Hard Paper

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

H_A_R_D_P_A_P_E_R

Phoenix Art Space, 2 March – 14 April 2024

Abstract art has been around for a little over a century – or is many millennia old. It depends on how, and what, you count. Either timespan puts into perspective recent market-led claims of the return of abstraction or its demise at the hands of figuration. Abstraction is a fact of the artistic landscape, continuing whether or not institutional curators, art journalists, blue-chip galleries or wealthy collectors are paying attention.

The current show is a broad and egalitarian view of current activity. It is the third in a series of exhibitions and the first to concentrate on works on paper. Participants in the previous iterations were asked to nominate another artist to join them. Each exhibiting artist chose which work of theirs would be shown. More than fifty artists were included, ranging from their mid-twenties to their mid-eighties, with most probably somewhere in the middle. Amongst them are two who have recently passed away – Jane Harris and Pete Hoida.

The work presented in H_A_R_D_P_A_P_E_R is diverse enough that there are exceptions to all general statements about it. I would be surprised if the curators agreed on a definition of abstract art (or, as they prefer, non-objective art) and completely amazed if anything like a consensus could be reached amongst the exhibiting artists. The point is not to advance a particular position, but to show something of the range of approaches that abstraction sustains. The development of abstract art in the twentieth century was fuelled and enriched by frequent and often intense polemics. Ironically, this succession of narrow views revealed abstraction’s openness, the impossibility of tying it down to a single definition. Abstract art is a matter of family resemblance rather than essence.

All that being said, some dominant (if never exclusive) themes can be drawn from the work chosen for H_A_R_D_P_A_P_E_R. This is a natural consequence of the taste of the four curators, and the artistic/social circles they move in. There is a tendency toward geometry, and correspondingly less self-expressive or ‘painterly’ painting. Geometry tends to be home-spun and improvised rather than mathematical or idealised. Brevity is preferred to complexity, concision and clarity to extravagance or overt drama. There is a concern for painting as an object, a particular material brought into a particular order, rather than painting as a screen or window where illusions are created. Colour is correspondingly simple and direct.

What is ‘hard’ about this? For me the exhibition promises pleasure rather than difficulty. Yet perhaps our pleasure will increase if we approach the exhibition as a challenge, one where we attempt to be as open as possible to each work as an individual thing, and to the myriad surprises on offer as these individuals meet for the first time.

Sam Cornish, February 2024

Philip Cole These Days

Stig Evans blue strike study 2

David Webb Kakopetria (Ochre)

Richard Graville POUR DRAWING_01 (2024)

Helen G Blake

Jane Harris Edges on Edge Red. Courtesy of CLOSELtd

Jessie Yates Walking through