Hackney in Clerkenwell

No, that's not a misspeak by a deranged sat nav.

And there's no need to adjust your set for this, either. It is supposed to look like that.

The Chess Game II (detail) [2013]
25 x 30 cm, oil on aluminium panel
©Tom Hackney

It is one of Tom Hackney's new, intriguing and tantalizing works on show in his latest exhibition where he continues his exploration of the mental landscape of chess as the raw material for his art. The show is on until the 5th October at the BREESE LITTLE Gallery in London EC1 (on the edge of Clerkenwell). Pop in and have a look if you are close by. 

As you know from earlier posts (here, here, and here) in which we have discussed Tom's work, he has, for a few years now, been transforming the games of Marcel Duchamp from moves on the board to images on the wall. But Tom's art is not just about the end product - though the finished works are indeed absorbing in their own right - but is as much (or more) about the process and the thought that lies behind, or that has "gone into" the work.  

His new show demonstrates further variations on the games of Duchamp, and also gives us another chesser or two, (both rather better known, though, for other things) to ponder upon. If you can't figure out who it is playing in The Chess Game II above, then Tom's website, or that of the BREESE LITTLE Gallery, will explain all. Looking at your screen from the other side of the room helps, too.

You can hear directly from Tom when he will be in conversation with Benjamin Cohen, the artist in a parallel exhibition, at the gallery at 7.00pm on Wednesday 2 October.

Unfortunately your blogger will be otherwise engaged in an important Streatham match in the London League at its venue near the Barbican not a quarter of a mile away - but perhaps my opponent will agree a quick draw in the interests of chess-in-art, and we'll be free to hotfoot it over to the BREESE LITTLE to kibitz.

Hackney will be in Clerkenwell until 5 October,
at BREESE LITTLE 30b Great Sutton Street EC1V 0DU.
Tuesdays to Saturdays 12noon-6pm

We'll review Tom's show of his latest chess-art in posts coming soon (see here and here) - when we'll also try and expose a bit of the chess implicit in the work.

Thanks to Tom for use of the image, and apologies to him for taking geographical liberties with his family name - but better anyway to be a Hackney in Clerkenwell than, as in my case, a Smith in Tooting.      
 
Chess in Art Index