2022: Five Contemporary British Artists

4th September to 13th November, 2022 An exhibition featuring work by five artists curated by Alan Kluckow at the Stapleford Granary in Cambridge. Exhibiting artists: Boo Mitford, Christopher Farrell, Nicholas Herbert, Sally Moore and William Balthazar Rose. The phrase ‘contemporary’ when used together with ‘art’ in today’s world, usually presumes we are talking about the more extreme forms of the practice, but the dictionary lists the meaning as ‘belonging to or occurring in the present’ which is a reminder that contemporary also includes large numbers of artists who work in what would be called traditional or old fashioned ways. This number has been steadily growing in recent years as young painters and sculptors return to these tried and tested ways of expressing themselves, and this exhibition showcases a small selection of paintings by 5 practitioners who use traditional methods and materials to make their art. Boo Mitford is the only one who could easily be categorised as an abstract artist, the others fall into what we loosely call realist or representational. However, one look at the styles and techniques used by the four representational painters in this exhibition shows us how diverse a small group of realists can be. Sally Moore and William Balthazar Rose are narrative painters, Sally using herself as the featured model in all her work to tell stories about her life, real and imagined. William invents extraordinary visual tales, almost always featuring his favourite subject - chefs. Nicholas Herbert and Christopher Farrell are probably best described as landscape artists, but the contrast in what they have to say about this subject could not be greater. Nick uses meticulous detail and a darker palette to carefully observe the mysteries of the rural countryside, while Chris employs a much brighter and energetic approach to record the buzz of cityscapes'. - Alan Kluckow