A very useful on-line tutorial as usual from Emma very much focussed of the actual process of painting. We discussed the use of glazes to create thin layers of paint with Emma suggesting I think about how the brush feeds the paint over the canvas. We agreed that I was relying too much on drawing with the paint rather than allowing the layers to build up.
We discussed the exhibition which is booked in for May at the Ballroom Arts gallery in Aldeburgh and the practical aspects that will need to be considered for the exhibition.
Action points
Be a bit more like a dancer – be attentive to your brush and how it meets the canvas. Try skating across the surface of the paint.
Build from your grisaille more radically so you are creating forms through layers rather than lines
Trip to St Ives in Cornwall – exhibitions, course and talks with artists.
A two-week trip to St Ives gave me a chance to visit some of the many galleries in the area. The largest of which is Tate St Ives which houses a collection of modernist works by people such as Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth and others who lived and worked in St Ives together with other artists such as Joan Eardley. As the reason for my being in St Ives was to attend a course at the St Ives School of Painting looking at the work of Eardley, the chance to get a closer look at her work was keenly taken.
Salmon Net Posts Joan Eardley (1961-2)DetailDetail
Being able to view the paintings up close allows one to appreciate the brushwork and texturing of the artist, something that is difficult to appreciate when viewing a photograph.
As well as the permanent works there were two other exhibition events at the Tate, a major solo exhibition by Ad Minolti, (b.1980) an Argentinian artist who has created their ‘Biosfera Peluche’ work in the main gallery. This involved the repainting of the walls and floor in bright colours together with the creation of geometric installations and animalistic figures to create an alternative biosphere based on an interpretation of queer and feminist theories.
The other event also involved direct painting on the gallery walls as it involved creating a work by American minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewitt (1928 – 2007).
Curved and Straight Colour Bands (2004) Sol Lewitt
Works that require direct painting onto the gallery walls are obviously going to be different each time they are recreated depending on the space and the interpretation which can lead to discussions regarding originality.
While I was in Cornwall I also took the opportunity to visit Kurt Jackson’s gallery in St Just to see his latest works.
As with many of his previous exhibitions this dealt with a small geographical area, in this case the Helford River. He does much of the work en plein air before returning to the studio and usually works on large unstretched canvases laid on the ground. This means that there are often twigs, leaves and other detritus incorporated in the paintings.
Kurt Jakson A wader’s fluting call echoes up and down Frenchman’s Creek (2015) Mixed media on linen 198.5 x 226.5 cmDetail showing embedded leavesKurt Jackson Trevador (2022) Mixed media and collage on canvas 122 x 182 cmKurt Jackson Calamansack, Rain Stops, Tide Drops (2022) Oil on canvas board 60 x 60 cmDetail
Chats with artists:
Stephanie Sandercock
Back in St Ives I visited the Penwith Gallery where I came across the work of Stephanie Sandercock, she is originally from Preston but moved down to Cornwall about eight years ago. Her abstracts struck a chord with me and a book of her work was on sale at the gallery. A visit to her website revealed that she had a studio in the next street to where I was staying and that she welcomed visitors so I called around the next day.
The book had revealed that she drew her inspiration from the rocks near her home on the coast, in particular the rocks in the cliff at Gwydian. We chatted about the patterns and textures to be found in rocks and stones and she explained her technique of using different t
ypes of plaster to build texture and applying layers of acrylic paint that are then sanded down and carved into to create the desired effect. She also uses thin sheets of mica that she obtains from the cliffs embedded into the paintings to create a reflective surface.
We also talked about promoting her work and getting prints, greeting cards etc. made and she gave me copies of several magazines that had featured her work. All in all she is not only a very good artist but also a thoroughly nice person.
A second visit to the Penwith Gallery led to a meeting with another artist working with stones but this time as a sculptor. It transpired that although now living down on the Lizard he was originally from Cambridge and had learnt his stone carving skills as an apprentice with a local building firm. Needless to say this led to long reminiscences about Cambridge pubs that have now closed and the lack of gallery facilities that are available for contemporary artists in the city.
