Mixing It Up: Painting Today
Hayward Gallery, London
9 September - 12 December 2021
Hurvin Anderson
Ascent, 2019
Acrylic on paper laid on board
© Hurvin Anderson (2021). Courtesy the artist and
Thomas Dane Gallery. Laura & Barry Townsley, London.
Photo: Rat Hole Gallery
Jadé Fadojutimi
Cavernous Resonance, 2020
Oil and oil stick on canvas
© Jadé Fadojutimi (2021) Courtesy the artist and
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. Photo: Eva Herzog
Smoke and Mirrors, 2020
Ink, gesso, synthetic tempera, chalk and oil pastel
and oil on canvas mounted on board, 200 x 330 cm
© Lisa Brice (2021). Courtesy the artist;
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and
Salon 94, New York. Photo: Mark Blower
Mixing It Up: Painting Today brings together 31 contemporary painters whose work freely draws on varied image sources, techniques and traditions in order to fashion fresh and compelling works of art that speak to this moment.
Featuring three generations of artists who live and work in the UK, Mixing It Up: Painting Today highlights the UK’s emergence as a vital international centre of contemporary painting. Reflecting the international character of the UK painting scene, the participating artists come from a diverse range of backgrounds and nationalities: over a third of the participating artists were born in other places, including countries in Africa, Asia, South America and North America. Mixing It Up: Painting Today is also the first survey of contemporary painting in the Hayward Gallery’s history in which the majority of the artists are women.
Cameo, 2021
Oil on linen, 36 x 25.5 cm
© Louise Giovanelli (2021) Courtesy the artist and
Workplace, London and Gateshead ; Photo: Michael Pollard
The Captain and The Mate, 2017-2018
Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 244 cm
© Lubaina Himid (2021). Courtesy the artist
and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Andy Keate
Bira, 2019
Oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm
© Kudzanai-Violet Hwami
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro
Hope and History, 2021
Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 190 cm
© Sophie von Hellermann (2021)
Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias (London),
Greene Naftali (New York), Sies + Höke (Düsseldorf),
Wentrup Gallery (Berlin). Photo: Ollie Harrop
lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021
Oil pastel and oil stick on canvas, 250 x 160 cm
© Rachel Jones (2021) Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac
Photo: Eva Herzog
Whilst this multi-generational group of artists doesn’t constitute a new movement or stylistic tendency, they share a significant interest in mining their medium’s exceptional multiplicity, and exploiting its potential as a format in which things can be mixed up as in no other. They frequently create works that sit in between existing categories and genres, and that fashion unexpected associations between the past and the present. Rather than aiming to craft iconic images, they treat the canvas as a site of assemblage where references converge from diverse sources, including advertising, vernacular and documentary photography, viral memes, fashion, medical manuals and cinema, as well as art history. Using the medium as a platform for speculative thinking and unexpected conversations, their paintings oscillate between observation and invention, depiction and allegory, illusion and materiality. Exploring fissures in our conventional ways of looking and thinking, including our conceptions of gender, race and identity, their paintings hint at different ways of thinking about the relationship between individual and collective identities, as well as between self and other.
Adult Services, 2019
Oil, acrylic and iridescent pigments on linen, 200 x 160 cm
© Allison Katz (2021)
Courtesy the artist and The Approach, London
manifestation, 2019-2020
Oil, oil stick, cotton thread and graphite on canvas,
velvet and linen, 255 x 155 cm
© Oscar Murillo (2021). Courtesy the artist
and David Zwirner. Photo: Jack Hems
Two Boys (Church Tower), 2020
Oil on canvas, 45 x 35 cm
© Matthew Krishanu (2021)
Photo: Peter Mallet
Ralph Rugoff, Director at the Hayward Gallery, says: “If painting is typically pigeon-holed as the most conservative and traditional of art forms, the artists in Mixing It Up offer evidence for a contrary point of view: that in fact painting - thanks to some of its unique characteristics - may in fact be the medium that accommodates the most conceptually adventurous thinking.”
Mixing It Up: Painting Today features 31 artists: Tasha Amini, Hurvin Anderson, Alvaro Barrington, Lydia Blakeley, Gabriella Boyd, Lisa Brice, Gareth Cadwallader, Caroline Coon, Somaya Critchlow, Peter Doig, Jadé Fadojutimi, Denzil Forrester, Louise Giovanelli, Andrew Pierre Hart, Lubaina Himid, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Merlin James, Rachel Jones, Allison Katz, Matthew Krishanu, Graham Little, Oscar Murillo, Mohammed Sami, Samara Scott, Daniel Sinsel, Caragh Thuring, Sophie von Hellermann, Jonathan Wateridge, Rose Wylie, Issy Wood and Vivien Zhang.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with original texts by Jeremy Atherton Lin, Martha Barratt, Ben Eastham, Emily LaBarge, Rosanna Mclaughlin, Rianna Jade Parker and Ralph Rugoff.
Mixing It Up is curated by Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff, with Assistant Curator Phoebe Cripps and Curatorial Assistant Thomas Sutton.
HAYWARD GALLERY
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX
