warped brochure 18/5/02 4:17 pm Page 21
WarPed
WarPed : Painting and the Feminine
Maggie Ayliffe
Jo Bruton
Shirley Kaneda
Inside 3 Foreword/Acknowledgements 4 Warped, not wasted: or painting as a rechargeable battery Terry Myers 8 Warped: Painting and the Feminine Maggie Ayliffe
Joanne Greenbaum
19 Artists' Biographies 22 Colour Plates
Valerie Jaudon
Vanessa Jackson
Rosa Lee
Foreword Deborah Dean, Angel Row Gallery Warped; Painting and the Feminine brings together seven
abstract painting (and still questioning the warped nature
artists - Maggie Ayliffe (UK), Jo Bruton (UK), Joanne
of this situation).”
Greenbaum (US), Vanessa Jackson (UK), Valerie Jaudon
Warped has evolved from a series of discussions
(US), Shirley Kaneda (US) and Rosa Lee (UK) - whose work
between the artists - orchestrated by Maggie Ayliffe -
all sits within the broad framework of contemporary
which have revealed connections: one influenced by
abstract painting.
another, another suggesting someone else whose work
As the title for an exhibition, Warped might
strikes a chord with her own. This ‘chain of association’
somehow suggest a ‘theme’ or manifesto. In fact, it is
has led to an on-going communication by fax, Email and
more about the examination of a particular point in time
sometimes face to face, in which the artists have raised
for these seven quite separate individuals: artists who
questions for themselves and one another, which examine
have developed their practice on either side of the Atlantic
the particular nature of their practice and its broader
yet who now find resonance in one another’s work, drawn
context. The exhibition and this accompanying catalogue
from shared or parallel experiences.
are, therefore, only the beginnings of a dialogue and
Moreover, the artists are all painters - all women
Maggie Ayliffe has given a taste of their current thinking in
- who have chosen pattern or ornament as their field of
her edited extracts of early stages in the discussion,
enquiry within the context of perennial debate about the
published here. Angel Row Gallery is indebted to her for
‘position of painting’ and its validity as a choice of media.
all her initial research and subsequent work in bringing
So whilst the show itself has, without doubt, a powerful visual impact, grandness of scale and collision of
this - and the initial idea for the show - together. We are grateful to Terry Myers for his insightful
colour that makes the heart beat that little bit faster, it is
contextual essay and we would also like to thank all the
also the catalyst for a debate which might take many
artists for their generosity and support in the development
possible directions. In an Email conversation with Maggie
of the project and for their contributions to this publication.
Ayliffe (whose MPhil research first suggested the
Finally, we are grateful to greengrassi in London and
exhibition), Valerie Jaudon pinpointed what were, to her,
Feigen Contemporary, New York, for lending work by Joanne
the most exciting aspects of the project: “seven women
Greenbaum and Shirley Kaneda respectively and to the
artists from different backgrounds, countries, ages and
Midland Band Curatorial Development Fund, Chelsea College
education independently sharing ‘the will to unsettle and
of Art and Design and the University of Wolverhampton for
perturb’ the tightly bound conventions of 20th century
funding aspects of the exhibition and catalogue.
