INSPIRING OFFICES Robin Simon LLP in collaboration with ART360 at Alan Wheatley Art 22 Mason‟s Yard Duke Street St. James‟s London SW1Y 6BU
ROBIN SIMON LLP is a law firm renowned for giving its trusted and expert advice to professional institutes. Our fifty experienced lawyers spread across four UK offices are dedicated to the protection of firms of every discipline and size, including twenty five of the top one hundred law firms in the UK. In keeping with our discerning and high quality clientele, we have sought in all of our offices to create a prestigious and distinctive yet discreet working atmosphere. We are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to motivate and spark creativity within our employees as well as make our offices memorable to our clients. For that reason, together with ART360 and their art consultants, who fully understand our requirements, we have enhanced our working environment with a contemporary art collection, predominantly in the form of photography and sculpture, upon which many clients and visitors frequently comment in complimentary terms. Indeed, such has been the level of interest in our art collection that we have decided to share this enthusiasm with others and to show how art can live within a corporate environment. We are delighted to sponsor this private viewing on 22 September 2009, held at Alan Wheatley Art gallery, courtesy of our suppliers ART360, and its principals, Alan Wheatley and Jacky Robin.
Michael Robin and David Simon Robin Simon LLP September 2009
RENÉ BURRI (Swiss, born 1933) Known the world over, especially for his iconic images of Che Guevara, RenĂŠ Burri is one of the world's greatest living photographers. First achieving international recognition with the seminal photography book on post-World War II Germany Die Deutschen in 1962, Burri has since become one of the most important figures in the history of photography: he is universally revered by his peers for his sympathetic eye and his capacity to capture larger-than-life personas on camera. Burriâ€&#x;s curiosity and humanity as a photographer have afforded him almost unrestricted access to the major events and celebrities of the last 50 years. His photographs are a fascinating personal account of the major artists, politicians and personalities that the photographer has made a part of his life. Burri has travelled across Europe to the Middle East, Vietnam, Brazil, Cuba and beyond; he visited Picasso, Le Corbusier, Yves Klein and Giacometti in their studios; he witnessed political figures such as Che Guevara in repose, and Fidel Castro at the helm.
Rio de Janeiro. Ministry of Health by Architect Oscar Niemeyer 1960 Silver gelatin print 102 x 76 cm
DENNIS STOCK (American, born 1928) Dennis Stock served in the U.S. military before he fully devoted himself to photography. Stock managed to evoke the spirit of America through his memorable portraits of James Dean, whom he met in Hollywood in 1955 and photographed there as well as on his family farm in Indiana. One of his most iconic images is a photograph James Dean on Times Square (1955), in which the young actor wanders through the rainy streets of New York City at twilight. Stock also made lively and intimate portraits of jazz and blues performers. His evocations of musicians such as Satchmo, Billie Holiday, Sydney Bechet, Gene Krupa and Duke Ellington won him first prize in the International Photography Competition and were published as a volume, Jazz Street. Later in his career Stock mostly pursued the making of colour books that emphasize nature's beauty through details and landscape. In the 1990s he went back to his urban origins exploring the modern architecture of large cities. Dennis Stock has taught numerous workshops and he has exhibited his work worldwide. His photographs have been acquired by most major museum collections.
James Dean on Times Square 1955 Silver gelatin print 58 x 39 cm
HIROJI KUBOTA (Japanese, born 1939) After graduating with a degree in political science, Kubota told his mother that he wanted to be a photographer. Her reaction was to sob: "How can you do this?� Nevertheless, determined to follow his vocation, he moved to the United States and began working as a freelance photographer. One of his first assignments, for the London Times, was to take a picture of Jackson Pollock's grave in East Hampton, USA. In 1968 he returned to live in Japan where his work as a photo-journalist was recognized by a Publishing Culture Award from Kodansha in 1970.
Hong Kong Stock Exchange 1996 Digital C-type colour print 122 x 183 cm
Kubota saw his share of death and suffering while growing up in a war-ravaged country, and as a photo reporter he witnessed the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon. After his experience in Vietnam, he continued to focus his attention on Asia, photographing Korea in 1978 and then China. From 1979 through 1984, Kubota explored the whole of China, a 1,000-day tour during which he made more than 200,000 photographs. The result was the comprehensive book and exhibit China, published in 1988.
