Press
Independant Newspaper: Monday 6 July 2009
The sketch show: Can television teach you to draw like an expert?
Today's "tutor" is the painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling - Colony Room regular, carouser with the late George Melly, and a lesbian who prefers to be called a "queer". If anyone would supply no-nonsense practical advice it would surely be her. So sketch pad and pencil out, and somewhat nervously (it's not everyone who has their first public exhibition in a national newspaper) here we go. After all, as Hambling says: "You may not end up as Michelangelo but it's worth having a go."
The model, a strapping chap called Matthew Oghene ("he has a most fantastic set of curves, you must have noticed") and who is apparently much in demand in these circles, gracefully flits into a succession of rapidly changing poses that Hambling informs us are "a way of getting your eye in ... " read more...
© Photo Alan Kane
Observer Newspaper: Sunday 21 June 2009
A daily nude in your living room
Full frontal nudity! On Channel 4! Before lunch! You can imagine the knee-jerk reaction already but a wonderful new series on daytime television makes for some of the most unusual, thoughtful programme-making you're likely to experience. Meditative, slow-moving, repetitive - Today's Nude is everything that most television output isn't, and all the more magical for that.
Five half-hour episodes, each devoted to drawing or painting the naked figure, each starring just two people: the artist and the model. The conceptual artist Alan Kane has persuaded five very different "tutors" to take part: John Berger, Maggi Hambling, Gary Hume, Humphrey Ocean and Judy Purbeck. It was, he says, "a big ask" and not all of them jumped at the invitation. While Berger thought it the most original idea he'd heard for a long time, Hume, who had not done life drawing for years, was unsure. Hambling said she'd much rather do something about painting the sea but Kane coaxed her round.
Hambling ends up sketching a beautiful black model, Matthew Oghene, his back muscles rippling like sand in the desert. She's so taken with him that she gives him an affectionate pat on the tummy. "Life drawing is like a love affair," she says. "Hopefully one that doesn't end with a broken heart." read more...
