Judy Blame: Never Again

29 Jun 2016 – 4 Sep 2016 at The Institute of Contemporary Arts

The first major solo exhibition by accessories designer, art director and fashion stylist Judy Blame.

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Safety pins, buttons, badges, pearls, bottle tops, cutlery, plastic bags, toy soldiers and keys form an inventory of objects that Blame has innovatively adapted to create his trademark jewellery and other accessories.

The exhibition is presented as a montage rather than a chronology that brings together an arrangement of artefacts, including clothing, collages, jewellery, fashion editorials, sketchbooks and T-shirts alongside unique commissions that bear witness to Blame’s tactile, thought-provoking, approach to fashion and his propensity towards collaboration and experimentation.

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Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic at the ICA

3 Feb 2016 – 10 Apr 2016

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The first UK solo presentation of works by Betty Woodman (born 1930), one of the most important contemporary artists working with ceramics today. The exhibition focuses on work Woodman has created in the last ten years, including a number of major new mixed media pieces.

Betty Woodman began making work in 1950 with clay as her chosen medium, and throughout her practice has constantly explored new directions and introduced new techniques and media. Woodman’s conceptual boldness and her ambitious experimentation—in which she combines such unlikely materials as lacquer paint on earthenware and terra sigillata, a slip glaze often used on ancient ceramics, on paper—have generated a unique series of innovations. Significantly, the ways in which she combines ceramics and painting in her three-dimensional works resonates with younger generations of artists.

All her work relates to her ceramics, their decorative design, imagery and unusual use of various media, and can be seen as a way of exploring her painterly sensibility. For many years she has focused on the vase, which over time has become her most salient subject. For Woodman, the vase can be a vessel, a human body, and animal figure, a metaphor, or an art-historical reference. Painting, particularly in recent years, plays a key role in the work of Betty Woodman. Her later works are large, colourful drawings and paintings on handmade paper or canvas that combine graphite, ink and lacquer with terra sigillata and wax. Her work alludes to and blends numerous sources, including Minoan and Egyptian art, Greek and Etruscan sculpture, Tang Dynasty works, majolica and Sèvres porcelain, Italian Baroque architecture, and the paintings of Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse.

https://www.ica.org.uk