Basil Beattie RA
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13 April - 11 May 2013
Talk by Basil Beattie - 2.30pm Saturday 27th April (Tickets in advance £10)
Basil Beattie is one of Britain’s most respected abstract painters, highlighted by a major show at Tate Britain in 2007. Amongst others, his work is in the collections of The Tate, Saatchi Gallery and the Arts Council. He studied at West Hartlepool College of Art, 1955 and at the Royal Academy Schools, London. He taught at Goldsmiths College London form the 1960s – 1990s where he taught the YBAs and gained a strong following amongst fellow artists. Whilst teaching at Goldsmiths Beattie became more and more aware of conceptual ideas that place language as central to contemporary art practice and challenge the importance of the expressive gesture in painting. Since 1987, seeking to get away from pure abstraction, he has developed a pictographic language which enables him to explore the symbolic and metaphorical associations that arise from these, whilst remaining committed to the physicality of the painted object as the means through which to decipher meaning.
This show at Hilton Fine Art deals with Beattie’s current paintings which have the collective title of the Janus series. Janus was the Roman God, originally of light, who opened the sky at daybreak and closed it at sunset. In time, he came to preside over all entrances and exits. He is often represented as having two faces, one in front and one behind, one to see into the future, and one to see into the past. In this series Beattie uses a stack of three units, sometimes four, to frame a series of horizons, often with perspectival suggestions of travel and journeys. However any resulting illusion of space is contradicted by the raw physicality of the paint. It has been suggested the framing units resemble rear view mirrors and windscreens. Beattie recognises and accepts these references simply because the view through the windscreen might be said to denote the future and the view in the rear view mirror, the past.
A powerful show by one of Britain’s foremost painters, as the Guardian art critic Adrian Searle puts it…… Looking at Beattie’s painting is a physical encounter, concrete and palpable as well as being an event which takes part in the eye and the imagination.
> Biography
Basil Beattie
Born 1935 West Hartlepool
Studied at the Royal Academy Schools
Taught at Goldsmiths’ College, London until 1998
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2013 Hilton Fine Art
2008 Basil Beattie Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland, New Zeland
2007 Basil Beattie Paintings from the Collections, TATE BRITAIN
2005 Marking a Year – Nick de Ville, catalogue introduction
2004 Stacks, Atkinson Gallery, Millfield
2002 Above and Below, Sadler’s Wells Theatre London
2000 Storey Gallery, Lancaster
1998 Todd Gallery, London
1997 Reg Vardy Arts Foundation Gallery, Sunderland
1997 Galerie Renate Bender, Munich
1996 Path Galerie, Aalst, Belgium
Todd Gallery, London
1995 Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham
Todd Gallery, London
1994 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
Newton Gallery, Johannesburg
1993 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
Maak Gallery, London
Todd Gallery, London
1991 Drawing on the Interior, Installation at the Eagle Gallery, London
1990 Curwen Gallery, London
1987 Curwen Gallery, London
1986 Gray’s Art Gallery, Hartlepool
1984 Bede Gallery, Jarrow
1982 Goldsmiths’ Gallery, London
1979 Newcastle Polytechnic
1978 New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh
1974 Hoya Gallery, London
1973 Consort Gallery, London
1971 Mayfair Gallery, London
1968 Greenwich Theatre Gallery. London
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009 Invisible cities - Jerwood Gallery London
2005 Spiral of Time, OHHS Gallery, London
2003 Drawn to be alive, Hales Gallery London
20 x 5 Drawing Eagle gallery, London
2002 Viewpoints Eagle Gallery, London
2001 Jerwood Painting prize 2001, Jerwood Gallery London
Traditions and Innovation, City Art Gallery, York
Three Big paintings, Sarah Myerscough Gallery
2000 British airways Terminal, JFK Airport, New York
1999 Thinking Aloud, Camden arts centre, London
1998 Art ‘98, Islington Art Fair, (Todd Gallery)
Frankfurt Art Fair, (Galerie Renate Bender)
Jerwood Paunting Prize '98, Jerwood Gallery
Cologne Art Fair, Galerie Renate Bender
1997 Art ‘97, Islington Art Fair, (Todd Gallery)
Yellow, Todd Gallery, London
John Moores Exhibition 20, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
1996 Art ‘96, Islington Art Fair, (Todd Gallery)
Ace! Arts Council Collection, Touring -
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne,
Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston
Oldham Art Gallery
Hayward Gallery,London
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham