LONDON.- UPSTONE Soho launched on 14 November 2019 with an exhibition of new works by the acclaimed British artist Keith Coventry.
The venture, a collaboration between Robert Upstone, formerly the Head of Modern British Art at the Tate, and the artist Graham Snow, focuses on British art of the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries.
Coventry’s exhibition is comprised of more than 20 collage works which reference and conflate two outdated cultural forms, the ‘Old Comedy’ of Aristophanes with modernist, Bauhaus-like abstract compositions. The collage materials include lollipop-like sticks that have printed on them the crude humour that delighted huge audiences in ancient Athens. The jokes now seem lost to us as many of them ridiculed well known figures of that time, while others retain their piquancy.
In some works, the paper used for the collages is nearly a hundred years old, which gives the impression the works are of that time. This unlikely combination of socially concerned humour and simple abstract forms reminds us of the enduring nature of some forms of art.
Says Robert Upstone: ‘As a gallery, we’re interested in old and new art, and believe that to make sense of it you have to let it sing together. Keith Coventry, a contemporary artist who responds to and develops prototypes of early constructivist modernism with brilliant dialogues and diverse references, is close to an embodiment of this ethos.’
Keith Coventry is a British artist who works in a diverse range of media encompassing both painting and sculpture. He combines an interest in social issue and urban depravation with humour and a fascination for history of art, as well as a further belief in the restorative powers of art.
Coventry studied for his BA at Brighton Polytechnic 1978-81 before completing his MA at the Chelsea School of Art in 1983. He was featured in the seminal exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997 and in September 2010 his Spectrum Jesus painting won the John Moores Painting Prize. He is represented by Pace gallery.
