Gary Hume’s studio is overrun with swans. They don’t quite outnumber all the tins of Dulux gloss, his go-to paint, but it’s close. Avian necks and elegantly drooping heads, liquefying into abstraction and then curdling back into figuration, drift across the walls of his east London workplace. One charcoal drawing is echoed by a painting opposite, rendered in gloss and satinwood. Elsewhere, there are swan diptychs, Aubrey Beardsley-like affairs in black and white. Each has a horizontal line that bisects the swans, making them seem like winged Narcissuses gazing at their own reflections.
These are all destined for Hume’s new exhibition, Mirrors and Other Creatures, about to open at Sprüth Magers in London. While it’s true that there are paintings of other living things here – humanoid flowers and other natural forms – this place feels more like an aviary than a studio.