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Warped, not wasted: Terry Myers
or painting as a rechargeable battery There is little doubt that painting has once again become something very much worth doing, especially for many of those individuals for whom it could have been either passé or even taboo not so long ago. This avoidance or refusal was (or is) not only due to the exclusions exercised in painting’s various histories, but also because of its inability to remain in what is considered to be the “center” of culture. If painting now fully thrives as a “marginalized” activity, then so much the better for many artists (most of whom are women) who clearly understand what it means to assert the centrality of one’s (constructed) self in its space because they’ve never been given the opportunity to take it for granted. Painting is becoming a uniquely ever-present surface that has the unusual ability not only to be still and in motion at the same time, but also to be a non-final, modernist resting place for what has been called ‘presence’- what I have in the past preferred to call a ‘right now’ situation to support a perpetual ‘what’s next?’ Painting still stays in the most peculiar ways, and the paintings in Warped constantly demonstrate their ability to remain in a wide variety of circumstances, using an intentionally diverse range of hybrid figures and grounds that are borrowed from various subcultures within all that constitutes popular or even high culture. These paintings stick around to get under our skin. Given the increasingly fleeting nature of our late-capitalist, postindustrial, downloadable (for some of us at least) technocentury, paintings that are able to keep their associative and conceptual options open to us, while simultaneously surfing multiple models of painting and their (handmade, even visceral at times) production values is no small feat. In the consistent unpredictability of their referential, spatial, and even social leaps, the
Painting has become much more interesting these days because it has moved beyond what I want to call assault (whether that which is found in the clarity of modernism’s exclusionary tactics that too often masqueraded as self-criticism, or in the deliberate lack of clarity in many of post-modernism’s institutional critiques) to what I like to think of on several simultaneous levels as battery. Back in what would become (for art and life) the watershed year of 1989, I was fortunate to be introduced to the paintings of Marilyn Lerner, an underexposed artist who has been working in New York since the late 1960s, and she remains one of my most favorite painters. Jumping at the chance to write about her work immediately, I published an essay in 1989 in which I suggested that her paintings were “psychological batteries-storage containers for a world view.” 2 Little did I know at the time how much that phrase would continue to resonate in most of my significant relationships with painting. It is also provocative here that ‘battery’ can also mean ‘sequence’ or ‘array’: there is something very intriguing about the phrase “a battery of paintings.” It could be that the word contains an ever-so-slight echo of the threat still to be found in “assault and battery,” an act of transgression, the likes of which held great promise for painters in the early 1990s. Witness Michael Corris’ vivid assessment of the moment, taken from a 1993 conversation with Robert Nickas, called Punishment and Decoration: Art in an Age of Militant Superficiality: “A painting of quality is a picture that uses abuse, embellishment, degradation, and decoration to generate complex visual malapropisms out of erasure, cancellation, acts of outright destruction of the surface of the picture, the scotomization of vision, unabashed scenarios of seductive plasticity, patterning, and color, or outright displays of incompetence-intended and otherwise. The picture/surface dialectic is not the same frame of reference as the figure/ground opposition.” 3
Warped: Maggie Ayliffe
Painting and the Feminine Warped: the exhibition brings together the work of seven women painters, four from the U.K. and three from the U.S.A; artists from different cultural backgrounds and generations to be viewed within the conventional site of the gallery. If the curatorial project works, a conversation of sorts, between the works and the audience will be initiated. However, behind this most public façade, another dialogue has begun, via email, amongst ourselves, the artists. During the summer I set up an email site and invited participating artists to ‘post’ on to it some of their ideas and responses to the exhibition and to use it to ask one another the questions they each pose themselves as part of their individual studio practice. The intention of this dialogue was not to produce a group manifesto or a series of self affirming artists statements, but to take advantage of this unique opportunity to trace the histories and geographies of our practice and to provide a platform for questioning and progressing our internal debates - a mapping of the territory from which we spring. Shirley Kaneda: “Artists respond to multiple histories and the agendas of places and nationalities. These conditions inform their practice by locating them within a dialogue. Such exchanges are sometimes broad and at other times, narrow. Today’s concern for history, purpose or gender in relationship to abstract painting is a product of the discourse network that is formed from a stored body of (common) information and (specific) desires. These are contextualized and re-contextualized according to different geographic conditions, histories and traditions. What may have been conflicts for one generation quickly dissolves into the unproblematical for another and viceversa. Art and its conditions are not fixed in western society and the artist’s task is to recuperate and reform these conditions rather than merely replicating them.”
The Warped project brings together artists who have been working in and around the field of painting, gender and abstraction for a long time with ambitions to test the issues we are talking about in the studio and the gallery, within education and in critical and theoretical forums. The dialogue as it stands is still very much in its early stages; the artists have set down important opening gambits, laid down the foundations for future discussion and begun to tease out some common ground. The purpose of this essay is to draw out some of the initial observations from the questions that we are asking ourselves, a preface to the historical and political coming together of this work, at this time. All quotations are taken directly from this communication but it should be noted that in the space available I can only begin to allude to the range of subjects addressed and by no means represent the complexity of the debates. This is a work in progress. Valerie Jaudon: “Conflicts for me lie not in the studio, not in my relationship to art works, other artists or even viewers, but in another category that I think of as art-text, or writing about art. We all have a relationship to this category (indeed, more than likely constructed out of it) which includes not only critical writing, but more specifically, the discourse of disciplines such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, art history, Marxism and feminism.”
