The first two days of Bridport Open Studios saw a steady stream of interested visitors and some good sales – and that was after me not really being set up properly. It’s a little more organised now and who knows, I might even be able to say I was ready! I am pleased to be showing a wide range of my work including new work on canvas, erasure drawings, field drawings, new watercolour pieces and a range of small “affordable” studies. I have aslo set aside some space for a selection of #Collage365 work
A selection of #Collage365 is on show at the studio during Bridport Open Studios
Outfall 2 Ink & watercolour on paper 559mm × 762mm
I have been pleased with the quality of visitors to my Open Studios this weekend. Most people have displayed a keen interest in my work and I’ve enjoyed meeting new people and talking about art. I’m also pleased that I have sold something each day – including today when I was technically not open! A visitor over the weekend called this morning to say they had decided to by “Outfall 2”, the piece pictured above. It’s quite a special piece for me and I am delighhted it has found an appreciative home.
I have also sold some of the small studies I framed up and another larger piece, “You Were Born And So You’re Free”
You Were Born And So You’re Free Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm
“Double Erasure – that soft spot in my heart” Multiply-erased graphite drawing on Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm
It’s that time again and now I have a studio at St Michael’s in Bridport town centre it would be foolish of me not to open up and join in Bridport Open Studios. Since completing my #Letter365 project I have been busy catching up on a couple of years’ neglect in the garden but I have also been getting on with new work.
Thermopylae (not as black as you think) Collage, acrylic & ink on board 306mm x 306mm
I completed the erasure drawing I was talking about earlier (shown above) and have been working on black squares (as usual not always black, not always square!) and various field pieces. Some of the field pieces are on canvas! That’s the first time I have used canvas or completed a piece on canvas for 43 years! (It has been interesting!) I aim to add images of some of this work in the next few days.
I have also been moved to return to using wet-in-wet watercolour again and have been creating large field pieces, starting a new series of work under the working title of “The Stone Archive – Fields of Oblivion”. I will post some of these later too, including some small pieces I have framed up especially for Bridport Open Studios. These small nicely-framed pieces are designed as affordable introductions to my work and would make great gifts for loved ones or yourself! They are the sort of things people point to in my sketchbooks and say, “Ooh, that’s nice!” Since I have been working on larger sheets than my sketchbooks when I am trying out some ideas (especially the watercolour and acrylic stuff as I can do more while the paint dries) I thought I would isolate some of the ones that work best and frame them for sale.
As usual there is a “6×9” show to accompany Bridport Open Studios. This year it occupies the foyer and cafe at Bridport Arts Centre and I have entered some specially made pieces that explore my current themes and, some, move into new territory. The show opens on Wednesday 19 August and runs till 18 September after which it transfers to Black Swan Arts at Frome.
Tired but inspired after doing 3 shows in London: Agnes Martin and Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern and Joseph Cornell at the RA.
After just three rooms of Agnes Martin I was ready to call it a day: either call it a day for my art career – for what point when she has done so much of what I’m exploring – or call it a day and go back home to the studio and get to work with renewed fire and vigour! As it happened I forced myself to be disciplined and make the best of the day in London.
I had been really looking forward to seeing Martin’s work after being recommended by a friend. I wasn’t disappointed, though the quality was variable ranging from averagely interesting to sublimely beautiful and completely enveloping. Some of the early work and some of her last seemed to lack a positive spark, seemed to be floundering, looking for a connection. The rest was hard-wired to her muse. Most of it I would love to take home with me and look after lovingly!
I may write in more detail about particular pieces, but over all I felt she was investigating similar areas to my current and recent work, that there is more than a superficial similarity in the way the finished pieces look.
I only scooted round the Delaunay because I was with my daughter and thought she may be interested in the costume and textiles. It was nice to reconnect to a few favourite pieces from my last visit, but it didn’t add to the positive inspirational effect of the day so far.
The Joseph Cornell was a disappointment and a delight: irritating and inspirational. I first came across his work in the early 1970s but never got to see the show in London around that time. At that time I was making sets and boxes – in a very different style – and was very drawn to and, possibly, influenced by his work. The disappointment was that photographs have shown them brighter and somehow more polished. In the flesh they seem a little dull. The delight was in the detail. If I had seen them in the seventies I would have been put off by the apparent slapdash construction, but now I can accept and cherish the poor mitres and uneven paintwork: it’s the ideas that captivate and intrigue and they are mostly put together perfectly. There was less humour than I expected: quite a few had fairly dark subject matter. I liked that many were physically dark, making you work to see what was there. I liked that the show connected me back to the best of the ideas and materials I was exploring back in college days that I have started to tinker with again.
