Saturday, June 24, 2023

Review: New English Art Club Annual Exhibition 2023

When I walked into the Private View of the Annual Exhibition 2023 of the New English Art Club (NEAC) yesterday, I was immediately struck by the new approach to hanging the exhibition in the East Gallery (see my Facebook banner this week!)

The East Gallery on Private View Day

For the very first time large artworks have been grouped and hung from the top to the bottom of the East Wall. 

Plus the acronym NEAC is very strident on the north walls of both the East and West Galleries.

West Gallery - Preview Day

It shouts "presence" - and coincides with the Summer Exhibition 2023 of the Royal Academy of Arts - from which the founding members of NEAC broke away back in 1885 to provide an alternative venue for showing art.

Since then it has become the national art society that members of other national art societies want to be members of. Indeed, when the artists selected from the open entry are reviewed, very many of them are members of other art societies and some are candidates for membership.

However, having both on at the same time provides an excellent reason for those outside London to make a trip (and possibly stay over) and visit both on a back to back basis!

This is a review of the exhibition. I cover:

  • how to see the exhibition
  • events during the exhibition
  • observations on the exhibition
  • artwork I liked
I'll be doing the stats about percentage of artists / artworks / sales relating to the open entry in a future blog post. 

How to see NEAC Annual Exhibition 2023  


I would ALWAYS recommend that all those wanting to submit work to the exhibition try and make an effort to see it in person.

You can:
Works are also available to buy both in the gallery and online - but will remain hanging in the exhibition until it has finished. There was a healthy show of red dots at the Private View. 

I'll be doing my statistics review of the show - including prices and sales and the ratio of members to open artists at a later date.

Two paintings by Judith Gardner NEAC RBA
her paintings snapped up fast as per usual

Exhibition Tours and Events

You can find out more details on NEAC Events Programme

Prizes and Awards


You can read about The New English Art Club 2023 | Award Winners in this post. I've highlighted some of them in my albums of photos on Facebook.

View of part of the West Gallery

Observations about NEAC Annual Exhibition 2023

My observations this year are based on assertions in the catalogue and observations in the galleries on broad themes which are recurrent across exhibitions.

View of West Gallery on the afternoon of Private View Day

Bold claims matched by reality?

NEAC has never been afraid of making some bold claims. Below is a quotation from the email about the opening of the exhibition. While I would certainly agree with the second paragraph, the first is maybe rather over ambitious. I think there are one or two other art societies which might want to dispute this assertion.
The New English Art Club (NEAC) exhibits the very best in figurative, observational and painterly work in the UK.

The NEAC Annual Exhibition showcases paintings, drawings, and prints from its elected members alongside work by emerging artists whose ethos reflects its own: informed by the visual world and personal interpretation, while underpinned by drawing.
When you make a claim as bold as this - you have to live up to it.

While I was impressed by the size of the paintings and the boldness of the hang - and the complete mix of member and open artist artworks across all three galleries - I'm not sure it's the best NEAC Exhibition I've ever seen (and I've been visiting them for c.20 years or more).

My argument would be that NEAC can only assert it's the very best exhibition to see if you like figurative, observational and painterly artwork IF all the art it shows is representative of the best there is - and there is no serious competition. That would also assume Council members have all been to see the competition!

The preface to the catalogue asserts that it is a bizarre request to ask artists to only put forward their best work for exhibitions - and yet I'd suggest this is maybe not such a silly thing to say. 

There's certainly lots of really excellent drawings, paintings and fine art prints in the show (although sadly far too few of the latter) but there's also artwork - by both members and open entrants which is not quite top notch.  

For example, yet again I saw artwork by older members which is a pale imitation of their best work. (A phenomenon which often happens as artists age).  
  • Should work be included which is self-evidently a study rather than a finished painting? 
  • Should an artist never be asked if this is the best they can do right now? 
  • Or is this an artwork from the stacks - completed many years earlier?  
Some art societies have resolved this by now vetting all submissions by members - and we have seen much better exhibitions as a result.  Others include one really good artwork from what is submitted and then rigorously vet the rest.

