Back in the smoggy days of Victorian England, art critic John Ruskin got awful hot and bothered over James McNeill Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’, a largely abstract work that, as the title suggests, was all about the use of colour.
We no longer get upset at the idea of art being more interested in colour tones than, for example, historical accuracy. In fact, times have changed so much that Newport Street Gallery – the exhibition space owned by Damien Hirst – has programmed an exhibition of three contemporary artists, Helen Beard, Sadie Laska and Boo Saville, united through their creation of crackling chromatic artworks.
But even if he’d gotten over his hatred of heavily hued art, many of the paintings here would still have made Ruskin spontaneously combust in shock. If you blush easily, look away now, or, rather, avoid rooms one and four containing Beard’s huge, close-up images of [deep, awkwardly English breath] penetrative sex.
Rendered in happy, primary school-bright greens, purples, yellows and oranges, the funny thing about the pictures is how quickly seeing a 4ft-high triptych of dicks becomes almost unremarkable. Their explicitness makes them largely unerotic, and the most fascinating by far is a mid-sized tapestry, its pretty pink stitches brilliantly subversive in contrast to its subject matter.
The clever distortion of traditionally feminine crafts continues with Sadie Laska’s patchwork-style works inspired by the quilts made in the southern United States. Along with a faded Americana aesthetic, the pieces make use of everyday detritus – old tartan shopping bags, paper party plates, discarded headphones.
The real treat of the exhibition, however, is finding Boo Saville’s towering ‘colour fields’. The description gives the game away, these are literally just great big expanses of colour, subtly shifting between shades the way a densely-planted rural landscape does. Simply put: they’re gorgeous. Even grumbling Ruskin couldn’t disapprove.