The Artists Studio
Compton Verney
26 September-13 December

Beginning in the 1640s with the first known depiction of an artist’s studio in Britain, the exhibition offers an insight into the way artists have represented their working spaces. Thematically organised, the show considers the studio as display space for the artist and his or her work; the studio within the academy; the studio as sociable space or garret; and as a private room for reflection and creation. Works by artists including Peter Tillman’s, R. P. Bonington, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Rowlandson, George Morland, Edward Burne-Jones, Lord Leighton, W. P. Frith, and Ricketts and Shannon, offer personal and theoretical notions of how the studio has been perceived. The exhibition moves into the twentieth century with works by Mark Gertler, Jack B. Yeats, William Orpen, Eric Ravilious, Gwen John, William Coldstream, Rodrigo Moynihan and Euan Uglow.*Compton Verney*

Perry Ogden-Reece Mews, Francis Bacon’s Studio

I was looking forward to this exhibit. I had an Idea of what I hoped to see, a glimpse into the private world of the Artist (across medium-possibly to hopeful there) from the earliest documentation of studio life to the contemporary. It was the early representations of studio life in obscure and faded photographs that I found most interesting, so private and still formal. The more contemporary studio documentation felt somehow to familiar to me.

Compton Verney are still experiencing issues with hanging and lighting, shoddy at times in both cases. This is both distracting and disappointing.

Paul Ryan-Studio in your pocket

The sketch book has become the place that generates and holds my work. It provides the enclosure, surfaces, safety, experimentality of a studio. *Paul Ryan*

Gautier Deblonde-Artist’s studios

They are images that capture what the environment reveals about the artists and their works through the image of the space in the absence of the artists themselves but yet could be seen as a portrait of the artist. *Gautier Deblonde*

Luc Tuymans

Ron Mueck

Damien Hirst

Paula Rego

Contemporary artists represented include Art & Language, Shezad Dawood, Jeremy Deller, Andrew Grassie, Lisa Milroy, Paula Rego and Paul Ryan. New work has also been commissioned by Mark Fairnington and Sigrid Holmwood. Holmwood will be artist in residence within the exhibition at Compton Verney for the duration of the show. *Compton Verney*

For me the exhibit did not reach far enough into the contemporary or investigate the realistic nature of the Artists studio today, now so diverse and quite possibly difficult. The term Studio is, I’m almost certain, applied to kitchens, bathrooms, garden sheds and squats, as needs must in an economically uncertain time. To re create a *studio* within the gallery-though I understand its context in relation to the early and traditional craft of the painter (which the Artist in residence employs as an integral part of her practice)-seemed an overly Romanticized version of an environment that I am not convinced many Artists emerging or established work within. This is not a comment on the Artists practice, but rather on a curratorial miss step.
Artist studio reconstruction-Sigrid Holmwood
Such a shame that there was a rope dividing Artist from audience. There was a division for me in this simple object that undermined the point of the exhibit and placed the audience firmly apart from the Artist. Who was *in studio* on my visit.

This was a safe academic visit to the Artists studio-whatever that may be today wasnt investigated enough despite the exhibition information which promised much more.

OTHER NEWS-if you are in Paris:
Rosson Crow-Paris Texas
Galerie Nathelie Obadia

Grand salon, 1976