Re-visited Paul McCarthy’s show at Hauser & Wirth to see the film of the making of a woman’s body cast, and ‘Pig Island’ – a massive sculptural installation where the visitor observes a pop-up of the artist’s workplace. It features an accumulation of disintegrated materials, junk and half-finished figures that show a fascinating insight into the artists’s creative process. Every item is meticulously positioned.
The thought crossed my mind as to what will happen to the ‘pop-up’ when the show finishes on 14th of January? Will the gallery consult the archaeologists who mapped the studio of Francis Bacon at 7 Reece Mews and noted the exact positions of the 7,000 items in this space to evacuate it from London to Dublin where it is now exhibited at the Hugh Lane Gallery?
Opposite Hauser there is a delightful and excellent exhibition at Ordovas Gallery: ‘Irrational Remarks: Bacon-Rembrandt’. It explores the influences of Rembrandt’s self-portraits on Francis Bacon’s own self-portraits, featuring works of both artists, including Rembrandt’s ‘Self Portrait with Beret’. In the downstairs space of the gallery, clips are shown from ‘Sunday Night Francis Bacon’, the film where the artists speaks to the art critic David Sylvester.
