Image © Janet Nabney

This month’s theme of Abstract/Abstract Reality was very popular with 16 members showing work. Abstracting a piece of reality from its context was a popular method of constructing new meaning to create a new and sometimes unrecognisable subject. Geoff Titley’s ongoing project which he is making specifically for Instagram shows how we are reconnecting with nature in London’s parks and gardens during lockdown. The bright colours reflect the artificiality of these man-made spaces. Yas also showed abstract work connected to life during the pandemic. She made collages of scanned sculptural paper models and photographs of people living in Lombardy to represent the dislocated lives and disruption caused by Covid.

The urban environment with its hard surfaces, strong shadows and reflections, and infinite variety of shapes was a choice for many. Anna’s images displayed diagonals and abstract shapes with shadows and reflections featuring strongly, as did Eve’s whose photographs were all shot on the same day within 500 yards of her front door. Jim’s photograph of peeling paint and shadows contained a sense of mystery and Robin’s abstract of road markings had a sense of pathos with a discarded bright pink coat hanger being the only trace of a human presence. Heloise focused on one element as in her video still of stairs in a pool, the repetition of shapes creating a sort of meditation.

Some chose to create abstracts from the natural world – Janet’s beautiful blurred bird in motion, Tony’s image of the sea, sky and horizon without any other detail to give it context, Nusse’s reflections of trees and clouds in water, Sukhy’s snow patterns on a roof window like a still from a grainy black and white film, Edey’s close-up shots of leaves in the sun creating fascinating abstract shapes.

Some images were pure abstract with very little reference to the real world. Simon showed more of his daily kitchen abstracts, where camera motion and chance create vivid random splashes of colour, incorporating a sense of time in a 2-dimensional image. Austin chose to manipulate a series of photographs of closely cropped bricks, stretching and blurring them, altering the colours to make compelling Rothko-like abstracts. Alec’s photograph of a tulip was highly manipulated with reversed highlights, making a strange, glowing, hybrid flower never found in nature. Finally, Chris showed photographs of an exhibition at the Serpentine where the bright primary colours, raindrops and reflections all combined to make a super-saturated abstract frenzy!

Jim Paterson

Alec Wylie

Robin Barr

Anna Lerner

Austin Guest

Janet Nabney

Chris Burrows

Simon Zebu

Edith Templeton