Long before he sung of how paint “gets you going like you wanna be got” on the early Suede track ‘Painted People, Brett Anderson had grown up surrounded by art. His mother was a painter. “Mum’s paintings were everywhere;” he wrote in Coal Black Mornings of his West Sussex upbringing, “she devoted her entire modest career to detailing the gently rolling Sussex countryside, and the walls would be full of her beautiful watercolour landscapes and intricately observed natural. Where her own work was absent she hung prints of Hendrick Avercamp, Vincent Van Gogh and Aubrey Beardsley.”
It seems fitting, then, in a way, that the Quietus should launch what we hope to be a new semi-regular series with ten paintings selected, curated, and introduced by the Suede frontman, brought together under the virtual exhibition title (selected by Anderson himself), ‘Power and Pain, Love and Madness’.
Art UK is a British charity, the result of a collaboration between 3,200 British institutions with the intention of making art available to everyone. It has created an online portal where anyone can view reproductions of works held in public collections through Britain and Northern Ireland. This week, they launch their new Curations tool, allowing members of the public to select works from that collection and present them as a timeline, slideshow or online gallery. Since all galleries are online right now, that basically puts you on level pegging with the director of the Tate. To give you a glimpse of what’s possible, the Quietus will be working with Art UK over the coming months to present selections from that database curated by some of our favourite artists. Starting, here and now, with Brett Anderson.
To see Brett’s selections – and read his descriptions – please click through the accompanying gallery (below) – and don’t forget to check out Art UK’s Curations for yourself and come up with a virtual exhibition of your own.
