Caroline Walker (b. 1982, Dunfermline) has established herself as one of the UK’s most exciting figurative painters of her generation working internationally today. By means of an elegant and seductive yet forthright use of paint, Walker makes paintings that explore ideas of gender in relation to architecture. With a particular interest in femininity, she addresses people’s physical, psychological, emotional, and social relationships with the buildings in which they spend time – whether at home, at work, at leisure or in more mysterious circumstances. By depicting women undertaking all manner of activities, from everyday chores, sleeping, and sunbathing to more obscure or dramatic scenarios, she takes the viewer inside people’s private worlds and states of mind. Some of the women depicted seem lonely, bored, tired, or depressed, while others appear playful and relaxed, whether alone or in company.Often it is unclear who the women are or what their relationship is with the premises in which they are located, raising notions of identity, class, and roles acted out at different times in people’s lives. As many of the locations depicted are luxury houses and apartments, it is hard to say if a particular person is the owner or a tenant, a guest or a maid, opening up economic, political, social, and cultural questions about the paintings – are we looking at the super rich at leisure, house-sitters, holidaymakers, domestic workers, squatters, or actors on set? While the paintings are often charming and appealing, there is regularly something odd or unexpected underlying them – occasionally verging on the threatening or dangerous. Sometimes dream homes can be anything but…The research and development for Walker’s paintings is an elaborate process. Involving numerous life models and actors, she finds properties around the world in which to stage photo shoots. Carefully chosen costumes, accessories and props are brought along, and Walker directs her cast around the property. Following this, the artist makes a number of drawings and oil sketches before settling on a composition to work up into a final painting back in her studio. It is a process that clearly helps to generate the cinematic and theatrical atmosphere that pervades her work. Alongside film influences ranging from Hitchcock to Lynch and recent Hollywood productions, Walker is inspired by artists including Eric Fischl, the Scottish colorists, and current painting from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as by the constructed photography of Hannah Starkey, Gregory Crewdson, and Jeff Wall. Full of contemporary and historical references and influences, Walker’s practice is an engaging journey into the modern female condition and the ‘female gaze’.In Every Dream Home – the first monograph of Walker’s work – features around fifty key paintings, oil sketches, and ink drawings alongside an introductory text by art historian, critic, and curator Marco Livingstone, an essay by independent critic and curator Jane Neal, and an interview with the artist by editor and curator Matt Price.

Caroline Walker - In Every Dream Home

Arts & Photography

LIVINGSTONE, Marco

Neal, Jane

Price, Matt

History & Criticism

Anomie Publishing

The paintings and etchings of Robert Fry (b. 1980, London) confront viewers with an engaging exploration of the human form that asks profound questions about people’s physical presence in the universe and the psychological, emotional, and spiritual engagement we have with the world through our bodies. With a deep sense of civilizations past, from the prehistoric to the ancient Egyptian, Medieval and Renaissance to the Enlightenment and beyond, Fry navigates a complex visual language that bridges the figurative and the abstract in a way that is evocative of body and mind, matter and spirit, life and death. Fry’s search for universal truths leads into dark territory, into our subconscious minds and neuroses, our deepest fears, anxieties, and insecurities. Both sacred and profane, Fry’s work masterfully employs color, mark, line, shape and form to bring us face to face with our inner and outer selves, with our humanity and, ultimately, with our own mortality.This beautifully produced publication features around sixty selected works by the artist over the course of more than fifteen years, from very early works to 2013. Following an introduction to the artist’s work by Mamuka Bliadze is an essay by the artist’s father, distinguished Consultant Psychiatrist Anthony Fry, which investigates the themes of masculinity and maleness in his son’s paintings, and in particular a series of works that refers to the Fry family, including a portrait of both Anthony and Robert Fry that seeks to unravel the complexities of the father-son relationship. A wider consideration of Fry’s practice is pursued in an essay by critic and curator Jane Neal that addresses topics ranging from Saussurean signification to automatic writing, pagan fertility symbols to archetypal human forms, twentieth-century British painting to body builders. London-based Fry has had solo exhibitions in London, Berlin, and Los Angeles, and featured in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Newspeak – British Art Now’ at The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and ‘The Curator’s Egg’ at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London. This, the first monograph on the work of Robert Fry, is co-published by Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, and Anomie Publishing, UK.