Tissue paper lain over the almost completed double erasure drawing (detail)
I am increasingly interested in the idea of veiling work so the viewer has to work harder to see what they are looking at and have used semi-opaque papers in collages to mute and soften images below. I am considering using etched and frosted glass in front of some pieces, in particular some black square ideas that are 3D or relief pieces. The image above was totally by chance when I covered the erasure drawing I was doing with tissue to protect it till I returned to make any final adjustments. I am certainly tempted to experiment with more veiling, maybe with silk voile or cotton muslin. Perhaps I should go the whole hog and use black perspex or something totally opaque like black-sprayed metal to cover work?
Last year the show I had in Ramsgate was called “The Seen and the Unseen”. That refered partly to #Letter365 being sold unseen but also to the fact that my work is designed to make the eye unsure of what it is actually seeing (amongst other invisible aspects). During the #Letter365 process I had a number of conversations with people who liked the idea of never opening the letters and Schrödinger’s Cat was mentioned on a number of the envelopes and in many conversations.
So much of my work has been inspired by the sea’s marks on the shore and the transient and uncontrollable nature of our existence. It could be said that much of my work is an attempt to freeze a record of those unseen forces at play in the littoral landscape and my mind and emotions. Perhaps my work should move towards even more conceptual and ephemeral work?
For now, I have this piece to finish off. I have not seen it for a few days and other issues may arise when I do, but the biggest question I had when I left it was “how much do I clean up the edges and how big a border”? Of course it still needs a signature, which will, of course, be erased!
How much cleaning up at the edges of this erased drawing should I do?
Erased black square 1 Pencil and eraser on Canaletto paper
It may seem odd that my work on black squares and my Tidelines theme are intimately linked but it is all a continuum. This latest phase – erasing and redrawing and erasing again for as many times as necessary to get the effect I want – mirrors the tide’s twice-daily erasing of the sand patterns and debris on the beach; rubbed out but leaving a trace of the history of previous times and tides. I am experimenting with various surfaces. These featured are on 300gsm Canaletto paper. It is thick enough not to buckle and stretch too much and robust enough to take repeated erasure yet still soft enough to hold the indentation of an HB pencil.
Detail of surface after repeated erasing and redrawing
I have chosen to use traditional pencils rather than a clutch pencil because it allows a greater degree of chaos to enter the mix. The sharpness wearing to bluntness and my reaction to it in the marks I make, plus the length of the pencil affecting my grip on it as it gets shorter, are important elements in the content of the works.
Erased black square 2
The piece I began today (detail below) is on a full sheet of Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm on which I have created a semi-accurate ruled grid. I am using what I believe to be HB pencils that were liberated from conference rooms at various hotels 20 years ago – knew they would come in handy! I may have to buy some more as they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In future drawings I may use harder pencils depending on what the surface of chosen paper suggests. For the first layer I am trying to be pretty loose and not get into my usual rythmns and shapes. I am listening to Soft Machine and at times using my left hand. Once this “ground” has been established, with the general shape and form of the piece tentatively mapped in, I will be more controlled about the marks I make after each successive erasure.
First layer of marks (detail) on an as yet untitled erasure drawing
Another Moment Waiting To Happen Ink on Paper 303mm x 216mm
I am delighted to announce that “Another Moment Waiting To Happen” has been selected for the Evolver Prize Exhibition at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton from 4th July to 29 August 2015. It is only a small regional prize but I believe it attracts some of the best artists in the area so I am delighted to be ranked among such high quality. (Sorry for the appalling photo!)
In my last post I left the narrative of my trip to London at the end of last week ar the Royal Academy. What I failed to relate was my disappointment with the lack of interest and training in the staff at the RA. I have to say there is something odd about the RA to my mind.
The founding Royal Academicians in a painting by Johan Zoffany
I never feel comfortable there really, yet have never investigated why that might be. I avoided visiting for a long time. I started to get a bit of a feeling about it on this visit – and it’s not just because it is a different clientele to the Tate.