New York City: Aerial View of Manhattan with Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center 1989 Digital C-type colour print 66 x 100 cm
STEVE MCCURRY (American, born 1950) Award winning photographer Steve McCurry is a world famous photojournalist whose work has taken him far and wide, and placed him in danger a ton of times. He has taken pictures during many wars, often coming very close to death. He has been reported dead in the media twice but he just keeps coming back. After working briefly for a newspaper he left for India. Since then he has covered areas of conflict in the Iran-Iraq war, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. For over 20 years, Steve has been working for National Geographic magazine and is best known for his picture of a 12 year-old Afghan girl who had lost both of her parents in the war when she was just a baby. Her piercing green eyes made the photo one that no one could ever forget. The image titled Afghan Refugee. Pakistan (1985), elicited much attention when it appeared on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in 1985 and was named one of the Top 100 National Geographic photos by the magazine. In January of 2002, Steve tracked down the young Afghani girl, who was then about 30, and retook her picture.
Srinagar, Dal Lake Kashmir 1996 C-type colour print
54 x 36 cm
BRIAN MCKEE (American, born 1977) Photographs of Brian McKee are haunting visions of deserted spaces. Shooting the ruins of once-populated urban areas, McKee finds presence in absence. McKee‟s works are universally devoid of people, yet they possess a dramatic quality that suggests the life that once filled the old hallways and rooms. This comes predominantly from his ability to capture brilliant colour and natural light, elements that imbue the voids with energy and mystery. Having worked in India, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, McKee‟s gaze tends to focus more on the politically created ruins of the East than anything to be found in his home base of New York. The result is a body of dynamic narrative works that show much more than the single snapshot moment of traditional photography. McKee insists that a viewer‟s engagement with a work is more important than the narrative they construct. As McKee says, “It is not an image that you can just approach and dismiss as a visual sound bite or clipping from one of any number of nameless media sources. The images force you to interact, if even for a brief moment.”
Re-build-ings 2003 Brian McKee has been travelling throughout the world photographing sites that represent important political and social events in contemporary history. One of the projects, Re-build-ings, is a continuation of this larger conceptual body of work. Acting as a kind of visual historian McKee creates images that convey a unique and important view of select aspects of world history. Within architecture and landscapes he seeks to explore the way we define and relate to its existence. Although creating precisely composed and executed images he carefully chose projects that have a conceptual meaning and importance beyond their visual interest or beauty. The images from Uzbekistan encompass and express the intents of his vision as an artist.
Uzbek #5
Uzbek #26
2005 Agfa Professional on aluminium 126 x 162 cm Edition of 5
2005 Agfa Professional on aluminium 162 x 126 cm Edition of 5
MARK POWER (British, born 1959) Mark Power is a leading British documentary photographer whose work has been exhibited and published worldwide. He is also a Professor of Photography at the University of Brighton. Powerâ€&#x;s first major project was The Shipping Forecast (1996), a poetic response to the Met Office weather forecast broadcast daily on BBC Radio 4, which won him the Yann Geffroy International Documentary Prize and the Mosaique European Photography Award among others. Since 1997, he has produced a number of works combining large-scale commissions from the industrial sector with selfinitiated projects. These include Superstructure (2000), which documents the construction of Londonâ€&#x;s Millennium Dome, and The Treasury Project (2002), which captured the refurbishment of HM The Treasury Building, in Whitehall. In his more personal project titled 26 Different Endings (2007), Power discovers those landscapes unlucky enough to fall just off the edge of the London A-Z (a map which could be said to define the boundaries of the British capital).
The Shipping Forecast 1992-1996 Artistic pressure led Mark to research the sounds that he had heard for years coming from the BBC Radio 4 as storm warnings and culminated in The Shipping Forecast. Intangible and mysterious, familiar yet obscure, the shipping forecast broadcast four times daily on BBC Radio 4 for those at, or about to be put to sea, may mean the difference between life and death. But for millions of radio listeners it is more than this; the enigmatic language of the shipping forecast has entered the public consciousness, creating a landscape of the imagination and confirming romantic notions of Britain's island status. In The Shipping Forecast, Mark Power documents the 31 sea areas covered by the forecast, which include, among others, Finisterre off the north Portuguese, Biscay off the north Spanish coast, the Irish Sea, and southeast Iceland. Here, in picture after picture, life itself appears to have lost its co-ordinates, movements are disjointed and frenetic, people wander aimlessly or gather in trance-like formations, lonely gazes stare out towards blank horizons.
The Shipping Forecast 1993-1995 Each: Silver bromide print 76 x 66 cm Edition of 10
Wight. Saturday 18 February 1995 Northwesterly backing southwesterly 6 or 7, increasing gale 8 for a time. Showers then rain. Good becoming moderate or poor.
Plymouth. Friday 12 August 1994 North or northwest 3 or 4. Mainly fair. Moderate or good.
Tyne. Sunday 25 July 1993 West or southwest 3 or 4 increasing 5 or 6. Showers. Good.
Dover. Friday 6 August 1993 Northwesterly 5, becoming variable 3. Fair. Good.
