Being a Discerning Eye 2013 selector was a privilege.  An honour.  Nerve-wracking too!

My individually invited artists are those whose work I liked – much before I even began to understand just how extremely good their art really was.  Then I chose my open submission artists.

Deborah Azzopardi
Isabel H Langtry
Ash Naghouni
Jonty Hurwitz
McAlpine Miller
Jane McAdam Freud
Kelvin Okafor
Paul Regan
Paul Coldwell
Charlotte Hodes

I treated curating my art exhibition like a garden.  Except my garden is more like a park – a theme-park, with a variety of art so diverse, that excellent artists of all ages, and technical abilities, working in all mediums, and styles, come together.  All my artists are making artworks that I like looking at.  They cheer me up.  And they exhilarate me.

My plot reaps of a visual harvest with different tastes and styles ensuring surprises.  I love what they do.

There is the mutual ‘getting-to-know-each other’ period that occurs when you first spot the artwork you’ll fall in love with.  It’s a bit like a first date; the bioengineering of it all is ever-so-personal.  Though do remember, that even though glazed in love, a picture of a beautiful girl that is badly painted is not as pictorially stunning as a picture of an ugly girl that is beautifully painted.  All in all, I’ve artworks so alive, I’m sure they breathe.

Like your favourite soft armchair, or carbohydrates for the eyes, this is how best to experience art.  Enjoy…

Photography by Cristina Schek.

Antony Gormley comments: “I’m interested in Abraham because I see him carrying on the work Orozco and others in Mexico started, which is really dealing with contemporary urban life from the point of nothing, from the street, and doing that in a very intelligent way, a very open way, and celebrating the inherent hope of those that make something from nothing.”