A friend once, in response to me voicing my unease, said “well they are a bit up themselves there aren’t they?” The clientele is definitely more conservative, more establishment, more old-money, more class-conscious and there is the sense of a posh club. I feel as if the RA as an establishment doesn’t really care about its visitors or it would have paid more attention to the basics of its retail/visitor-attraction offering. The terrible indictment I realised when I left was that in 11 interactions with Royal Academy staff only one was “good” (the lady in the cloakroom), one “adequate” (the person who checked my ticket) and all the rest were below the basic standard you would expect for day-to-day dealings let alone a major art gallery and visitor attraction. For example, I asked four different staff members (three at desks) where I might find the “Converse and Dazed” show “you know, the emerging artist thing” and they had no idea. Rather than taking responsibility the first three suggested asking someone else (“ask at the desk”, “ask downstairs”, “you’ll need to ask at the information desk for that”). The woman at the information desk looked at her screen and seemed not to be able to find it and treated me as if I was mad and not giving her enough information to go on! Whoever is responsible for visitor-facing staff at the RA really needs to visit Tate Modern to see how to improve; or the Whitechapel to make the visitor feel involved; or for a proper object lesson in how to do it properly they should take a look how they do it at the Turner Contemporary!
So I finally managed to get to the Converse and Dazed show (despite the poor signage, lack of information and aggressive security staff!) and had to take some time to calm myself before I was in a good place to look at the art. You enter the show through Jonathan Trayte’s “The Shopper’s Guide” and it is as good a place as any to shake off the irritation. It is fun, wry and quizzical: I can see why Grayson Perry picked it as his favourite. It didn’t hold my attention for long enough in the end and my rosette goes to Rachel Pimm’s “India Rubber” which is engrossing and subtle and, at times, quite beautiful. I can’t illustrate this as there are no relevant images on the RA website!
One of Klaus Staudt’s pieces at the Mayor Gallery
I then went for a little wander down Cork Street where Klaus Staudt’s show at the Mayor Gallery was quite interesting, especially the very minimalist pieces. I also found some Gillian Ayres work at the Alan Cristea not really to my taste. Her work is vibrant and colourful but my reaction to her work is often black and white: love it or leave it. I feel I would do well to spend some more time looking at her work to examine just why!
Next stop was Tate Britain to see the Salt and Silver exhibition. I had been prompted to visit through the Tate’s marketing, Tate Etc and the (careful) selection of images I had seen. I was especially drawn to the statements about the “materiality” of these prints; the image being absorbed in the top layers of the paper rather than a surface coating giving them a more artistic sense compared with other early photographic processes. Sadly I was disappointed not to get any of this sense of the image becoming an object. Behind glass and in the subdued light needed to preserve them I found them pretty much the same as any other early prints and even the side-by-side display of three techniques failed to make much impression on me, though I am sure if I was holding them in my hand in normal light the differences would be obvious. That aside, the exhibition did illustrate the history of 20 years of early photography but what is it doing in an Art Gallery? This should have been a free show in the Science Museum where they would have done an even better job of telling the story of the process. I looked at the images (and I do find old photographs interesting and involving) and thought “so even back then people took boring snaps of old ruins!” I have dozens of old postcards and many wartime images, bought or taken by my father, which have similar poorly-composed, tonally-challenged images of random people, churches, ruins and the like. They too are not fit subjects to be in a paid-for show in a major international art gallery. And yes, there is a historical, documentary aspect to the show – 20 years of a few countries in flux – but that’s a job for a museum not the Tate. The photographers were, with a few exceptions, not artists and were not recording the world from an art perspective or intending to make aesthetic creations; they were lawyers, politicians, scientists and generally rich folk! I quite liked the uncropped ones where the edges are black in swathes from the excess silver salts exposed in full light. I didn’t have to pay extra as I have Tate membership but I would have been pissed off if I had to pay £12 to see it! Perhaps I am being harsh – and there were perhaps a dozen images that were a true delight – but frankly I would have been just as happy seeing them in a nicely printed book because behind glass I could not see that special “materiality” of the image as object.
Nick Wapplington image of Alexander McQueen creation
So after a few experiences where my expectation was higher than the exhibitions delivered, one that was the opposite. I wasn’t even intending to go to the Nick Wapplington/Alexander McQueen: Working Process exhibition but I am pleased I did. By this time I was tired and had done a lot of art and wished I’d seen this earlier. If I had I would have spent a lot more time with it. It is a shame I won’t get a chance to revisit before it closes. What started out as a photobook collaboration has been transformed into a larger-than-life celebration of McQueen’s final 2009 “Horn of Plenty” collection. The photographs of every aspect of the working process of putting a major fashion show together are fascinating and involving and often movingly beautiful. These are juxtaposed with Wapplington’s huge images from landfill sites and recycling plants which act as a comment on the short life of consumer goods, fashion, art and the regeneration and constant reuse of ideas within the creative industries.