He explained how he works with different soapstones from around the UK which give him a variety of textures and colours which he then combines within his pieces.
St Ives School of Painting Course –
“Joan Eardley: Land Sea and People” with Jill Eisele
This was a three day course at the Porthmeor Studios looking at the work of Joan Eardley both in terms of her paintings of people, especially children, in Glasgow and her work in the coastal village of Catterline. It was this latter subject that interested me most as Catterline shares many similarities with Shingle Street.
It was very much a hands-on course using a diverse range of media and techniques which we started by looking at her approach to figures:
Charcoal and pastel on paperAcrylic paint over collaged material
A series of experiments with poured India ink and acrylic paint that resulted in some amazing textures and patterns:
Looking at Eardley’s landscapes and seascapes:
Oil bars worked over written script
A series of seascapes from beach level using charcoal and chalk:
And finally, a seascape from a high vantage point:
View from The Island St Ives Oil on board
This was painted using a palette knife and a limited ‘Zorn’ palette consisting of just cadmium red, cadmium yellow, ivory black and titanium white.
Cornish take-aways (and not just the pasties):
Two weeks spent in a town so saturated with art and artists is bound to have some sort of effect. Having the chance to not only see contemporary art at close quarters but to be able to talk to the artists themselves has been a useful experience. Seeing Stephanie Sandercock’s work and having the chance to talk to her has boosted my enthusiasm for my work using the textures and patterns that I find in stones. Spending a few hours with a sketchbook and camera among the rocks and cliffs on Porthmeor beach has given me a collection of source material if I wanted to expand my geographical range beyond the shingle coast of Suffolk. Her use of different types of plaster to create textures on the canvas also made me think back to some of the work I had done previously with assemblages and maybe I could combine some of those ideas with the work that I’m currently undertaking.
My work is currently based around the sights, textures and colours of the shingle coastline of Suffolk. I use the pebbles of the beaches together with the material that forms the basis of the physical substance of the area to create a sense of place. The patterns that one finds amongst the stones, the shells, the rusty metal and the palimpsest of the oft-repainted structures that make up the fabric of the coastline provide a source of inspiration for my paintings.
With this in mind I have been visiting galleries in the local area to get a feel for the options for exhibitions and to see how other artists present their work. The main artistic centres along that part of the coast are the towns of Aldeburgh and the Maltings at Snape. Aldeburgh has several commercial galleries that represent local artists and two larger sites, one of which is the Aldeburgh Lookout and Art House. This consists of a large house on the seafront which forms a gallery and is run by international art dealer Caroline Wiseman, and a second building the Lookout Tower which is on the beach itself where members of the Arts Club Aldeburgh Beach hold individual exhibitions. It has to be said that the membership of the club seems to be a rather select group featuring people such as Antony Gormley, Peter Blake RA, Maggi Hambling, Anthony Horowitz, etc etc.
The second major site is another gallery, formerly known as the Peter Pearce Gallery it has been totally re-furbished over the past two years and is now known as Ballroom Arts. This also overlooks the beach and consists of two sections, upstairs is the large main gallery but downstairs there is a second gallery known as the Courtyard Gallery.
This is ideal for solo or small group exhibitions and given its location next to the beach would be an ideal site for my degree show exhibition. At my last visit to the gallery I was able to chat to one of the exhibiting artists who, by sheer coincidence, turned out to be a good friend of one of our neighbours back in Cambridge. I was able therefore to get some good advice and information regarding hiring the gallery, including the recommendation that early booking was advisable. This turned out to be valuable advice.
Ballroom Arts AldeburghCourtyard Gallery interior (exhibition by Honor Surie and Dan Hussey)
The ‘white cube’ style of gallery would I feel provide the best way of displaying my works and the size of the gallery means that I could fit several of my larger pieces along one wall to have maximum impact and to catch the eye of people walking past the large glass doors opposite to the long wall.