Robert Fry (English and German Edition)

Bliadze, Mamuka

Fry MBBS MPhil MRCPsych. DPM, Dr. Anthony

Berlin-based painter Martin Eder (born 1968) has dedicated his career to exploring the illusory possibilities of painting and its meaning. His canvases are dominated by a shifting palette of vivid color and hyperreal depictions of contrasting textures. His subjects, which range from oversized pets to nude men and women, question received ideas of value, taste, and “high” and “low” art. Parasites presents a varied selection of Eder’s work from the past 14 years, alongside new paintings and installation shots. Curator Hugh Allan provides a foreword to the publication, reading religious shame into Eder’s paintings, while writer Jane Neal reflects on what the artist’s works have to say about contemporary culture. Also included is a conversation between Eder and German writer Thomas Girst, in which the artist shares some of the ideas and influences behind his singular painting style.

Martin Eder: Parasites

Girst, Thomas

Allan, Hugh

Other Criteria Books

Limited Edition, cloth-covered book beautifully presented in a printed hard slipcase, published in an edition of just 500 copies. Matters of Life and Death' is a limited-edition publication documenting the accomplished and haunting recent paintings of celebrated Dallas-based British artist Richard Patterson (b.1963). An engaging introduction by Paul Moorhouse, Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, London, discusses the dynamic and complex relationship between figuration and abstraction in Patterson’s oeuvre. In his essay, art historian James Cahill explores the subjects of portraiture and personae within the artist’s works, while curator and critic Jane Neal navigates ideas of gender and sexuality in his practice, taking us into the realms of fetish and the male gaze. Features a selection of works executed between 2013 and 2016, many of which are published here for the first time.

Richard Patterson - Matters of Life and Death

Cahill, James

In this publication, British artist Anna Freeman Bentley presents a series of new paintings and works on paper documenting her journey into the exclusive realm of private members clubs. Having started out in her home city of London, her research took her to California, and in particular to some of the most desirable clubs of Los Angeles, where through friends, professional networks and a number of courteous emails, doors were temporarily opened to her. In places where photography is often strictly forbidden, Freeman Bentley was authorized to document some of the many luxurious lounges, well-stocked bars, and high-end restaurants that are second homes to the members who pay considerable fees to use them. Whether celebrities, self-made business people or those born into lavish lifestyles, members clubs are synonymous with wealth and success, where people can relax, socialize, or do deals in a smart and protected environment free from fans, paparazzi, or the general public. It is a world of affluence and glamour tailor-made for the jet-set, a meeting place where artists and art collectors fly in and drink cocktails, where high-net worth individuals and media moguls hang out with the great and the good from Hollywood or the music industry, and where social media stars can switch their phones to flight mode for a while and chat freely with friends. Freeman Bentley uses the photographs she takes of these interior and exterior spaces out of hours as the starting point for unpeopled drawings, collages, and painted sketches, transforming her studies of members clubs into complex paintings that hover between reality and invention. Freeman Bentley is known for her paintings of architecture and interiors, not only exploring the physical attributes of the built environment, but also raising questions about how and why they are used, and how this is reflected in the ambiance and dynamics of a given space. At a time of heightened awareness of wealth inequality, through her painterly works Freeman Bentley gives us a glimpse inside the spaces of the social milieu of the financially successful, the movers and shakers, the leaders and trend setters, inviting us to respond as viewers in whatever ways we choose. For some, it may be a matter of curiosity or of desire and aspiration; for others the very idea of members clubs might be elitist or snobbish. Yet for others it might be an occasional treat, or simply an everyday occurrence, the norm. With her characteristic combination of matter-of-fact observation, critical reflection, and atmospheric perception, Freeman Bentley presents us with a body of work that is as enigmatic as it is intriguing, asking us not only about issues of individuality and communality, private and public life, exclusivity and inclusivity, but also about how we each fit into such dialectics, and what this says about our inner and outer lives. 'Exclusive' has been co-published by Pinatubo Press, Inc., and Anomie Publishing, and released to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at the Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, California, in spring 2018. This hardback publication showcases images of approximately twenty paintings and as many works on paper, alongside a foreword from collector and patron Roberta Ahmanson, an introduction by the exhibition curator John Silvis, and a specially commissioned essay from critic Jane Neal. Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) is an artist based in London. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design before graduating with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010. She has had solo exhibitions at venues including Wolfson College, Oxford (2017), Husk Project Space, London (2015), Workshop Gallery, Venice (2012), and Galerie Kollaborativ, Berlin (2007). Selected group exhibitions include ‘London Now’ at Space K, Seoul, South Korea (2017), ‘Der Kuhle Glanz’ at 68projects, Berlin (2017), the East London Painting Prize (2015 and 2014), the Prague Biennale 5 (2011), and Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2009). Freeman Bentley has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Breathing SPACE Residency, London (2015-16), the ERDF New Creative Markets Programme, London (2013-14); Artist in Restaurant at Pied à Terre, London (2012); The Florence Trust Artists Residency, London (2010-11) and The Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award, London (2009).

