Maggi Hambling - New Sea Sculpture Paintings and Etchings

Maggi Hambling, New Sea Sculpture Paintings and Etchings, Marlborough Fine Arts, until 5 June

Maggi Hambling's last major exhibition was a tribute to her friend and bohemian cohort, George Melly, but now she's returned to the theme of the one before that, the sea, and specifically the North Sea off the coast at Aldeburgh.

You might think that George Melly and the sea have little in common but the two shows are different parts of Maggi's ongoing obsession with the big themes of life and death, sex and sheer energy. The previous Waves and Waterfalls exhibition was dominated by oil paintings of those things- brilliant, powerful, mesmerising involvements with those forces of nature. Close up and increasingly they become almost abstract with faces, animals (and she says, birds) and ghosts appearing in the paint to such an extent that she said that when one such accidental suggestion became too apparent, it had to be painted out. They are there to find the longer one looks but they are genuinely sub-conscious and not part of the design.
The latest collection has fewer oils but Wave with reflected moon, 2010 (pictured) has a wonderful example of a ghostly face in the white paint just below the moon when seen in its full 48 x 35 inch glory. The detail below the breaking wave is done with understated panache. And although this night-time North Sea is very much a part of the waves of her current theme, one can't help but be reminded of Broken Moon, that I've used elsewhere on this website, from 20 years or more ago, which was similar except for the wave.
As the title indicates, this collection is dominated by sculpture, bronzes and bronze reliefs. The sculptures are small and although carrying such detail as seaweed or a breakwater, somehow reduced by their scale. The reliefs are unlikely to feature on a list of Maggi's finest work and, sceptical even of one's most favourite artists, professional as they need to be if they run big cars and smoke, one might see this exhibition more as a sale of buyable artefacts. That might seem an ungracious thing to say but the etchings are available in limited editions of twenty, numbered and signed, in a choice of colour. They presumably won't cost you the 20k that the picture above is available for but in order to avoid embarrassment, I didn't ask. The book is a tenner and it's a fine addition to my Hambling library.
So, it's more of the same elemental stuff but somehow less so. I wrote on the previous website about Waves and Waterfalls and rather than repeat myself but in muted fashion, it might be best if I retrieve the previous review from the archive and post it here for posterity, later.
But still, by some distance, she is the most magnetic and compelling artist at work in Britain, and probably anywhere else, today.