What is it about language, the text that is so important to contemporary visual artists? It may seem strange for a group of painters to start a conversation about language and text but as Jaques Lacan observed, the relationship between the subject, its body and the world is not just a visual understanding, but a named experience, and the power of patriarchal law is incorporated into the fundamental structures of language. So, for artists seeking to explore a gendered space in painting, it is vital to understand the importance of language in the process of establishing sexual difference and identification. How indeed did modernist abstraction become a signifier of masculinity? Lacan’s symbolic order, the learning of language through visual and spoken exchange, relies on binary or dualistic terms of reference and differentiation, beginning with ‘self’ and ‘other’. As painters engaged in visualising the feminine we run the risk of being trapped by the negatively connoted ‘other’ compared to modernism’s humanistic and abstract male ‘self’. The first questions posed by Vanessa
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Jackson began to address the problematic of working within a negative syntax and to challenge our unease with the term ‘abstract’ all too readily associated with a limited and specific modernist agenda. If we are not abstract painters then what are we? Vanessa Jackson: “How are we validated as so called abstract artists when all the language surrounding our discipline is negative? e.g.: Non-representational Non-Figurative Non Objective etc. What words can we use to ‘represent’ our painting? In the US it may be ‘Post Formal Abstraction’ although abstraction still refers to taking from something initially observational. Mondrian referred to himself as a ‘real abstract’ painter, which I like, but might sound odd these days.”
How indeed do we assert ourselves positively within a culture that traditionally negates the ‘other’? The Warped project is addressing the risk of negation at a number of levels: it is an exhibition of women painters, who employ the signs of a traditional and subjugated femininity; beauty, the decorative, colour and craft, as metaphors for talking about individual (and perhaps problematic) relationships to the history of painting and feminism. Rosa Lee: “Terms such as ‘sexual difference’, the search for a feminine symbolic/imaginary have been borrowed from the numerous and often opposing feminist critiques of
current psychoanalytic theory. The questions that such terms pose for painting, for example, reveal the conflicts perceived by feminists of the seemingly impossible status of being a woman and a painter, given the longstanding history and tradition of painting’s exclusion of women. Where painting is concerned, suspicion has been cast on the very nature of the creative process itself.”
The sites of femininity in contemporary abstract painting explored in this exhibition derive from a dialogue with feminism, psychoanalysis and modernism. However, wary of inclusion and closure in a fixed and polemic formation, the work also evidences a resistance to such all-encompassing and self referential discourses. Ironically, feminism, modernism and psychoanalysis have all proved equally resistant to the notion of the female abstract painter. Valerie Jaudon: “Could it perhaps be that language, philosophically considered to be outside of, denied to, visual art will turn out to be our friend after all? In recognizing that language is already embedded in art from its conception and practice, to its viewing, reception and critique, we can give ourselves permission to speak. At the top of my wish-list is the desire to separate previously linked concepts, for example, abstraction from modernist aesthetics. I know this seems like overkill, but it brings me to the question that has possibly brought us all together: where is the “decorative” in all of this and why does it continually resurface?... What exactly is the connection between abstract painting and the “feminine?” I want to ask this question, not to raise the status of crafts, to celebrate ostensible feminine imagery, or to be a “bad girl” by self-consciously using decorative vulgarity, but for a simpler reason - to see if this is the right question.”
The works in the show might well be collected together under the term ‘decorative’ - but this is too easy (on the eye and the brain!). The pejorative reading of the decorative in relation to modernist abstraction has formed a basis for the realisation of ‘otherness’ and the construction and telling of personal and critical narratives borne out of individual experience. The decorative is not simply one of the outlawed ‘others’ of modernist painting practice; it is outlawed
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precisely because of the visual connection it makes between abstraction and social history. Is it possible then that when we ask what is the connection between abstraction and the feminine we are looking not only for a space that affords aesthetic pleasure but also for what I might loosely term social recognition or narrative space? Rosa Lee: “As a pejorative term, the word ‘decorative’ has come to refer to the superfluous, the decadent, diluted, derivative. And yet without these - and I am thinking of those ‘humble’ arts, known sometimes as ‘crafts’ - borne of necessity, diligence, a desire to enrich through embellishment and adornment - all those anonymous women through time, all those hours dedicated to the clothing and feeding, the embroidering, making, bending and sweeping. As Adrienne Rich has put so beautifully - without those ragged, frayed, sometimes unfinished items kept in a drawer and handed down through the generations - where would we be?”
