Sue Tilley is best known as one of the late Lucian Freud’s major muses, with two studies of her ample curves among the 32 Freud etchings going under the hammer at Phillips today. Apparently, the first one came about when Tilley had the temerity to get a suntan, messing up the continuity of the artist’s painting-in-progress, so a “harrumphing” Freud made an etching instead.
But not so well known is the fact that Tilley is a trained art teacher and a practitioner herself, with the first exhibition of her paintings and drawings currently on show at Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery, in East London’s Hackney Wick, until 12 November.These include many pictures of her good friend and fellow Freud model, the late, great Leigh Bowery, as well as some resplendent self-portraits, including one of a swim-suited Tilley simultaneously surfing and snorting poppers, and another of her in full naked glory reprising one of her iconic Freud poses, accompanied by the caption “I wish I could afford to not draw on kitchen roll. I’d love to buy some cartridge paper.” This should soon be possible with the news that hers is the best-selling show in the history of the gallery and, with prices ranging between £50 and £400, it’s also a lot cheaper than bidding for Freud’s version.
Mark Leckey's work is feline fine
A huge inflatable pussy is making waves at Frieze London. Mark Leckey’s Inflatable Felix (2014) looms over Galerie Buchholz’s stand (D8), with its doe eyes, pointy ears and button nose. Leckey loves Felix and has previously confessed to having a “slight obsession” with the cartoon kitty; at a talk at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2009, Felix’s face appeared out of the dry ice as Leckey discussed technological developments. But let’s hope the Frieze Felix stands up to scrutiny from his numerous admirers—indeed, a group of Spanish cat-lovers were mischievously pretending to puncture the piece. Fear not, Felix fans, as a gallery spokesman stressed that this is “an exhibition copy; it’s all good.” The work, in an edition of three, has been sold to a private collection in London.
Musa's stars and stripes fail to unite
The France-based artist Hassan Musa is no stranger to controversy, having created the outlandish image in 2002 of Osama Bin Laden posing butt-naked on a US flag. Musa flies the flag again with another provocative piece at 1:54 Contemporary African art fair at Somerset House courtesy of Paris dealer Galerie Maïa Muller (until 18 October), which shows a beaming President Barack Obama against the stars ‘n’ stripes, with the words “I have a drone” emblazoned along the top of the eye-popping textile. One visitor was so shocked, she uttered: “What the hell would Martin Luther King think?”
Art for the brain, art for the body
“Art is philosophical and political: you can’t drive it, you can’t eat it.” So declaimed Donna De Salvo while she talked with Art in America’s Lindsay Pollock in Frieze’s reading room yesterday lunchtime. But at the very same time as the Whitney Museum’s senior curator was uttering these lofty words, over at the opening of Sunday Art Fair, the London-based collector Anita Zabludowicz was proving that you can, however, wear it—having just purchased one of Charlie Roberts’s pendant-sized clay sculptures for the modest sum of £50 from David Risley’s stand. Indeed, such was the appeal of the multicoloured piece by the Kansas-born artist that the entire Zabludowicz family are now bedecked with these vividly painted talismanic pieces. Whether they take the plunge for Roberts’s rather larger and costlier paintings, however, remains to be seen.
The look of love? Silent nude delights and unnerves Frieze visitors
A naked woman is causing visitors at Frieze London to stop in their tracks. But this voluptuous female is not real—just a curvy work of art with exquisite cheekbones and astonishing breasts, by John de Andrea, called Cierra (2003).
The piece, available with Galerie Perrotin (FL, A16), is dividing fairgoers, who appear to either adore or detest its hyper-real features. “I think it’s a bit scary, and more frightening than beautiful,” said the Norwegian artist Chris Reddy. “If I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that, I’d be like, woah!” Another onlooker, who preferred to remain nameless, expressed in a rather dreamy-eyed way that “it would be better to have her than a real wife as you could just sit and watch her in silence”, which perhaps demonstrates the power of this particular female’s gaze and assets (even though they are made out of polychromed oil polyvinyl).