Painting exhibitions at London's Hayward Gallery

By Louisa Buck

The recently opened smorgasbord survey of painting at the Hayward Gallery in London offers yet more confirmation—if any more were needed—of the lifting of the spirits and the firing of the synapses triggered by a physical encounter with art, especially important after all the recent months of screen gazing.

Certainly the largely new work from the 31 intergenerational, multicultural British-based artists featured in the Hayward’s Mixing it Up: Painting Today confirm that the medium is still ripe for pushing, challenging and affirming. (...)

The show has stunning works by already familiar names but also a great many new discoveries–for me at least. Lisa Brice ushers us in at the entrance with a four-panel magnum opus which amply lives up to its title of Smoke and Mirrors. Both of the above reflect, syncopate and further complicate an already spatially dizzying chamber containing a throng of her posing, painting, puffing and partially clad females, rescued from being art history’s objects of desire and given new agency as artists in their own right.