Courtyard Gallery, Ballroom Arts Aldeburgh (Paintings by Honor Surie, Furniture by Dan Hussey)
Details of the application process and the outcome will follow in a later post.
In contrast to the large-scale exhibition spaces of places such as the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall or the ‘gallery of galleries’ type exhibition as exemplified by the Frieze Fair I would say that most artists display their works either in small high-street galleries, or through their own spaces, or these days through their websites and social media. Between these two extremes there are the short-term temporary events involving many artists and usually organised on a regional basis, an artist’s group basis or on a subject theme.
Examples of these types of exhibitions include local Open Studio events where artists or small groups of artists open their studios or create spaces for people to visit, with the publicity and organisation being handled by a local committee. The annual Open Studio event in Cambridge runs for four weekends in July and showcases over 300 artists including painters, sculptors, ceramicists, photographers, woodworkers and jewellers in Cambridge and the surrounding villages. Publicity takes the form of guide books, website and downloadable app with descriptions and examples of the artists’ works.
A theme-based event is organised by Pint of Science, an organisation that runs annual events in many cities across the UK including Cambridge. This seeks to link together scientists with artists and present a series of lectures at which the scientist can explain their work to the public and an artist can present an interpretation of the work using an artistic medium.
An example of this collaboration this year was the linking of the artist Mark Cheverton with a scientist studying the Hawking radiation around black holes. His interpretation used the ‘Beyond Black’ paint and growing a crystal structure over several weeks to represent the radiation:
Mark Cheverton Black Hole (2022)
The interaction of the scientists and the artists can open up new ways of thinking for both and the combined presentations reach wider audiences than might be the case for each on their own – a symbiotic relationship possibly.
During my own career within science and engineering I was involved in organising and curating an annual art and craft exhibition of works by the staff of the laboratory in which I worked. This was held in the atrium of the lab which was not open to the general public but could be viewed by the staff and visitors.
Life drawings grey charcoal on black paper (A3)
Other non-gallery exhibitions:
Jenny Holzer’s 2018 exhibition was set in Blenheim Palace with the works creating interventions in the stately home, once home to Winston Churchill and his ancestors. Holzer’s works were very critical of the way the wars in the middle east were being conducted by the western military and their setting within the stately home that contains so many artworks depicting the glory of past battles created a real sense of tension. Many of her works showed the redacted pages of reports and instructions regarding techniques for the torturing of captives:
Jenny Holzer Waterboard (2018)
Other works involved the placing of bones within the display cabinets or on the dining tables within the house:
Jenny Holzer Untitled (2018)
And another intervention involved creating a bedspread to be displayed on Churchill’s bed:
Jenny Holzer Untitled (2018)
This exhibition demonstrated how the combination of site-specific works and the careful juxtaposition of works within the surroundings can create a much more powerful reading of those artworks.
The Turbine Hall in Tate Modern is part of what was once the Bankside power station and the enormous space has been used as a site for a series of commissioned site-specific installations since the opening of the gallery. The sheer volume of the space allows for monumental works to be created such as The Weather Project(2003) by Olafur Eliasson which created the impression of a huge sun and clouds within the hall. In fact part of the illusion was created by installing a mirrored ceiling, giving the impression that the hall was twice as high as it actually was. This gave rise to a visitor-led phenomenon of people lying on the floor of the chamber in such a way as to create patterns of bodies that were reflected in the mirrors, an example of the viewers interacting with the installation in a way that may not have been expected.
More recently the space allowed Kara Walker to create Fons Americanus (2019) a monumental sculptural fountain based on the Victoria Memorial that references the links between Africa, Europe and America and their respective involvement in the slave trade. Again the volume of the Turbine Hall allowed for a monumentalism that few places could provide in an indoor space, allowing (or obliging) the artist to react to the scale of the site.