German Bight. Sunday 27 August 1995 Northwesterly veering northerly, 5 to 7, decreasing 4 for a time in east. Squally showers. Good.
Biscay. Saturday 27 July 1996 Northerly 4 or 5 backing northwesterly 3. Mainly fair. Moderate with fog patches in north
Malin. Monday 6 September 1993 Southeast backing easterly 4 or 5, increasing 6 in south. Mainly fair. Moderate or good.
German Bight. Thursday 24 August 1995 Northwesterly 4, backing southwesterly 5 or 6. Rain later. Good becoming moderate.
The Sound of Two Songs 2004-2009 Mark Power began working in Poland in September 2004, for his part of the group project EuroVisions, which was first shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2005. However, his work there has continued well beyond that deadline, and Mark has now made many more visits to Poland. Set in the heart of Europe, Poland is a multifaceted country and is by far the largest of the new ten European countries. Over the past decade, Poland has developed into a modern, vibrant and progressive state, yet at the same time the remnants of communist era are still very visible as seen through Mark Power's series of photographs. The project titled The Sound of Two Songs, has been completed and published in 2009.
Warsaw. Poland. October 2006 2006 C-type colour print on Diasec 95 x 122 cm Edition of 5
Zabrze. Poland. October 2004 2004 C-type colour print on Diasec 95 x 122 cm Edition of 5
A380 Airbus 2002-2005 In 2002 Mark Power was commissioned by Airbus to cover all stages of the construction of the new plane, A380 – the largest passenger plane ever built to date. Because of its extraordinary size, Airbus first had to construct the infrastructure, such as the final assembly line in Toulouse, factories throughout Europe and extensive transportation networks, including a specially built ship. Mark Power photographed every step of its construction. Dubai Air Show. November 2005. The A380 is presented in the Middle East for the first time 2006 C-type colour print on Diasec 102 x 130 cm Edition of 5
Bristol, England. April 2004 The first complete undercarriage of the A380 2006 C-type colour prints on Diasec 61 x 153 cm Edition of 10
CHARLIE WHITE (American, born 1972) Using a combination of fiction, artifice, and make-believe to represent the human condition, many of White's photographs explore Americaâ€&#x;s social fictions and the tensions in identity and perception they generate. This narrative focus can be perceived in his first photographic series In a Matter of Days (1999) and Understanding Joshua (2001), which employs a pictorial play between reality and fiction that is occasionally taken to grotesque extremes. Charlie White has been a critical contributor to photography's radical transition and his work continues to move the medium forward. White has exhibited his photography internationally since his first solo exhibition in 1999. White has been described by Grace Glueck in the New York Times as "a wiz at set-up photography, directing and staging his narrative stills with cinematic techniques," and David Vellesco in Artforum described his work as "offer[ing] luscious and compelling snapshots of a uniquely American psychology."
In a Matter of Days 1999 This project consisting of nine large scale photographs was Charlie White's first full-scale one-person exhibition. The monsters in White's images read both as literal and naturalistic in the context of LA/horror cinema, as symbols of social decline. Looking as if they have happened in Los Angeles by accident, the monsters, created by Hollywood effects artist Jordu Schell, seem almost as panic stricken as their human victims. White investigates the resulting environment, creating characters that are deeply and permanently bound to their surroundings, at once alienated from and dependent upon the overbuilt world around them. The dream of Los Angeles, just like a scary movie, encapsulates its own nightmares within the pleasures of its fantasy world. White's goal was to present scenes that are at once metaphors for reality, moral allegories, and even, however fantastic, literally possible.
In a Matter of Days, Rosita Drive 1999 Chromogenic print mounted on plexiglass 122 x 244 cm Edition of 3
IAN DAVENPORT (British, born 1966) Many of Davenport's works are made by pouring paint onto a tilted surface and letting gravity spread the paint over the surface. He usually works on medium density fibreboard rather than canvas, and most often employs household gloss paint, meaning the viewer can see their own reflection in the work. For the Days Like These exhibition at Tate Britain in 2003, Davenport made a thirteen-metre high mural by dripping lines of differently coloured paint down the wall from a syringe.
Circle Painting: Magenta/Red/Magenta No.1 2001 Household paint on mdf 30 x 30 cm
In September 2006 he unveiled a 50 meter painting, his largest public commission, on Southwark Bridge entitled Poured Lines: Southwark. Davenport was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991 and short-listed for the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2001. In 1999 he was the prize winner at the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 21 and the following year was prize winner of the Primo del Golfo, La Spezia, Italy.
