RHYTHM & GEOMETRY an Art Exhibition 2023 - event details

Image source Sainsbury Centre: Variable Screw, 1967 by Kenneth Martin. Sainsbury Centre Collection © The Estate of Kenneth Martin

Calling art history students, mid-century art and design enthusiasts, those with an interest in modernism; art lovers, art appreciators, families and their young explorers. I wanted to reach you all, and to let you know there is a really interesting and worthwhile exhibition at Nottingham's Lakeside Arts Centre.

The recently launched (07 April 2023) touring art exhibition Constructivisit Art in Britain Since 1951 RHYTHM & GEOMETRY - is a collection of abstract and constructed art, created from 1950s to present day. Many of these works exhibited in public for the first time in decades.

The collection includes sculpture and relief sculpture, mobiles, painting, drawing, etc., sharing in a common language of geometry, bold colours and industrial design, and is presently encompassed within the exhibition at the Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside Arts.

This exhibition marks a bequest to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia (UEA), by collectors Joyce and Michael Morris, and it follows Lakeside Arts’ 2016 exhibition, also in the Djanogly Gallery, Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality, which revealed artist, Victor Pasmore’s transition in the 1940s and 50s from paintings of conventional subjects, to constructed abstract reliefs made in wood and Perspex.

Image Source: Sainsbury Centre The wooden/metallic tower like sculpture, credit as: Climbing Form, Mary Martin, 1957 @ Sainsbury Centre Collection © Estate of Mary Martin

 
RHYTHM & GEOMETRY opens with an important group of sculptures and reliefs by Pasmore, and fellow constructionists who were on a similar path in developing abstraction throughout the 1940s/50s. 1951 was to prove a significant turning point in the arts in Britain when The Festival of Britain was staged across the country to celebrate the arts, sciences, technology, and industrial design. In the same year, the first exhibition devoted to abstract art since before WWII was presented by the Artists’ International Association where both Pasmore and artist, Mary Martin, made their first relief sculptures, and artist, Kenneth Martin his first mobile.

RHYTHM & GEOMETRY then proceeds to examine how artists in the 1950s used mathematical or scientific principles – including early computer-based coding – to create their art. Some artists in the 1960s experimented with works that involved the active participation of the viewer to move magnetic parts or manipulate their sculptures in other ways, while kinetic art works might involve motorised elements that caused them to actually move. 

Other artists took their abstraction into different realms exploring the emotive and optical effects of colour and pattern. The exhibition ends with younger generations of painters and printmakers collected by the Sainsbury Centre who have engaged in geometric abstraction since the 1960s. 

Apart from those mentioned other artists include: Robert Adams, Lygia Clark; Anthony Hill; Francois Morellet; Takis; Mary Webb; Victor Vasarely; Gillian Wise and Li Yuan-Chia.

“the overwhelming sense I get from this work is of a real optimism for the future. These artists – sometimes working together with architects – were part of the rebuilding of the country and culture after the war. Their art speaks strongly of faith in science and the idea of progress. I’m also struck by how familiar their particular brand of abstraction now feels, how much has been absorbed through the popularity of mid-century furniture design and minimalist interiors.” Neil Walker (2023) Head of Visual Arts at Lakeside

Lakeside Arts are holding a number of events relating to the exhibition including lectures and tours - details of which can be found on the website

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with new photography and research. Also available is an Arts Investigator for children.

Constructivisit Art in Britain Since 1951 RHYTHM & GEOMETRY is at Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, and is open at various times until Sunday 23 July 2023. Admission Free. 

References 

Lakeside Arts RHYTHM AND GEOMETRY: CONSTRUCTIVIST ART IN BRITAIN SINCE 1951 Press Release March 2023

Lakeside Arts

https://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/exhibitions/event/5770/rhythm-geometry-exhibition.html

Sainsbury Centre https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/art-and-objects/31208-variable-screw/