In contrast to the Tate Turbine Hall which presents the work of single artists with commissioned artworks specific to the site, the annual Frieze fair in London creates a space for galleries around the world to curate and present the artists that they represent. In this way the fair becomes a ‘gallery of galleries’. The works presented are all by contemporary artists and creates a space for collectors, critics and (some of) the public to view art trends on an international scale.
The Frieze fair London was started in 2003 and in the early days was more accessible to the general public, in fact my first OCA study visit was to the Frieze Fair led by Michele Whiting, but with entry prices now ranging from £32 (for children) up to £245 those days are gone. It seems fairly clear that they are targeting a specific audience rather than those with a general interest in the arts.
It seems also that with the individual galleries presenting works within the overall framework of the art fair that the artists themselves will have little or no input into how their work will be viewed. The transactional nature of an art fair is by definition a space within which art is bought and sold and this means that site specific works will not be on display, the works will be presented in a ‘white cube’ environment.
Paul O’Neill The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures (2012)
O’Neill traces the development of the curatorial process and ideas through the 20th century detailing how the artistic curator developed from a person attached to an institution, responsible for the care and display of the artworks within its collection, through a period in the 1960s when the artist became more involved with the process of how their works should be viewed, and then later in the century the role of the curator becoming less attached to specific institutions and becoming more of an artistic creator of exhibitions.
Of course, it could be argued that from the beginning of the arts academies of France and later Great Britain the display of works very much influenced what value was placed on the individual works. The hierarchy of genres, with historical and religious subjects being at the top and still life paintings at the bottom, determined where on the walls the paintings would be hung, the history paintings got pride of place at eye level while the lesser genres of landscape, still life etc. would be placed higher up the walls towards the ceiling.
In the mid 20th century modernist ideas of media specificity espoused by Greenberg and others gave way to post-modernist ideas, blurring boundaries between painting, sculpture and performance creating a new approach to artistic events and exhibitions. This led to much greater interaction between curators and artists and led to the disassociation of the curatorial process from institutions and a greater role for individual curators.
This is exemplified by the exhibition in 1969 titled “557,087” curated by Lucy Lippard. As O’Neill writes:
By 1969, the convergence of artistic and curatorial praxis was causing confusion as to what actually constituted the authorial medium of the respective producers. A landmark exhibition in this regard was Lucy Lippard’s “557,087” for which, in many cases, Lippard herself installed or made work based on the instructions of absent artists. (O’Neill, 2012)
This led one critic to suggest that ‘Lucy Lippard is in fact the artist and her medium is other artists’ (ibid). This process later went a stage further and the Lyon Biennial in 2007 saw the curators Obist and Moison invite about 50 other curators to each present an artist which O’Neill describes as ‘curated curators curating artists’ (ibid).
The process of curation involves many different aspects of how artistic works may be presented to the public. As can be seen by the examples above, exhibitions may be for single or multiple artists, they may contain art from a single period or be a juxtaposition of works from different eras. They may also have a specific relationship to the site or be a ‘white cube’ type of display showcasing individual pre-existing works.
The siting of an exhibition can raise many issues. At one level the internal structure and surroundings will affect how the works are seen by the viewer, and importantly how individual pieces relate to each other. It may also be the case that an artist’s work relates to the surroundings both inside and outside the venue. In my own case for example much of my work is based upon the colours, shapes and textures that can be found in a close examination of the landscape of the Suffolk coast. For this reason, my choice of works that I would exhibit in a gallery in that coastal region has much more relevance to visitors to the exhibition.
O’Neill writes that ‘Whichever form exhibitions take, they are also the primary site of exchange in the political economy of art, the point at which “signification is constructed, maintained, and occasionally, deconstructed”, where one can establish and administer meanings of art.’(O’Neill, 2012) I would also argue that they also form a critical part of the monetary economy as far as artists are concerned.
O’Neill, P., 2012. The culture of curating and the curating of culture(s). The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts London.
