Gondwanaland rather than Pangaea would have been a better name, although even then one would expect ancient artefacts. That aside, the exhibition which is modern art is fascinating, and suitable for children as well as adults, and the Saatchi Gallery have produced a special audio track for under 8s at nominal cost which was much enjoyed by the 7 and 8 year olds that I went with.

At the beginning of the exhibition is Rafael Gomezbarros's enormous installation of giant ants, which climb the walls and cluster in a corner in ant-like fashion. Each ant has a leg span of nearly a meter, and the head and back parts are made from life-size casts of human skulls. The installation actually

concerns the plight of the world's migrant workers and asylum seekers, too often viewed as vermin, although this wasn't necessarily clear without the commentary.

The highlights of the exhibition are the works by Aboudia (born in 1983), a young Ivory Coast artist with exceptional ability. His works largely are about the civil war which raged in his country. Daloa 29 (above) is 4 meters long and shows Aboudia's furious and powerful vision of gun-carrying skeletons, and Enfants de la Rue (below) shows an energetic portrait of everyday urban life for homeless children, eyes shocked by violence, a mix of collage, overlapping figures, and grafitti-type scrawl.

Saatchi Gallery until 2nd November 2014 - admission free. If you go on a hot day with children, take a change of clothes for them - there is a lovely fountain they can play in - lots of fun.

Making Colour – National Gallery

Fascinating exhibition about how colour was made. The exhibition takes you through a rainbow of different rooms, shows how each colour was produced, and illustrates which colours have altered over the years, and why. The rooms are arranged roughly by rainbow colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, silver and gold, and there is an interesting illustration of the use of colour theory

in the artwork of the Impressionists. Most of the paintings come from the National’s own collection, so one could view them without paying the admission price for the exhibition, but the justification for paying to see what is otherwise free is the fascinating descriptions, film clips, and mineral / beetle / pigment samples on display, and the clear understanding that one gleans of how colours were made and may have changed over time. For example many Renaissance painters used green as a base layer for skin, which helped to define the shadows, but in many paintings (as in the one below – Ghirlandaio’s Virgin and Child with St John, 1490ish) the pink has partly disappeared, leaving more green than the artist intended.

The very opulent, dramatic blues were made from grinding lapis lazuli, mined in Afghanistan, and the resulting blue paint was more expensive that gold – you can see from the painting below how it has retained its iridescent glory.

National Gallery until 7th September. Admission charges apply.

Henry Moore Foundation – Perry Green

Hoglands at Perry Green in Much Hadham is where Henry Moore, sometimes thought of as the father of 20th century British sculpture, lived and worked from 1941 until his death in 1986. The gardens of Hoglands, laid out by Henry’s wife Irina, form a sculpture garden containing around 30 of Moore’s large scale works, and one can also see the house, the outhouses he worked in and the many “found objects” which gave him inspiration.

Henry Moore was born on 30th July 1898 in Castleford in Yorkshire, the son of a coal miner, who was determined that his children should have opportunities in life. His most famous works are his massive bronze sculptures. These are usually abstract versions of the human form, or inspired by natural objects such as bones, enlarged many times. His pieces often contain hollow spaces.

Large Totem Head 1968

Moore's believed that to maintain interest, a sculpture must have a sense of mystery. He felt that “Large Totem Head” brought to mind a huge impassive face with eyes, although children often view it as a giant ant’s head.

Moore planned his sculptures to be viewed from all around, against changing seasons, although the gardens are only open from April to October.

1981 – Reclining Woman “In my reclining figures I have often made a sort of looming leg - the top leg in the sculpture projecting over the lower leg - as a large branch of a tree might move outwards from the main limb - or as a seaside cliff might overhang from below if you are on the beach" - Henry Moore.

You wander through fields of sheep (and lambs if you go in Spring) to reach some of the sculptures, which the children with us really loved. These monumental sculptures are endlessly fascinating, beautiful and memorable – full of unexpected curves, shapes, and voids, blending with the stunning natural backdrop of the gardens.

Perry Green is open until 26th October this year, and will re-open in the spring of next year. There is a charge for admission.

“Body & Void: Echoes of Moore in Contemporary Art” - Perry Green

The exhibition features artworks by Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, and other well-known and lesser known contemporary artists. The aim of the exhibition is to draw links between Moore’s analysis of internal space (the large voids and objects inside objects in his sculptures) and the human body, and to show how Moore’s ideas have been taken in different directions by contemporary artists. The link is fairy tenuous - Moore’s works are entirely harmonious, still, apolitical and non-confrontational, in stark contrast to much of the work featured in the Body and Void exhibition. The exhibition is interesting, and appealing – including life-size cow and calf by Damien Hirst, cut in half

and mounted in tanks of formaldehyde – you can walk through the two halves and see all the preserved insides.

Rachel Whiteread’s inside-out shed continues Whiteread’s interest in showing the voids inside objects, much as Moore did, but in a very different way. Her work is a concrete cast of the inside of a garden shed, a humorous commentary on Moore’s beautiful organic sculptures among which it sits:

The exhibition runs until until 26th October 2014. There is a charge for admission.

Serpentine Gallery Pavillion 2014

Each year the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park hosts an architectural competition to create a temporary summer pavilion aimed at architects who have not build in the UK before. The winning pavilion is built in front of the Serpentine Gallery, and this year the winner was Chilean architect Smiljan Radic. He is interested in the conflict between the public and the private, and his pavilion was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s story “The Selfish Giant”, which concerns a giant who refuses to let the children play in his beautiful gardens, whereupon the gardens become permanently cloaked with winter until he relents.

Radic’s design, which looks like a UFO, is a white translucent fibreglass shell which glows at night, and rests on a ring of stones, with a grassy inside.

The Pavilion is open until 26th October – there is no charge for admission. Café inside, and of course Hyde Park to explore as well.

By Barbara Kay, KidsArt - art and art appreciation classes for children. For information please visit www.facebook.com/kidsartwoodsidepark or call Barbara on 07827-275821