Cathy's Art Diary

Strange but nice exhibition at the Vigo Gallery of new work by Amir Nikravan. The works were wall sculptures made of plaster and wood covered in canvas and painted. They were large curved shapes with tray like shapes within them. Those sections were textured which was added to with subtle shadowing. They were painted in lovely strong pastel colours. The gallery didn’t seem to have a press release on the day so it’s only since that I’ve learnt from the website that the work is response to modernist architecture and I can see that in the way they mirror the texture of concrete but wouldn’t it be nice if all Modernist buildings were in these lovely colours! Closing on 28 February 2019

Fascinating exhibition at Vigo of new work by Kadar Brock. This is definitely a show where it’s worth picking up the press release. On first glance I couldn’t work out these pictures which just seemed to be flecks of colour on pale canvases with holes in. However on reading the blurb I realised he paints a picture and then undoes it with a razor blade, primer and a sander then repaints on that surface sometimes repeating that process until he has a work he is happy with. Each work has traces of the previous work. I thought this was such an interesting idea making the works objects rather than paintings. I loved looking at the detail of the surface once you know what had happened to it, as the commentary says “What remains are strange ghosts and echoes.” It was a nice touch to include a more usual picture which I assume is the starting point for these works and the more usual image that they start out as. Closes on 8 November 2016