A visitor contemplates Elevator III at Allison Katz’s Camden Art Centre exhibition, Artery
(Picture: Rob Harris)If you stop to think about it, painting is a weird activity. Putting coloured pigment mixed with a medium onto a surface either to describe something, or to express feelings, or make a political or social point is somewhat absurd. It’s also wonderful, of course; a realm only limited by the imagination and, perhaps, technical ability of the painter. And contemporary painting doesn’t get much weirder or more wonderful than in the art of Allison Katz.
The Canadian-born Londoner’s Camden Art Centre show is perplexing and delightful by turns, and thoroughly absorbing. As the punning title of the show, Artery, suggests, Katz is a playful and curious artist. Stylistically, she’s hugely diverse – there’s a huge trompe l’oeil painting of a lift by the entrance to the show but then in another room there’s a cartoonish chicken, with grains of rice on the surface, and a sacred heart in authentically baroque style, surrounded by a frame with a frieze of silhouetted cavorting monkeys.