The headline indicates that I saw a range of art in London this last two days. I went to major shows at the Tate and Royal Academy; called in to the ICA and some Cork Street galleries; and visited the Other Art Fair. The snap judgement that “sublime to the ridiculous” suggests is, of course, bound to elicit a similar stereotype response, but where it’s the sublime to be found? I realise now that little I saw this last two days truly falls into the category of sublime – and I don’t intend this turn into a discussion of what I saw that was sublime or any attempt to define the sublime in art – I am merely indicating a wide range of work of varying quality and perceived financial value. What is true, in my belief, it’s that the best is not necessarily the most valued or highly regarded.
Cover of Ydessa Hendeles notes on the exhibition “From Her Wooden Sleep”
I started yesterday at the ICA to see “From Her Wooden Sleep” a fascinating, almost spell-binding, tableau featuring dozens of articulating dolls and artists’ mannequins set out on ranked wooden chairs almost like a school-room or town meeting: a chapel or early medical operating theatre. Rows of wooden people all looking at a figure at the front. Others round the sides; a collection of wooden banjos and an array of distorting mirrors. Part museum, part installation. Something I have never seen before and something that captured and captivated me probably even before I entered the theatre/ room. A visual delight, I found it a fascinating and heart-warming experience.
I also had a quick look round the other show at the ICA. “Looks” is a group show which I am told “explores the ways in which mass digital culture informs how identity is constructed, performed and challenged.” Sadly I failed to find anything that fitted that description and I don’t really understand what they mean by an identity being “performed”. That’s not to say that the work was without interest, I just couldn’t see how the description fitted. And if I am honest, the work didn’t have enough interest to engage me and make my visit more than just “a quick look round”.
From the ICA I walked round to the Royal Academy to see the Richard Diebenkorn show which I was really looking forward to and in which I found myself sadly disappointed. Perhaps I had been looking forward to it too much, seeing my expectations to high, but instead of finding the sublime I found myself classifying it as “quite nice” and “pleasant enough”. The work seemed to literal for me: an abstraction rather than abstract and is as if he can’t decide what is and what is not of importance and value. My notes read, “an art of hesitancy, indecision and bumbling along!” Somehow it’s not decisive enough to hold an essence or transfer emotion. Like my reaction the Richard Tuttle shows recently it seems a little lazy. Who am I to judge, but I felt the figurative and representational pieces to be compositional weak and poorly painted. All this was a great surprise to me.
Richard Diebenkorn: Ocean Park #116
I had expected to fall in love with them all. I may have seen a few works before but mostly I had just seen pieces in print or online and had projected on to them a luminous, spiritual quality I found oddly lacking in the actual pieces. There is a quiet, contemplative beauty to some of the Ocean Park pieces but it actually didn’t stand up for me under scrutiny and contemplation! I can’t believe I am about to say this, but they are nice decoration and a joy to the casual glance but, for me, lack substance. There’s a wealth of nice detail and I liked some of the gouache and collaged pieces very much but overall I couldn’t get excited by it all.
My #Letter365 installation Bridport Arts Centre meant I have had a couple of months of concentrated hard work and I still have got some loose ends to tie up, like updating the blog with images and relating some of the story lines from the show. I still haven’t mentioned it much on this blog!
Part of the #Letter365 installation at Bridport Arts Centre, Allsop Gallery
I’m starting to get my energy levels up again but I plan to do some major clearing up in the garden over the coming weeks and I have lots of work to get on with in the studio, so I thought I’d take a couple of days out to take in some art before I get bogged down.
I’m aiming to go to the ICA today. There’s an interesting-looking installation “From Her Wooden Sleep” I want to see. Then there’s the Diebenkorn show at the Royal Academy that I’m looking forward to very much. This evening I aim to go to the Other Art Fair. I want to see what’s going on and gauge if it’s of use to me as well as catching the work of Hanna ten Doornkaat whose work I really like.
The other things I hope to fit in, depending on time and energy levels, are the Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern (and another look at the Marlene Dumas too before it closes); Salt and Silver at Tate Britain; the Jim Dine gift at the British Museum and of course the Ravilious at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