Jo Bruton: “There is also an emotional content in the real experience of coming to terms with one’s identity. Perhaps looking back at how that has been formed and informed by an individual and social expectation. This for me, is not intended to be veiled through an abstract language but explored within the open field of painting. Is there a question in all of this about acceptability and status, an anxiety to be heard, to have a place or space from which to speak. Are we guided by an invisible art-law? Is there a feeling of prohibition directing ideas and intentions? In a ‘warped’ sense of course. Is there an invitation to contemplate this within the work? Is it a question of value and being valued?”
The touch of the individual artist in the activity of painting seems particularly articulate within this context of personal experience. Is it possible that in our desire to embrace postmodernism women gave up their individual voice a little too readily? Are we talking about valuing an individual relationship to practice and developing a personal iconography that keys into a number of different discourses and debates and the production of narratives which probe our experience of painting, feminism, psychoanalysis, criticism, and class? Perhaps it is precisely because we don’t have to talk openly about them under the guise of formalist abstraction, which makes these signs such articulate tellers of tales. Vanessa Jackson: “It is relevant to Warped that as a group we are a range of age experiences and subsequently we appeared as artists at different points in the feminist discourse. This time of arrival is influential on each of our individual practices, and as such, is our formation as artists... But I am curious to hear whether this overbearing weight of formalism that I too felt, has affected those of us that arrived at the beginning of postmodernism with the refreshing pluralism of practice and theory that emerged. However the influence of feminism on postmodern thinking is still very rarely acknowledged.�
As someone who started painting in the early nineties I was encouraged by the pluralism of style and the emergence of new voices afforded by postmodern discourse. However, I was also worried by the literalness and codification of feminist art practice which, at the hands of artists and theorists alike, seemed to prohibit abstract painting because of its emblematic relationship to patriarchal culture. Against this background my continued relationship with painting and abstraction was not a case of cultural contrariness or a reactionary stance to the problematic arena of gender politics. My interest was precisely the ability of the artist in the studio to perform and inscribe a very personal dialogue about his/her relationship to painting that began to inform my understanding of the feminine. In the circumstances it may seem a perverse and circuitous route.
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Jo Bruton: “I wanted to paint and needed to find a model for it. A way of working that felt relevant to my experience of things. This came from outside a modernist discourse but found a connection to it along the way. The work had an appearance to the formal which became the arena within which to work. I found this to be true of some British, and many American artists working within abstract painting and was very influenced by the new agenda that was moving through it. I felt part of a debate about painting which for many British artists seemed to be outmoded, unimportant... I took delight in bending the rules.”
Shirley Kaneda’s theoretical investigations at the beginning of the ‘90s sought to separate the feminine from the female body in the studio but not from the practice of painting altogether. Kaneda’s feminine transgresses and traverses fixed and binary identifications freeing the painter to metaphorically evoke any number of histories in the previously strictured space of aesthetic experience. Shirley Kaneda: “The space of the feminine adheres to no singularity or underlying consistent logic. It is fractured and sutured together, pragmatic, in that it is determined by needs rather than a priority. The conceptual liberation that feminism has promoted culturally has allowed painters like myself to take the fragmentation long considered a negative aspect of female identity and show that it is positive. Yet other aspects of this construct need to be still demystified and the idealization of such masculine values as heroicism, aggressivity, opticality and rationality need to be rethought rather than merely rejected. It is from this perspective that abstract painting can metaphorically promote such non-heroic themes as the ornate, fluidity, diversity, etc. while also embracing a feminized opticality.”
The title ‘Warped’ alludes to a way of thinking which is not about opposing one set of aesthetic or theoretical criteria but about bending any rules of engagement that privilege one story over another. To be warped is to be a little different, slightly off key, working alone and not as part of a group. The risk here, of course, is the potential obscurity of working with unrecognised or deviant values; signs without names. Valerie Jaudon: “The restriction of perception to formal aesthetic qualities, in other words, an aesthetics of exclusion, echoes social exclusion. How might we challenge this? Might it be that modernist aesthetics, particularly in its systematic form, dissolves when we acknowledge that language is intrinsic to art and to its understanding? Could it be that the repeated eruption of the decorative into the discourse of art is, in fact, an ongoing criticality - not just a periodic manifestation of style, but a cogent demand for understanding?”