A classic example of the one really good artwork was a delightful small oil painting of Spring by Diana Armfield which had been snapped up very fast despite it selling for £5,000. There again it is by Diana Armfield and she is now 103, so we can't expect to see many more by her in a NEAC Exhibition. (PS Her family conveyed to me that she was touched by the blog post I wrote about her three years ago on her 100th birthday - see Diana Armfield Timeline on her 100th Birthday)

Diana Armfield RA Hon PS HNEAC
Oil; 18 x 26.5 cm (30.5 x 38.5 cm framed)

On the topic of "the best", I'd also like to see a bit more intervention on the framing. There's an excellent portrait in the far north gallery which has the most awful frame. I looked at it and it just screamed "must be reframed" right back at me i.e. extremely unlikely to sell because of the additional expense of reframing. 

I'd love to see a more rigorous approach taken on presentation and framing - from much more explicit and useful guidance up front to ALL who have work hung in the exhibition (and that includes members) through to refusing to hang any work where the frame is "not up to snuff".

It's not difficult to frame to a good standard - and that need not mean customised expensive framing given there are plenty of places which produce very decent quality standard sized frames for very decent affordable prices. Including ones which an artist can customise to their taste - and that of the current buying public!

Innovation

We dread hearing "not another xxx from yyy and yearn to hear "Wow! What a remarkable painting!"
I couldn't agree more. It's certainly the case at some of the FBA exhibitions at the Mall Galleries that I've been looking at the same style of paintings of the same subjects by the same artists for years if not decades! It's like looking at the same wallpaper for decades. Times change, tastes change, people move on - and so do artists.

It's much more satisfying to me to see an artist maintain their style - but be constantly looking around for new subject matter to record. Such is the case with Peter Brown, the President of NEAC who is an excellent street scene and landscape painter. He was out plein air painting on the day of the Queen's Funeral and includes three paintings in the exhibition of that day - one of which won a prize. For the record I'd have given it to this one!

Peter Brown PNEAC RP ROI PS RBA
Oil on board; 20 x 61 cm (28 x 69 cm framed)

I love Paul Newland NEAC RWS's paintings - but would prefer to see him submit at least some watercolours which I think is the medium he works best in. His oil paintings this year were all quite muted and IMO nowhere near the best he can do.

Subjects


The thing I was slightly surprised about is that I saw less new subjects painted by artists I know and seen many times before. One of the phenomena of the pandemic was the way people were circumscribed by where they lived to what they could paint - and many started painting new subjects for the first time.

To be honest I didn't see a lot of evidence of this - which surprised me. I've certainly seen more in other shows.

Size


The one thing which struck me was how many more big paintings there were - and yet a decent selection of smaller and more affordable artworks too.

It was almost as if the email had gone out "bring me your big paintings!". There were certainly some very impressive larger works by non-members.

I might be wrong. It may be that because there was a decision not to use any extra display walls the galleries are very open - and what you can see is what you can assess.

Monochrome


I am more and more impressed by the monochrome walls / sections / galleries of artwork I am seeing in different exhibitions at the Mall Galleries - and this exhibition was no exception.

While I absolutely love colour, I have the greatest admiration for those who can conjure an interesting and effective artwork out of monochrome or near monochrome. There were certainly a number to admire at this exhibition (see below for some).

Catalogue


I'm very bemused by the catalogue. It's an exercise in making changes to no good effect. It seems to have tried to have gone very up market - and increased significantly in price as a result to £15.

Frankly, now is emphatically NOT the time to make discretionary spend MORE expensive.

As any Finance Manager (and I used to be one) will tell you - income is a product of volume of sales and price. Put up the latter and you are at risk of decreasing the former - and actually netting less income overall compared to past years as well. 

If it was done to try and make more money I predict it will fail to achieve its objective. I rather suspect there will be a lot of unsold catalogues at the end of the exhibition - which may well turn out to be an expensive mistake.

