Private view: Thursday 28 April 5-8pm
Not finding a pose: Marilyn Hallam | 28 April - 21 May 2022
Bobinska Brownlee New River
38 Tower Court, London N1 2US
Bobinska Brownlee are delighted to present large scale paintings by Marilyn Hallam - exquisite painterly compositions of four women and one man in domestic interiors.
Hallam’s choice of subject matter is conservative, even pointedly commonplace: views through a window, interiors, still life, people by the sea. However, there is nothing conservative or commonplace about the treatment. In 1994 I wrote of this work: ” …treated here without a trace of that secondhand softness that sometimes tries to pass for the Bonnardesque … the paintings are tough and put together with a cool lightness of hand which conceals the lucid pictorial intelligence which has gone into their making.”
What I had not taken wholly on board at that time is the highly evolved artifice involved in these complex works. Despite being figurative, or ‘depictive’ as Hallam prefers, these are not naturalistic paintings. Every component is subject to the demands made by considerations of scale, surface flatness, edge and design, the literal facture and objective truths of what a painting actually is.
Cuillin Bantock, 2008
These are brilliantly constructed paintings, filled with light and a masterly touch. They are also beautiful paeans to a life lived in art.
Marilyn Hallam was born in Yorkshire in 1947. She studied fine art at the University of Reading where she met and married the painter Clyde Hopkins.
Solo exhibitions include the early Bakehouse Gallery, Vortex Gallery, Smith Jariwala Galleries, Against the Grain SE1 Gallery London and Towner Gallery Eastbourne. Group shows include Castlefield Manchester with Paul Tonkin and Jeff Hollow; Art in Hospitals Project Hastings with Clyde Hopkins, opened by Adrian Berg and Three Artists; Hastings Museum and Art Gallery; Platform 72 MOMA Oxford, curated by Nick Serota; Whitechapel Open selected by Bert Irvin; Contemporary Art Society Market; The Spirit of London Festival Hall; Rooms, curated by Jenni Lomax; Watercolour Curwen Gallery, curated by Joan Key. Art 91 Olympia; Made in Greenwich, curated by Cuillin Bantock (catalogue);Stormont Studios, Rye; Delight at the Holden Gallery Manchester, curated by David Sweet (catalogue); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2003 & 2012); Clifford Chance/University of Greenwich 2011 (catalogue), Small is Beautiful Flowers East 2014. Hallam’s work is held in numerous public, private and corporate collections in the United Kingdom, Europe and USA.
Bobinska Brownlee New River is a continuation of the original galleries in east London - www.monikabobinska.com and CANAL.
The new project, founded by Monika Bobinska and Barbara Brownlee, is located in a domestic setting in Islington, north London.
38 Tower Court, London N1 2US
For more information contact us on 00 44 (0)786 606 3663
Gallery hours: Thurs-Sat 2-6pm or by appointment