The feminine, by its very nature, is not a fixed and concrete thing - and perhaps the feminine today has little to do with a litany of practice (decorative or otherwise) but more with a sense of deviance. Perhaps it is not so strange after all that a ‘warped’ sense of being, the desire to destabilise binary values and linguistic certainty, demands we reinterpret the activity of painting? Vanessa Jackson: “I want to return to our title for a bit here. I’ve no doubt we have all been to our Webster’s or Oxford dictionaries, and I might hazard a guess that we share a love of dictionaries and maps. Well, the derivations of Warped are even richer than I had thought, and more wonderfully perverse the further one investigates. The colloquial usage may vary a little between the UK and the US; for example we refer to a ‘warped sense of humour’ enjoying the perversity and deviation from the norm, recognising the spurious and inventive. I think in the US a common use is in the realms of “that’s a really warped idea”.”
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Warped is both physical and psychological offering multiple feminist connotations. It is firstly understood as a negative word, about imperfections, rendering things unusable and psychologically it is a character fault, a pejorative facet, possibly about being deluded and a deviant. To make or become crooked and to change ones disposition. A perverse inclination in the mind. The further one follows this ‘thread’ along the vertical stretch of the loom the more it offers for feminist discourse and practice, and it is very certainly a Non Binary term, as it is disruptive and deviant; physical and psychological.”
I hope that by now it is clear that this really is only the beginning of our dialogue; important issues have only been touched upon. Indeed as I write, the emails continue to arrive pushing the boundaries of this text in new and demanding directions. Most exciting, of course, is that the direction remains unclear and open ended; a citation against fixing and stalling the discursive process. MAGGIE AYLIFFE, CURATOR, WARPED DECEMBER 2000
The Artists Maggie Ayliffe was born in Birmingham in 1968 and lives and works in Manchester, UK. She studied at Humberside Polytechnic (1987-90) and gained an MA in painting at Manchester Metropolitan University (1992-93). She has undertaken post-graduate research at Manchester Metropolitan University and is currently a lecturer in painting at the University of Wolverhampton. Recent group exhibitions include Fabrications, at Norwich Gallery & Worcester City Art Gallery in 1999, Departure Lounge, Mart 1999, Manchester and The Grammar of Display, Huddersfield Art Gallery, 2000. Jo Bruton lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at Exeter College of Art & Design (1986-89) and gained an MA in Painting at Chelsea College of Art & Design (1993-94). She held the Stanley Picker Fellowship in Painting at Kingston University (1994-95) and was Painting Fellow at Winchester School of Art, Southampton University (1996-97). She is currently 0.5 lecturer in painting at Winchester school of Art and visiting lecturer at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Recent selected exhibitions have included: Images at The Young Artists Gallery, Prague & Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (1994); Past The Post at Clove 2 Gallery London (1994); GO-ON at The Grand Hall, Albert Dock, Liverpool (1995); Atomica at the Small Mansions Art Centre, London (1995); The Question of Scale, curated by Vanessa Jackson and Rebecca Fortnum, Winchester Gallery, Winchester/Arnolfini, Bristol and tour (1995/96); In Residence In Transit at the Stanley Picker Gallery London (1997); Silhouette (solo show) at the Winchester Gallery (1997); Eliminate The Negative at Gasworks London (1998); In Front at Art Public Barcelona (1999); Fabrications at the Norwich Gallery & Worcester City Art Gallery (1999); Jo Bruton & Katie Pratt at Gallery Westland Place (2000); Group Show at ArtProcess Paris (2000); Please at the 291 Gallery (2000). Joanne Greenbaum was born in 1953 and lives and works in New York. Her work has been seen in the UK at greengrassi in London (one-person show in 1999) and she has had other solo
