#retrospective

#retrospective

To be honest, for many years, I was mostly reacting. Life was happening to me, rather than me shaping the life that I was living. I was making progress reactively and I was looking out for all kinds of opportunities. It was easy and quite straightforward - I was floating and jumping between projects and calls and making things work as I was going along. Years ago, my wonderful wife introduced one little annual ritual which changed that dynamic entirely.

When Robert Therrien passed away in 2019 at 71, he left behind a series of small note cards, each bearing a labeled line drawing. To those closest to him, they felt like legends that, if decoded, might reveal something of the elusive artist's practice. Many feature recurring forms in his work, like a keystone with the words "this is her" scrawled beneath it, or a bent cone titled "this is the path."

Artist Suzanne Jackson is an alchemist who can make paint hold shapes in the air without the support of canvas or frame. She can turn garbage into stained glass, shimmering silk and hammered precious metal dreamscapes. And she can divine love and beauty in situations of peril and grief, like the devastation of the environment and the loss of a grown child.

The Histories, an exhibition conceived by Godfrey in collaboration with Marshall and Adrian Locke, the RA's chief curator, is Marshall's largest show to date in Europe and is timed to celebrate his 70th birthday. After London, it will travel to Kunsthaus Zürich and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. The exhibition's title speaks to the layered histories in Marshall's work, to the history of painting as well as African and transatlantic history.

Bowery's legacy isn't merely a trivial notion of authenticity but rather an embodiment of artifice that never strayed into deceit, merging spectacle with genuine meaning.