- peter griffinart
Opening of The Terry Frost Exhibition,The John Hoyland Exhibition and The Barbara Hepworth Garden
The last seven days, with the openings of Damien Hirst's gallery, the Frieze Art Fair and the exhibition celebrating the centenary of my late friend and mentor, Terry Frost, has been both exhilerating and exhausting.
Damien Hirst's new 33,000 square feet gallery is stunning, with the exhibiting space up there with the best in London. The exhibition he opened the gallery with was thirty paintings (1962-1982) of another of my friends, John Hoyland. These large-scale paintings (up to twenty feet in length) are all part of Hirst's own private collection. The colour structure of each painting works to it's very best in this terrific space the exhibition is really magnificent.
The following four days were packed with openings; Firstly, Terry Frost's centenary exhibition at Beaux Arts, London, then a five and a half hour train journey down to Penzance. The following day saw two openings of Terry's work, organised by the Tate gallery. The first of these shows contained work from the 1950s and 60s, containing some great paintings like Brown Harbour. In the exhibition of Terry's later work, the paintings use a much higher colour key to express an intense sense of being alive. What is really fasinating is to see such a body of work, spanning over fifty years, and to witness the struggles, the sucesses, and the whole spectrum of the creative act. On Saturday, there was another show of works on paper by complimentary sculptures sitting alongside the Mediterranean plants of the garde, Terry, and a visit to the Barbara Hepworth's studio and gardens (which are fantastic).
