This is a rather special show in several
ways. Very often the bundling together of
several artists to create an exhibition is
nothing more than commercial convenience,
whereas linking Colin Self, Brüer Tidman
and John Kiki has an underlying logic. First,
they are all Norfolk-based. Secondly, their
personal connections are strong, with the
consequent inevitable, if subtle, interplay
of artistic appreciation and ideas. At the
same time, anyone viewing what is on the Chappel
Galleries walls will see that Self/Tidman/Kiki
remain powerfully individual artists.
The artists are much of an age, Tidman born
in 1939, Self in 1941 and Kiki in 1943. Although
Tidman was born at his grandmother’s
in Gorleston, he was taken to Norwich immediately
after, and remembers Self there in his pram.
As small boys they were brought up together
in Greenborough Road, Rackheath, which was,
as Self recalls, “a dirt road, surrounded
by fields, a tank trap and forest in the countryside.”
When Tidman was nine, he and his mother moved
to Gorleston – “totally gone”,
the amazed Self one day discovered –
to meet up later by chance in Great Yarmouth.
It was as if the absence had not been several
years but a day. “We played on the beach
all day,” Self recalls. “Then
gone again.”
Tidman returned to Yarmouth in 1957 where,
having shown singular talent at school, until
1961 he attended the College of Art. He was
to win a drawing prize in a touring show of
work from East Anglian art schools that stopped
off at Norwich Art School, where from 1958
Self was studying. While he was stonecarving,
Self recalls, “Brüer walked in,
said ‘Wutcha, Colin!’, and it
was as if no time had passed.” Tidman
then had three years at the Royal College
of Art, 1961–64, while Self was at the
equally prestigious Slade School of Fine Art,
1961–63. Now the friendship was taken
up again, Self visiting Tidman at the College
a couple of times.
John Kiki was also studying in the capital.
Although born in Famagusta, Cyprus, in 1943,
by 1946 he had moved to London, where his
family was involved in the restaurant business.
Kiki’s family also had a restaurant
in Great Yarmouth, which he was visiting from
the age of four. He attended two of the other
key art schools: Camberwell School of Arts
and Crafts from 1960–64, then from 1964–67
as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy Schools.
The 1960s were heady ones on the London art
scene, the period when war babies also reacted
to the rather fusty Fifties by enhancing fashion,
art, photography, music, theatre, films and
satire. This was reflected half-way through
the decade by the publication of Private View.
A huge survey of artists, art schools and
dealers by Bryan Robertson, John Russell and
Lord Snowdon – now a collector’s
item – its foreword asked: “What
has turned London into one of the three capitals
of art? Who did it and how? And what kind
of people are they?” The answer lay
partly in those with whom Tidman, Self and
Kiki mingled and with whom Self was particularly
associated.
In one way or another, all three were touched
by and part of the Swinging Sixties. Now,
the articulate, proselytizing Self is angry
that Pop Art, “the only truly international
movement to have ever been conceived, created
and named in Britain” – one with
which he is closely connected – has
received so little Front illustration: “Saying
it with Flowers” by Colin Self etching
107 x 76cm recognition in this country. Although
it was given a big, successful show in Moderna,
Italy, two years ago and recently one in Bilbao,
Spain, the biggest British Pop Art exhibition
yet, “it still awaits its first retrospective
museum exhibition here”. He feels that
Britain’s old school tie art establishment
remains “too embarrassed that it was,
in the main, the creation of mainly working
class war babies, given a first break by Attlee’s
welfare state and a second break by Harold
Wilson.”
Self has always been highly regarded by his
peers, if not by the art bureaucrats. His
first solo show, at the Piccadilly Gallery,
in 1964, was attended by Tidman as well as
Michael Andrews, Lucian Freud, David Hockney,
Ron Kitaj, Norman Stevens and Michael White.
“The best draughtsman in England since
William Blake” was Richard Hamilton’s
assessment of Self, who, if he has not achieved
the commercial success that was his due, has
had solo shows on the continent, at the ICA
in 1986 and Tate Gallery, 1995–6, and
inclusion in important survey exhibitions,
such as This Was Tomorrow, at Tate Britain,
in 2004.
Self rightly has a high regard for Tidman,
with whom he remains closely in touch. Tidman
taught until the early 1980s, latterly at
Lowestoft School of Art, while persevering
with his own work. He has gained a string
of prizes, including two 1st Prizes: East
Anglian Artists Open, 1986, and Drawings for
All, 2000. Tidman is a prime example of a
fine draughtsman and imaginative colourist,
steeped in the European figurative, painterly
tradition, able to work comfortably on a large
scale, yet whose huge output has been largely
unnoticed by London critics. Although Imperial
College and the financial consultants Arthur
Andersen own his pictures in the capital,
public collections with examples are mainly
in East Anglia, although, as Self says, “the
best 30 of his works would enhance any collection
or museum.”
Kiki is another prolific, figurative colourist
with an unmistakeable style. Like Tidman,
he has a studio in Yarmouth. As painter and
printmaker, Kiki has taken part in many group
shows in Britain and abroad, with over two
dozen solo exhibitions, many of them abroad,
especially in Switzerland. The Chantrey Bequest,
National Gallery of Wales and Saatchi Collection
are among major collections holding his work.
Tidman had heard of him through acquaintances
before they met initially. They next met in
a pub in 1990 “which then turned into
a crawl” and finally Kiki was introduced
to Self, completing the trio. It led to them
all having a Yarmouth circus paintings show
together in 1999. Kiki’s strong, almost-naïve
style does not appeal to everyone immediately.
Self admits to at first not quite understanding
Kiki’s work. Then he saw his horse paintings
and says: “I got it! It was like a blast.
I realised that if it was Rock and Roll I
would not ask about the music, just enjoy
it. His work is outstanding.”
David Buckman, author, The Dictionary of
Artists in Britain since 1945
