past exhibition | Marilyn Hallam: Not finding a pose | 28 April - 21 May 2022

Bobinska Brownlee are delighted to present large scale paintings by Marilyn Hallam - exquisite painterly compositions of four women and one man in a domestic interior.

“Hallam’s choice of subject matter is conservative, even pointedly commonplace: views through a window, interiors, still life, people by the sea. However, there is nothing conservative or commonplace about the treatment. In 1994 I wrote of this work: ” …treated here without a trace of that secondhand softness that sometimes tries to pass for the Bonnardesque … the paintings are tough and put together with a cool lightness of hand which conceals the lucid pictorial intelligence which has gone into their making.”

What I had not taken wholly on board at that time is the highly evolved artifice involved in these complex works. Despite being figurative, or ‘depictive’ as Hallam prefers, these are not naturalistic paintings. Every component is subject to the demands made by considerations of scale, surface flatness, edge and design, the literal facture and objective truths of what a painting actually is.”

Cuillin Bantock, 2008

These are not only brilliantly constructed paintings, but also beautiful paeans to a life lived in art with her husband, the artist Clyde Hopkins.

Marilyn Hallam was born in Yorkshire in 1947. She studied fine art at the University of Reading where she met and married the painter Clyde Hopkins.

Solo exhibitions include the early Bakehouse Gallery, Vortex Gallery, Smith Jariwala Galleries, Against the Grain SE1 Gallery London and Towner Gallery Eastbourne. Group shows include Castlefield Manchester with Paul Tonkin and Jeff Hollow; Art in Hospitals Project Hastings with Clyde Hopkins, opened by Adrian Berg and Three Artists; Hastings Museum and Art Gallery; Platform 72 MOMA Oxford, curated by Nick Serota; Whitechapel Open selected by Bert Irvin; Contemporary Art Society Market; The Spirit of London Festival Hall; Rooms, curated by Jenni Lomax; Watercolour Curwen Gallery, curated by Joan Key. Art 91 Olympia; Made in Greenwich, curated by Cuillin Bantock (catalogue);Stormont Studios, Rye; Delight at the Holden Gallery Manchester, curated by David Sweet (catalogue); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2003 & 2012); Clifford Chance/University of Greenwich 2011 (catalogue), Small is Beautiful Flowers East 2014. Hallam’s work is held in numerous public, private and corporate collections in the United Kingdom, Europe and USA.

Private view: Thursday 28 April 5-8pm

Installation images: Max Colson