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shows at Arena Gallery, New York (1996) and D’Amelio Terras, New York (1997, 1998 and 2001). In addition, she has shown work internationally in numerous groups shows including, most recently: Painting: Now and Forever at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (1997); Exploiting the Abstract at Feigen Contemporary, New York (1997); Current Undercurrent at Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (1997); After Image, Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland (1999); Examining Pictures, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (1999/2000), curated by Francesco Bonami and Judith Nesbit; Points, Lines, Planes at Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris, France. In France, she is represented by Galerie Anne de Villepoix, where she took part in the show Mapping, Territories, Connections (2000). She has a solo exhibition in Paris in early 2002. Vanessa Jackson was born in 1953 and lives and works in London. She trained at St Martin’s School of Art (1971-75) and the Royal College of Art (1975-78). She has lectured widely for both galleries and academic institutions in the UK and Europe and was Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art from 1988 to 1997. She is a Tutor at the Royal College of Art (1993 present) and the Royal Academy Schools (1998 - present). Her solo exhibitions include: AIR gallery, London (1981); Gotham Book-Mart Gallery, New York (1986); Goodsway Cubitt Gallery, London (1992) and North Walls Gallery, Manningtree (1999). She has participated in numerous groups shows, including: New Contemporaries, London (1974/75/76); John Moores IX, Liverpool (1974); The Presence of Painting, Mappin Gallery, Sheffield, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and Hatton Gallery, Newcastle (1988); John Moores 18, Liverpool - Prizewinner (1993); The Question of Scale, curated by Vanessa Jackson and Rebecca Fortnum, Winchester Gallery/Arnolfini, Bristol and tour (1995/96); Eliminate the Negative, curated by Vanessa Jackson, Gasworks, London (1998). She has received a number of awards and grants, including: Yaddo Fellowship, USA (1991); John Moores 18, Liverpool - exhibition Prizewinner (1994) and Edwin Austin Abbey Award, British School at Rome (1995). Her work is held in various public and private collections and published in:
A Secret Language, poems by James Laughlin with woodcuts by Vanessa Jackson, Cast Iron Press (ISBN 1898761019); The House of Light and Tabellae, poems by James Laughlin with woodcuts by Vanessa Jackson, Grenfell Press, New York. Valerie Jaudon lives and works in New York. She was educated at universities in the US (1963-67) before completing her Fine Art training with a Post-Graduate year in Painting at St Martin’s School of Art in London (1968-69). She has since established a significant bibliography and biography of solo and group exhibitions, public commissions and architectural projects and her work is held in a number of public collections, including: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC. One person exhibitions include: Holly Solomon Gallery, New York (1977,1978, 1979 and 1981); Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland (1979); Amerika Haus, Berlin (1983); Sidney Janis Gallery, New York (1983/85/86/88 and 1990/93/96); Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, Florida (1996); Betsy Senior Gallery, New York (1998); Abstraction at Work: Drawings by Valerie Jaudon 1973-1999, Mississippi Museum of Art and tour (1999); Valerie Jaudon at the Stadel: Paintings and Drawings 1980-1999, Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (1999). She has taken part in numerous group shows from 1975 onwards, including, from recent years: Shades of Difference: The Feminine in Abstract Painting, curated by Shirley Kaneda, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York (1992); Italy-America, Abstraction Redefined, The National Gallery of Modern Art, Republic of San Marino, Italy (1993); Re:Fab, Painting, Abstracted, Fabricated and Revised, curated by Rochelle Feinstein and Shirley Kaneda, Contemporary Art Museum, University of Florida, Tampa and tour (1995); Investigations: American Abstraction, Robert McClain & Co., Houston, Texas (1996); Women, Women, Women: Artist, Objects, Icons, Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina (1998); Together/Working, curated by Judith Swirsky, The Art Museum, University of New Hampshire, Durham, US (1999); Five: Kenneth Noland, Valerie Jaudon, Bruno Rousselot, Gwen Hardie, Rachel Howard, Lennon Weinberg Gallery, New York (2000). Shirley Kaneda was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1951 and currently lives and works in New York. Over the years she has exhibited work extensively in the US and Europe but this will be her first UK exhibition. She has received a number of awards from foundations including The Pollock Krasner Foundation (1997), The Elizabeth Foundation (1998) and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1999) and she has researched and written extensively on painting and the feminine.