If it had been done because of the tributes to the four deceased members I might understand, but the main purpose seemed to be to increase the number of image pages so each artist had one page for an image of one artwork. Which would be OK if the colour printing was top notch - but it's not. Most of the images are curiously muted. Interestingly the printer has no reference or advert in the catalogue - always a bad sign in my book.

The old version of Mall Galleries catalogue were very satisfactory. Told you all the essentials, provided images of some of the artwork and were nice and lightweight and bendy which made them easy to tuck in pockets or handbags to take home. I see no benefit whatsoever in a heavier, less bendy and much more expensive catalogue with colour printing which could be much better than it is. 


Artwork I liked

...and now for what I liked! It's very far from all I liked as there's lots of like in this exhibition. It passes my universal exhibition quality test of "can I remember the walls and what was on them the next day?".  Not all of them - but most.

I was very struck by the very panoramic view of suburbia painted by Lia Hattersley. It well deserved its prestige placement beneath the NEAC sign in the East Gallery. It's a painting which is like "everyman" - a view from a bedroom which is similar to a lot of others in leafy suburbia and at the same time uses the colour palette and tones to make the shapes intriguing. You want to stand looking for a long time....

“December Morning Sunlight across our Gardens and Beyond”
( 3 panels total 155 cm by 50 cm - framed in walnut)

The urban equivalent was provided by Melissa Scott Miller RP NEAC RBA - who specialises in paintings of the complex patterns and buildings found in London in general and Islington in particular. Melissa is a multiple award winning artist whose complex paintings of urban scenes are also extremely popular. As an artist she she is also a great example of somebody who can charge large sums for her paintings and achieve them - as I see again and again in exhibitions at the Mall Galleries. 

Melissa Scott-Miller RP NEAC RBA
Oil on canvas, 102 x 77 cm


A third female artist whose work I liked is Felicity House PS. In part because she draws so well and is a master of her dry medium - charcoal and pastels. This year she is a candidate for membership for NEAC and I was very pleased to see that with this drawing she became a Joint Winner of the The NEAC Critics' Prize. You can find it in the 'almost monochrome' section in the North Gallery.


At the Printmakers by Felicity House PS
watercolour and pastel
58 x 82 cm (72 x 96 cm framed)

Hanging nearby in a very effective monochrome section in the North Gallery was this artwork by Mark Curtis Hughes. I was very surprised this did not win a prize given the innovation as to how it was made - through freehand papercutting. It's artwork with a scalpel in hand......


12% Pantomime by Mark Curtis Hughes
Freehand papercut; 70 x 100 cm (80 x 110 cm framed)

I really liked these three paintings hung one above the other - inspired! They all really made me stand and stare. From the top they are:

Three paintings which caught my eye

Finally, I paid homage at the tribute to Fred Cuming RA NEAC (1930-2022) who was one of the youngest painters ever elected to the RA.  There are four artists who get an obit exhibit of a number of pieces - but the one that really mattered to me was Fred Cuming. I've always thought his paintings were utterly sublime due to his wonderful use of colour and an ability to see the abstract in the real and the ability to ground the abstract in the real. I always used to like working out how many colours he'd included in his skies! (See my posts Fred Cuming 1930-2022 and Video: Fred Cuming RA)

Three paintings by Fred Cuming (Not for Sale)

The other artists are:
  • Anthony Green (1939-2023)
  • Ken Howard (1932-2022) - there's a wonderful Eulogy for Ken Howard - given by Peter Brown (President of NEAC) at his Memorial Service - on the NEAC website
  • Dawn Siddoli (1933-2022)

My next blog post will review:
  • number of artists exhibiting - members and open
  • number of artworks exhibited - split between members and open
  • number of sales of artworks - categorised by price band and split between members and open artists.
It provides useful data for both members and open artists to ponder on....
Posted by Making A Mark on Saturday, June 24, 2023
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