Virtual Tour: Join Us for a Walk Through ‘The Maddox Collection’

Hanging in the window of our Maddox Street gallery, a diamond-dusted artwork by British-American artist Russell Young welcomes visitors to ‘The Maddox Collection’. Capturing the essence of icons who have left their indelible mark on our world, the larger-than-life portrait of the Hollywood screen legend James Dean, cigarette dangling from his mouth, is tinged with darkness, knowing that his life would soon be cut tragically short.

Step inside the gallery and you are met by ‘Van Golf’, a small but mighty painting by the Scottish artist Ross Muir, whose second solo show with Maddox opened last week at our Westbourne Grove gallery. This witty reimagining of a classical painting by the portraitist Lemuel Francis Abbott, dating from 1790, is one of the earliest depictions of a sport that was born in Ross’s home country. His contemporary update features the face of Van Gogh peering out from the canvas and Turnberry lighthouse in the distance, a cheeky nod to the deeply unpopular takeover by Donald Trump of Turnberry golfing resort in Ayrshire in Scotland.

Opposite, works by The Connor Brothers reveal new additions to the duo’s ongoing ‘Regression’ series, including ‘Risk Takers’, which features two velociraptors angrily baring their razor-sharp teeth. Continuing the duo’s passion for pairing image with text as a form of social commentary, the painting quickly gets to the heart of an issue that is central to modern life. The two scrawled words are pointing a finger at the risk-takers – like the bankers who caused the financial meltdown of 2007 – who are infamous for their excess.

Moving further into the gallery, Will Martyr’s ‘I See Miracles’ captures the grandeur of the snow-capped mountains of Gstaad, with a row of deck chairs lined up to catch the winter sun. Martyr, who travelled to the Swiss ski resort earlier this year for his debut show with Maddox, finds the mountains exquisitely contradictory, and his work captures this dichotomy quite beautifully. “They can be a brutal and unforgiving environment – so cold and so remote, yet so vast and so breathtaking,” says the artist.

Beside ‘I See Miracles’, the stark stare of a wolf standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange Building draws the eye to ‘Wall Street’, one of four new works on show by David Yarrow. Showcasing the photographer’s unique brand of storytelling on an epic scale, it is a rumination on the ruthless desire to succeed. Yarrow knows all about the brutal side of New York’s financial district, laid bare in Martin Scorsese’s movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. Before he became one of the world’s most celebrated fine art photographers, he worked on this very street as a trader.

There is more to discover on the lower ground floor of the gallery, starting with a trio of large-scale paintings by the irrepressible Cooper, who has a unique knack of finding the magic in the everyday. Painted during his stint as Artist in Residence at our Gstaad gallery in July and drawing from his signature palette of joyful colours, ‘Swiss Summer’ captures the beauty of the wildflower meadows that are as much a part of Gstaad as the snow in winter. 

On the opposite wall, an abstract painting by Nick Grindrod embodies an upbeat energy as shapes and colours twist and turn across the canvas. One of the newest represented artists to join the Maddox fold, ‘Mojo’ is among the exhibition’s most playful artworks. Combining his signature vibrant neon hues with abraded, weathered surfaces, achieved by applying layers of paint and then carefully removing them, the interplay of colour and texture is hypnotic.

The exhibition draws to a close with the exquisite ‘The Moon Glows the Same’ by Yuki Aruga, a hauntingly beautiful work on glass. To create the warm mirror finish, which accentuates the ethereal beauty of the roses, Aruga applied 23ct gold leaf and enamel to the reverse of the glass panel using a traditional artistic technique known as verre églomisé, learned as part of her fellowship at City & Guilds.

‘The Maddox Collection’ is open until 7^th October at our Maddox Street gallery.