Keith Coventry - Softcover

Coventry Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0951598082 ISBN 13: 9780951598085

Publisher: The Showroom, 1997

Synopsis

This exhibition was comprised of painting and sculptures made by Keith Coventry from 1994 to 1997. The sculptures included Looted Shop Front, 1997, the bronze cast of a full-size shop window smashed during the Brixton riots in 1995; Burgess Park, SE5 and Peckham Rye, SE15, both 1994, from the series of bronze casts made from saplings found vandalised in South London housing states and parks; Kings and Queens, 1995, replicas of the heads decapitated by the vandals of Henry Moore's sculpture of the same name which is situated in the Scottish Highlands; and Bench, 1995. Chartwell, 1997, comprised of a series of framed and glazed paintings which formed an entire brick wall. The title of this work reveales its source as being the wall built by Winston Churchill between 1927 and 1932 around the grounds of his house in Kent. In Chartwell Coventry fuses two of Churchill's pastime activities, those of painting and wall-building. Congreve Estate, 1997, was one of an ongoing series of works. This body of paintings further reveals Coventry's enquiry into the legacy of the ideals that had in those years shaped art and society. Far from resulting in the egalitarian society desired by the Modernists, and although appearing as the abstract works by the Russian Suprematists, and Malevich in particular, these paintings are instead based on the ground plans of council estates, the emblems of current social disintegration. Coventry's works engage with the utopian ideals of Modernism which have been physically manifested in architecture, design, town planning and the fine arts since the beginning of this century. His resulting works conflate the aspirations of a cultural, political and social past with the realities of the present day.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Showroom
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0951598082
• ISBN 13: 9780951598085
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 36