About
Lives and works in London
Born in Blackpool UK
Education
2015-2017 MA Fine Art UAL Central Saint Martins London
2011-2015 Fine Art courses CityLit London
1994-1995 BA (Hons) (part 2) Art and Community Middlesex University London
1981-1982 PGCE University of Cambridge Department of Education UK
1972-1974 Dip. Art and Design Fine Art (part1) Exeter College of Art Devon UK
Employment
1982-2011 Teaching art, secondary schools London
1974-1978 Various: scene-painting at Northcott Theatre Exeter Devon UK
Solo Exhibition
2013 Rupert Whale The Stonespace Gallery London
Group Exhibitions
2017 Flock 17 London graduates GTX Gallery Camberwell London
2017 Paint Works Art Pavilion Mile End London
2017 Bacardi and The Dean Collection No Commission Berlin
2016 Show 4 Central Saint Martins London
2015 Refit at the Rag Factory Heneage Street London
2015 3 Painters The Original gallery London
2015 New Work: Four London Painters 54 The Gallery London
2014 Selected for 2 person show The Zetter Hotel Clerkenwell London
2013 Transitions The Original Gallery London
2012 The Journey Lauderdale House London
2012 Revealing The Hidden CityLit London
2012 When the Walls Come Down Norlington Studios London
1980 Mural collage Darwin College refectory University of Kent at Canterbury
Collections
2017 Painting Slippage 4 selected for University of Arts London Collection
2017 One of two London graduates to be represented in The Dean Collection chosen by rapper Swizz Beatz for Bacardi No Commission Berlin
Work in Tim Sayer collection (bequeathed to The Hepworth Museum, Wakefield)
Private collections
Reviews
Herb Shellenberger: Review of Rupert Whale’s paintings in the Central Saint Martins MA Fine Art Exhibition 6 June 2017
In his Slippage series, Rupert Whale shows three works that reveal surprising and fractured approaches to abstract painting. Hard-edged borders become blurred or covered by objects while solid and squeegeed colour forms mix with simple drawings. Slippage 4 seems to at first reveal an inset view of the larger background image. Upon closer inspection, the shaped section reveals a different narrative based on the same tonality but incorporating more coherence in shape and structure.
Misconceptions like this become productive moments in the artist’s canvases, drawing the viewer in and producing unexpected dissonances. Whale dispenses with the rigidity we might associate with artists like Gerhard Richter in favour of a more ambiguous tenor and a generous interaction with the viewer.
While the three large canvases are painted with a certainty that comes from experience, they also signal an artist who is in the process of developing new ideas and forms, a painter who is wilfully on the cusp of new ideas and experiments that he is diligently working through.
Herb Shellenberger is an independent curator.