The latest exhibition from the roving art gallery, The Horsebox Gallery, is a collection of works from one of Britain’s foremost original printmakers, Tim Mara...
Who? The latest exhibition from the roving art gallery, The Horsebox Gallery, is a collection of works from one of Britain’s foremost original printmakers, Tim Mara. Working both as an independent artist and as Professor of Printmaking at London’s Royal College of Art, Mara’s creations stand as testament to the enduring power of the medium in which he worked, a medium that has so often been subjugated to ‘real’ art’s less interesting younger cousin. This pop-up exhibition, lasting a mere four days, is a wonderful opportunity to explore, enjoy and purchase the vivid and eclectic output of one of printmaking’s greatest practitioners.
What? Constantly touring round the country, each exhibition put on by The Horsebox Gallery is positioned in a location synonymous with the project in hand. And this one is no different. In celebration of the period when Mara was at his height, his prints have been hung on the walls of an original seventies flat. Sitting above an old East End Pie & Mash shop in Broadway Market, the exhibition space is thus complete with the lurid wallpaper, boxy wooden furniture and the glasses of florescent cocktails so often portrayed in the works themselves.
Why? Mara’s work is an intriguing mix of very potent influences that are superbly conveyed in this unusual and highly evocative environment. Pop Art motifs abound, in the electric colouration and clarity of subject, and 70s filmmakers have clearly made their mark. Critics, when considering the stylised interior scenes, have often made a not unjustified leap to the collages of Richard Prince; yet this was an influence that Mara consistently denied. Indeed, Mara looked for stylistic inspiration to the classical masters such as Vermeer, whose works are powerful in their suspended narrative and an ordered calm, at odds rather with the somewhat hysterical energy to be found in more contemporary artworks. And it is due to Mara’s lofty ambitions that these prints defy detractors and artistic snobbery. As he himself said, "In the hierarchy of fine art, printmaking is usually associated with craft skills – with technique. And that gets in the way. My work was always about the ideas more than the medium.”
Tim Mara (1948-1997): Exhibition of Prints from 1970-1990 will run until January 28 at 9 Broadway Market, London, E8 4PH.
