Jiyoon and I travelled the streets of rain-swept East London in search of this art in her white Benz with its gold-trimmed fender and marine-blue soft-top, dressed as curators in matching black suede -- Jiyoon changing her detachable collar to suit the weather conditions. We visited countless studios, small off-beat art spaces and artists homes nestling next to Indian take-out restaurants, second-hand electrical component shops and pawn merchants.
We crossed used car lots, where Jiyoon was once offered part exchange and a score of monkeys for her shiny white Benz by a man in a velvet-collared, brown crombie and matching pork-pie hat; all in our quest for art.
But on we marched through oil-slicked puddles, past Punjabi spice shops, Kosher wholesalers and sequined suit specialists. Our moods alternated between disappointment and elation as we moved from cafe to bar to show to studio to home.
"So you can only let us have that one work?" we pleaded with Beaux Arts, Lisson Gallery, Modern Art Gallery, Mach, Hemsworth, Murdoch, Norris, Moody, Falconbridge, et al. "That's all I have at the moment, the rest is on show ... committed to another exhibition ... sold." Patterson's Kite and works by Crowley and Woods (not in the Taipei show) had to be returned after the Korean show because they were required either by the owner or for exhibition elsewhere.
The works we have brought together show evidence of historical continuity. There is the magic of Cecil Collins in the Irish and English landscapes of Crowley and Norris. The clinical detachment of Richard Wentworth and Michael Craig-Martin in Patterson's work and hard edge and pop art influences in Hemsworth. Moody alludes to Rauschenburg and arte povera. Murdoch draws on Patrick Caulfield's interiors and Bury and Lewis look back to Hogarth. Falconbridge refers back further to the still-life tradition of Velasquez, and Mach to the photographic records of Daniel Meadows. Macuga seeks inspiration from materials and Westwood from form, two primary sculptural concerns. Takahashi and Young-in Hong work with the sculpturing of space in the manner of Isamu Noguchi. Both artists are intrigued by material culture and inspired by Marcel Duchamp.
"So we've done it," I said to Jiyoon and Neil Webb, the British Council Arts Officer for Taiwan as we sipped one of those sickly sweet and now sadly ubiquitous Starbucks cappuccinos just outside the gates of Royal Academy in London. "Never has so much been owed by so few to so many."
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