Anna Freeman Bentley – Exclusive: Paintings of Private Members Clubs

Freeman Bentley, Anna

Kate MccGwire is an internationally renowned British sculptor whose practice probes the beauty of the uncanny. In creating arresting, sensuous, otherworldly sculptures, she explores ideas relating to Sigmund Freud's notion of the "unheimliche" or "unhomely", rendering the familiar strange and disturbing, often triggering a visceral response in the viewer.Growing up on the Norfolk Broads in England, MccGwire was fascinated by birds and the natural world from an early age, with avian subjects becoming a recurring theme in her artwork. Employing natural materials and in particular, feathers, MccGwire creates freestanding sculptures and site-specific works, her forms evolving intuitively and subconsciously based on subtle patterns or details within her chosen materials.This major monograph features works spanning her career, from the unsettling fabric and clothing works of the turn of the millennium through to the fantastical site-specific installation and interventions of her solo exhibition in 2020 at Harewood House, Leeds. In the first essay commissioned for the publication, independent curator and writer Jane Neal explores themes of childhood and family, nature and the body, physics and metaphysics, opening up connections between MccGwire's works and myths, legends, and belief systems across time and cultures. The second essay, by Dr Catriona McAra, an art historian and Curator at Leeds Arts University, explores MccGwire's oeuvre in relation to the history of soft sculpture, abstraction, and surrealism, especially with regard to feminist histories and to notions of counter-modernism. She asserts: 'The grotesque and the uncanny have sustained a significant hold over MccGwire's creative imagination, with interlocking thought-forms and otherworldly beings dominating her oeuvre.'Lavishly illustrated with around 140 images, the publication has been edited by independent curator and writer Mark Sanders and designed and produced by Peter B. Willberg. It is published by Anomie Publishing, London.Kate MccGwire (b.1964, Norfolk, UK), undertook a BA in Fine Art at University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham, before completing an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Solo exhibitions include 'Menagerie', Harewood House, Leeds (2020); 'Dichotomy', The Harley Gallery, Welbeck, UK (2018); 'Sasse/Sluice', Aldeburgh Festival, UK (2018); 'Secrete', Galerie Huit, Hong Kong (2016); 'Scissure', La Galerie Particulière, Paris (2016); and 'Covert', Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris (2014). She has featured in group exhibitions at venues including the Fondazione Berengo, Murano, Italy; Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Guerlain House, Paris; Centre of Contemporary Art, Toru&#324;, Poland; Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, Germany; the Museum of Arts & Design, New York; and the Contemporary Art Society, London. In 2018 she was the winner of The Royal Academy of Arts, Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture.

Kate MccGwire

MccGwire, Kate

McAra, Dr. Catriona

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