Holiday

David Adamo, Harold Ancart, Karel Appel, Alexander Calder, Sonia Delauney, Devin Farrand, Alberto Giacometti, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Asger Jorn, Yayoi Kusama, Henri Matisse, Dashiell Manley, Jack McConville, Joan Miro, Takashi Murakami, Auguste Rodin, Rallou Panagiotou, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, Ai Weiwei

Ibid Gallery is pleased to present Holiday, an exhibition comprising of works by artists from multiple generations.

The works shown revolve around the theme of holiday and its related ideals of escapism, pastime, leisure, eroticism, landscape and nature. For some, holidays can be replenishing, unfolding possibilities to realise untapped potential, but for others a forced experience of false promises of relaxation and peace of mind. Further to this, the works in the show touch on both the uplifting side but often more indulgent nature of vacation.

Takashi Murakami’s painting depicts a group of bizarre, alien-like characters suggestive of a family on holiday where they are dressed up in cloths they wouldn’t normally wear and engaging in a form of holiday theatrics. Rallou Panagiotou’s ongoing Liquid Degrade series of oversized marble drinking straws reference the discarded straws of the holidaymakers who descend upon the Greek islands during the summer months.

Henri Matisse’s work on paper, Odalisque Étendue (1928), depicts a post-coital recline, suggestive of an uninhibited holiday fling, while Jack McConville’s, El Expolio (2014), shows a young man who could also be post-fling, unselfconsciously pulling up his trousers in an alley lit by street lights. Visually similar is the work of Frances Picabia made in 1925, the year the artist returned to figurative painting from cubism, and shows two naked figures lounging in a Mediterranean garden.

Other works in the show include David Adamo’s plaster and clay cookie crumbles which mimic Italian-American candy-coloured butter cookies that are often eaten at celebrations and holidays and Alexander Calder’s Hammock (1974), a hand-woven Jute tapestry depicting a series of floating balloons above a beach.

Bringing together works from different periods in recent art history with contemporary works, Holiday presents the multi-layered ideas and activities of leisure time which sometimes aren’t quite what they are idealized to be.