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Solo shows from recent years include: Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (1992, 1994 and 1997); Fiegen Inc., Chicago (1995); Feigen Contemporary, New York (1998 and 2001); Raffaella Cortese Gallery, Milan (1996); Galerie Evelyne Canus, La Colle-sur-Loup, France (1996 and 2001) and the Centre d’Art d’Ivry, Ivry-sur-Seine, France (2000). Recent participation in group exhibitions includes: Face to Face: Recent Abstract Painting, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1996); Divergent Models, Kunstverein, Weisbaden, Germany (1997); Exploiting the Abstract, Feigen Contemporary, New York (1998); Super-Abster-Action, The Box, Turin (1999) and Filles du Calvaire, Paris, France (2000). Rosa Lee was born in 1957 and currently lives and works in London. She studied at St. Martin’s School of Art (1983-86) and the Royal College of Art (1986-88) and she has received a number of awards, including a British Council Award (1994) and (Prizewinner) John Moores 16, Liverpool (1989). She was Visiting Fellow in Painting at Winchester School of Art from 1988-89, has lectured extensively and, over the years, has written several papers published in art journals. She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including: (dis)parities, Mappin Gallery, Sheffield, Pomeroy Purdy Gallery, London and Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, UK (1992); Surface, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and tour (1993); British Abstract Art Part 1 (1994) and Part 3 (1996), Flowers East, London; The Question of Scale, curated by Vanessa Jackson and Rebecca Fortnum, Winchester Gallery, Winchester/Arnolfini, Bristol and tour (1995/96); Permission to Speak, Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery, Worcester, UK and tour (1996); Craft, Richard Salmon Gallery, London, Kettle ’s Yard, Cambridge and Aberystwyth Arts Centre (1997-98); Eliminate the Negative, curated by Vanessa Jackson, Gasworks, London (1998); Fabrications, The Norwich Gallery and tour (1999) and Todd Gallery, London (1989, 1991,1993, 1997 and 1998). Solo shows include: Ellipsis, The Winchester Gallery (1989); Artist of the Day, selected by Therese Oulton, Flowers East (1989); Conceits/Vanities, La Centrale, Montreal, Canada (1995); Todd Gallery, London (1990 and 1991) and Jenny Todd, London (1999). Her work is held in a number of private and public collections in the UK.
Maggie Ayliffe Sex Education (diptych) 2000 oil, gloss and metallic paint on canvas 100cms x 150cms each panel
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Jo Bruton
Cabaret (diptych) 2000 acrylic and glass beads on canvas 210cms x 135cms each panel
Showtime (diptych) 2000 acrylic and glass beads on canvas 210cms x 120cms each panel
Jo Bruton
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Joanne Greenbaum
Untitled 1999 oil on canvas 162.4cms x 157.5cms Courtesy greengrassi, London
Untitled 1999 oil on canvas 165.1cms x 165.1cms Courtesy greengrassi, London
Joanne Greenbaum
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Vanessa Jackson Back Off 2000 oil on canvas 180cms x 150cms
Vanessa Jackson Light Ripple 2000 oil on canvas 180cms x 150cms
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Valerie Jaudon
Magnificent Obsession 1999 oil and alkyd on canvas 180cms x 180cms
Nothing Sacred 1999 oil and alkyd on canvas 180cms x 180cms
Valerie Jaudon
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Shirley Kaneda
Hot Ice 1999 oil and acrylic on canvas 175cms x 175cms Courtesy Feigen Contemporary, New York
Momentary Suspension 1999 oil and acrylic on linen 191.25cms x 171.25cms Courtesy Feigen Contemporary, New York
Shirley Kaneda
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Rosa Lee Elisions 2000 oil on canvas 172.8cms x 147.3cms
Rosa Lee Interference 2000 oil on canvas 172.8cms x 147.3cms
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Published by Angel Row Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition
Warped: Painting and the Feminine 20 January - 10 March 2001, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 17 March - 5 May 2001, Middlesbrough Art Gallery 21 August - 30 September 2001, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum
ISBN 0 905634 43 8
and tour
Š the artists, Maggie Ayliffe, Terry Myers and Angel Row Gallery, 2001 Design: Kareen Husbands Print: Offset Colour Print, Southampton Angel Row Gallery (Nottingham City Museums and Galleries) Central Library Building 3 Angel Row Nottingham NG1 6HP United Kingdom Tel. (0044) (0) 115 915 2869 Fax. (0044) (0) 115 915 2860
Midland Band Curatorial Development Fund
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