January round-up

The abstract painter John McLean celebrates his 70th birthday this year, and the enterprising Poussin Gallery (Block K, 13 Bell Yard Mews, 175 Bermondsey Street, SE1) has mounted a show of his recent prints in recognition (until 14 February).

The show is on two floors at 108a Boundary Road, NW8, and for me the most interesting work is downstairs. Here are fine things by Josef Herman, Martin Bloch and Martin Nessler. I liked the energy of Eric Kahn’s drawing ‘Internment Camp Kitchen’ and the strange neo-romantic poetry of Georg Mayer-Marton’s landscape of frozen trees. By the great Dada-ist Schwitters there are a couple of accomplished portraits (one of Fred Uhlman) and a brushy Lake District landscape. There’s a great deal more, much of it effective work by artists previously unknown to me. The exhibition is organised in conjunction with the Courtauld Institute, is accompanied by a lavish hardback catalogue (£25) and deserves serious attention.

In the same road is the Boundary Gallery, until 28 February showing new work by David Tress (born 1955). I’ve written about Tress before in these pages, recently reviewing his museum touring show Chasing Sublime Light, currently at Gallery Oldham (until 18 April), but I make no apology for mentioning him again. He goes from strength to strength. The work at the Boundary includes mixed-media landscape studies, wonderful graphite drawings and a couple of fairly straightforward watercolours.

Wandering the West End I was particularly struck by a show of drawings at Marlborough Fine Art (6 Albemarle Street, W1, until 7 February) by David Rayson (born 1966), currently Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Rayson lives in Milton Keynes and the title of his exhibition is The Everyday Fantastic. His drawings explore the surroundings of urban life in a looped and ornate scrolling style, rendered in coloured inks. Patterns resembling wood grain, or knitting, or flame-like vegetation threaten to overwhelm the recognisable elements of ordinary or fantasy life. (Figures in a landscape, night shadows, war at sea, cowboys, the back garden on fire.) The style is immensely decorative but contains undercurrents which may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer. There’s a strong vein of potentially threatening sexuality and the rampant vegetable growth has a triffid-like quality that offers no quarter. Humour is here, but it’s fairly dark and desperate. There’s something nasty in the woodshed: this territory is definitely haunted. For me this exhibition marks the discovery of a substantial artist of real graphic power: an experience both disturbing and exciting.