After checking out the last day of Tony Albert's show with my one junior critic who was yet to see it we made our way back via Gallery Barry Keldoulis to see some more of Deborah Kelly's collages and to pay our respects given we had heard that he was closing up the physical space in Waterloo (which isn't a bad move if it means he does some pop-ups closer to town). As part of the lease ending he is accelerating his gallery programme with a number of artists getting a week for a show. Deborah Kelly has just had her turn so you've missed this although you can see her work online here.
This show is officially called Abide With Me, although I realised later it was mixed in with stockroom works from her previous two shows. There were a couple of large (200 x 110 cm) full body quasi nudes called The Magdalenes which made me view them with an air of catholic suspicion (Damien Hirst is right on the money when he comments that titles are vitally important to how you view a work) and a handful of smaller (40 x 60 cm) collages that visually look to run straight from her previous show, Awfully beastly. It is these smaller works that both the senior and junior critics of the Big Lamington contingent enjoyed. These are your frankenstein type creations where bits of everything are cut and glued together to make new creatures ... "pre-mammalian? And possibly post", just like the website says! You know, Deborah should put out an art app where you could build your own collage creatures, a la Robot Lab (which is currently iPad/iPhone game of the moment with the junior critics).
Points: 3 to Tota Pulchra Es (pictured above) which was great with all the colourful snakes (and reminded me of a great window display I saw once at the Bergdorf men's store in NY); 2 to Dream of a Common Language #5 and 1 point for the multitude of postcards on offer which my 4 year old collected about a half dozen of for some future art projects of our own.
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/davincicode/magdalen-later-art.html
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