Poured Painting: Blue 2001 Household paint on mdf 30 x 30 cm
GEROLD MILLER (German, born 1961) Miller‟s wall-works made of aluminium and covered with high-gloss paint represent an exploration of a pictorial presentation in the space between painting and sculpture. Miller is interested in fine lines where three-dimensional object becomes a two-dimensional surface, and where objectivity turns into abstraction. Throughout the Total Object series, Gerold Miller investigates connections between minimalism, pop art and design. His works oscillate between being „objects‟ and being „pictures‟; between abstract and reality. In 2002 Miller was a subject of a major solo exhibition at the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum fűr Gegenwart, Berlin. In 2003 his outdoor installation was unveiled at the Daimler Maybach Headquarters in Stuttgart. Miller has been widely exhibiting in Europe as well as in Australia and Japan.
Total Object #38, #39, #40 and #41 Each: 2004 High gloss painted aluminium 40 x 40 x 3 cm
DAVID JAMES SMITH (British, born 1980) David James Smith graduated from the Camberwell College of Art, London in 2005. Smith has became famous for producing super glossy paintings by building up layers of household paint, resulting in undulating, seemingly poured waves of haphazard and bright colour. There's something naĂŻve and childlike about his palette, evoking penny sweets bought at funfairs. He takes simple things and transforms them into fluid, abstract pieces of vivid beauty. Although Smithâ€&#x;s work is considerably recent, his art befit a far more established artist.
Ice Cream #3 2005 Household paint on mdf 51 x 51 cm
Ice Cream #1 2005 Household paint on mdf 51 x 51 cm
LARS WOLTER (German, born 1969) Born in the Netherlands, the young painter and sculptor, Lars Wolter graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Wolter‟s art combines ideas from 1960s minimalism with contemporary culture and fashion. He constructs his work with the skills of a furniture craftsman using wood and high-gloss lacquer. A series of paintings, or wall reliefs, titled CutOff are made with layers of medium density fibreboard and formica sprayed to a high-gloss or matt finish. Each work is black and white, or black and other colour. The corners and edges of each rectangular work have literally been „planed‟ off.
Drilled 7 (Funky) 2006 Polyurethane paint on mdf 190 x 170 x 7 cm
OffCut 1 2006 Polyurethane paint on mdf 48 x 57 x 4 cm
CLIVE BARKER (British, born 1940) On of the leading British Pop Artists, Clive Barker made his name in the late sixties and for over forty years he has been working with sculpture in chrome-plated steel, bronze and brass, replicating objects from everyday life – including Coca-Cola bottles, a newspaper, buckets and even a set of false teeth. The humorous touches and the acceptance of the banal and the kitsch contribute to the originality of Barker's work. Barker‟s early experience of working with leather and chrome on the car production assembly line at Vauxhall Motors in Luton proved decisive on his choice of materials for his sculptures, leading Barker not only to apply chrome finishes but also to work primarily in polished cast metals. In 1963 he began making his first sculptures. His first one-man exhibition was held in London at the renowned Robert Fraser Gallery in 1968. Barker‟s work has been widely exhibited at high-profile galleries and included in many of the most important Pop Art shows worldwide. Stove and Coffee Pot 1997 Polished brass, polished aluminium and cast iron 81 cm high Unique
Venus with Butterfly 1990 Patinated bronze 28 cm high Edition of 3
2 Jugs Against a Blue Window 1999-2001 Polished aluminium and glass 55.5 cm high Unique
ART360 is an exciting, innovative company which
ALAN WHEATLEY has been successfully assisting in
provides supplying premises. range of premises,
establishing private and corporate art collections for over twenty years. With that experience, Alan Wheatley also brings the full benefit of his expertise in advising in any aspect of modern art.
a comprehensive professional service in and advising on artwork for commercial ART360 offers arrangements to suit a wide tastes and budgets, and service all forms of from small office suites to entire buildings.
With an increasing number of companies building their own art collections, ART360 offers purchase as well as leasing from a wide selection of modern and contemporary paintings, sculpture and photography.
Alan Wheatley Art gallery located in the heart of London St. Jamesâ€&#x;s, faciliates the exhibition space for modern and contemporary art and offers a diverse selection of the highest quality of the 20th Century Modern British and International Art.
Artwork creates the prestigious and distinctive face of an office that can play an important part in enhancing the working environment, and delivers the right message about the image of a company. It can also be a valuable investment!
The majority of the artists represented by Alan Wheatley Art have gained an international reputation and their work can be found in the permanent collections of modern and contemporary art museums throughout the world.
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Published by Alan Wheatley Art © ALAN WHEATLEY ART, 22 Mason‟s Yard, Duke Street St. James‟s, London SW1Y 6BU, T: 020 7930 1262 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without first seeking the written permission of the copyright holders and of the publisher. Images © The Artists Design and research by Iwona Chroscielewska Print production by Screaming Colour Ltd.
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