NICOLE FARHI AND FRIENDS

JUNE 26, 2019 IN GALLERY NEWS

Canwood Gallery, Herefordshire – 23rd  July – 15th  September 2019

Open 11am – 4pm Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays)

Canwood Gallery are delighted to be hosting an exhibition of the work of Nicole Farhi in their main gallery this summer and an exhibition of invited artists, from Royal Academicians to early career artists, all with a connection to Farhi in the Turbine Hall.

Nicole Farhi first made her name as a fashion designer and is now making a new name for herself this time as a sculptor.
Farhi studied art and fashion in Paris in the late 1960’s. Her career as a fashion designer took off so quickly that she put art aside and concentrated on fashion. However twelve years later, having started her own business and feeling restless, she decided she wanted to return to making art.

A sculptor friend introduced her to Jean Gibson, (1935- 1991) a gifted artist and inspirational teacher. Farhi recalls that Gibson gave her some clay, asked her to make a torso there and then.
Jean said “I’ll only take you if you have something to say – otherwise, it’s a waste of time,”  When Nicole had finished, Jean took a good look at it. “I’m taking you on – come back on Wednesday,” she said.
“I went to my car and I burst into tears – I was so emotional,” recalls Nicole. “You see a door opening to another world. I’m emotional just to think about it.” 
Farhi went on to attend Gibson’s evening classes twice a week throughout the 1980s. In 1985, as she was casting her first bronze, she met Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005). He was interested in her sculpture and offered to tutor and mentor her, and then became a very close friend. He urged her to try out other media such as plaster and wax, but she quickly knew they were not for her. Farhi knew that sculpting was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life but for over 30 years she had to fit her sculpture around fashion.

In 2010 when the Nicole Farhi label was sold, Farhi realised this was her way out. Two years later she showed her last collection and then walked away from fashion . “Now I sculpt every day.”
Farhi’s work and primary interest has always been rooted in the human form and the emotions it elicits. The exhibition in Canwood includes a range of work spanning Farhi’s career as a sculptor from her earthy female torsos that echo the strength and simplicity of Neolithic clay female torsos. They have an ageless quality to them and remind the viewer that clay is the primeval material that comes straight out of the earth, and was the first material man used to make sculpture.

Farhi’s engagement with clay is very visceral and emotional, and she loves to work with it whether she is sculpting hands, busts of famous friends or her most recent work the torsos of voluptuous women, some of which will be on display. “Large women are beautiful – flesh is wonderful!” she exclaims.  These Rubenesque women are a world away from the models she used to work with during her previous career. “It’s about the sensuality of the flesh, the beauty that large women have,” she says. “For me, it’s a complete antidote, obviously, to everything I did before, to work on larger bodies. But it’s also very important for me to show that you expect to see beauty in a slim person, when beauty is in everything and everybody.”

All works are for sale.

The exhibition has been curated for Canwood Gallery by Selina Skipwith, an Independent Art Advisor and Curator. She was the former Director and Keeper of Art of The Fleming Collection 1996-2014, over eighteen years she directed the collection firstly as a corporate collection and subsequently as a charitable foundation. In 2000 she oversaw the creation of The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, prior to the sale of Robert Fleming Holdings Ltd to Chase Manhattan the same year, and The Fleming Collection gallery in Mayfair, which opened to the public in January 2002. She has curated numerous art exhibitions in the UK and abroad, she writes and lectures
regularly and advises a number of private and corporate clients. Selina is on the European Steering Committee for the Association of Professional Art Advisors and is a Trustee of Wilhelmina Barns Graham Trust.