12th July 2016

​Last trip to Paris I was confronted by a new piece of artwork in my daughter's apartment. It is a charming and intriguing work, by Charlotte Hodes. An intricate paper cut, layered and collaged, with a little Fragonard frivolity and the otherworldliness of Leonora Carrington. The little work stayed with me all evening until a small light shone brightly through a glass of inspiring white and I remembered Ivor Abrahams. More precisely I remembered Red Riding Hood. The disembodied little 'breezy' frock had reawakened the disquiet I had felt when Studio International brought me Red Riding Hood. 

There was an explosion of exciting art at the time, no catalogues available here, but even so Abrahams stood out, a very particular vision, bucket loads of narrative. So after the revelation of Red Riding Hood came the gardens, Claud Lorrain meets Raymond Chandler, brilliant. A rich seam mined to brilliant effect, sculpture, prints, drawings, new materials, exciting techniques, pioneering stuff.  ​

The seeding of the gardens seems to have begun when Abrahams was teaching at Birmingham in the early 1960's, Abrahams took a student work and placed it on artificial grass and surrounded it with paving. The rest is history. So this discovery left me slightly bemused, I just missed Abrahams and I was now chucking artificial grass around the same department and no one mentioned him, really disappointing or was I just failing to register.

This process of recollection is stimulating and apparently keeps alzheimer’s at bay but it also springs really annoying surprises. Thinking about Abrahams I spent time looking through his catalogue, I knew about the owls, it was about that time that he lost me. To the point, I had been struggling with an image for some weeks, nothing overly complicated, basically two red forms set against a green background, well there it was, good old Ivor had had the temerity to wrestle the same beast back in 1981. I have to say he made a really good job of it, tips to take, never too late and it should be the name of the game. Philip King, his lifelong friend, called him a traditionalist, that's not a bad thing.