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A CO N S I D E R E D P L AC E TA P E S T R Y
GLASS
CERAMIC
PA I N T
C LO T H
A CO N S I D E R E D P L AC E Drum Castle, Aberdeenshire 21 April — 17 November 2019
& The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh February 2020
The idea for this exhibition has developed in a collaborative way through conversations with and between the artists over a number of years. Our conversation revolved around a shared sense of the artists’ considered approach to their work, an emphasis on deep understanding of their chosen materials and sustained exploration of the meetings of surfaces, tones and textures to convey ideas, feelings and experiences. We wanted to look beyond the medium and, through juxtaposition of a range of different artists’ work, to offer new opportunities to explore shared ideas and/or contrasting approaches to common experiences.
“ A place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who spend time
A Considered Place brings together five artists who explore our relationship with landscapes, external and domestic, of our lives: emotional responses to light, colour and shape, the sense of natural balance; the exploration of containment, and the deep-rooted experiences of a domestic, internal world over time.
Sara Brennan’s subtle expression of being within a northern landscape and 1 Jo Barker’s vibrant response to movements of light and shadow are given substance through that most ancient and painstaking of techniques, hand-woven tapestry. Susan Mowatt explores the internal structures of tapestry through her experiments with processes of weaving. These are juxtaposed with the delicacy of Jane Bustin’s thought-provoking constructions: carefully built collages of materials that reflect memories of age-old processes within our domestic landscapes.
there…”
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Introduction
A sense of internal landscapes are reflected in the quiet strength and precision of Andrea Walsh’s glass and ceramic pieces: meditations on containment. Placed within the historic setting of Drum Castle, the work has contemporary resonance with aspects of the historic building and collections within their own ancient yet timeless landscape. The exhibition invites the viewer to reflect on the contrasting experiences of our own lived-in landscapes, our own “considered places”. An edited version of the exhibition with work by Barker, Brennan, Mowatt and Walsh, will be shown at the Scottish Gallery in February 2020.
Dorothy Williams Curator
1 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skills. London & New York: Routledge, 2000.
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A CO N S I D E R E D P L AC E Making an exhibition and making art can both be journeys into the unknown. As activities they require an ability to retain a sense of what the final object might be, and why, whilst simultaneously recognising the unknowability of what is to come. As viewers, we will need to find our own considered place to understand something of the thinking that lies behind the exhibition. Williams, as curator, is proposing a correspondence between the objects on show. Only by spending time face to face with these objects will the possibilities of that be revealed. Jane Bustin talks of how ‘painting’s power and future lies in its inherent physicality... only complete in a 'face to face' encounter’. Susan Mowatt explores the physical process of weaving as a way into different kinds of thinking. All art, as Michael Compton suggests ‘is the product of thought process’. ‘A Considered Place’ reveals thought process through visual, physical and material means.
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A Considered Place
Image Drum Castle, Aberdeenshire
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What we know through the senses can become knowledge in the mind 2 Light, materials, time are active components of this show. Jo Barker photographs and draws light, manipulating images online before slowly weaving light into tapestry. Andrea Walsh directs light through an interplay of opacity and translucency within her painstakingly constructed layers of glass/porcelain; Jane Bustin describes the shifting power of natural light to release physical qualities embedded in her collages. Sara Brennan patiently compares qualities of yarns: balancing thickness and weight to achieve her vital, woven surfaces. The painter Kandinsky encouraged us to slip into a different thought world when he said: “Open your eyes to painting and stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”
Amanda Game Independent Curator, Producer
1 Michael Compton Art as Thought Process London: Arts Council, 1974. 2 Gregory Bateson Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution and epistemology San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co.,1972. 3 quoted p17 in Frances Guy, Eye-music: Kandinsky Klee and all that Jazz. Chichester: Pallant House, 2007.
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/ Jo Barker
/ Sara Brennan
/ Jane Bustin
/ Susan Mowatt
/ Andrea Walsh 6
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JO BARKER Jo Barker trained in the Tapestry Department at Edinburgh College of Art. She now works from her studio in Edinburgh whilst teaching as a lecturer at Glasgow School of Art. Her work is widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in private and public collections including the V&A Museum, London, the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and Aberdeen City Art Gallery & Museums. Numerous works have been commissioned by, amongst others, the House of Lords, London, the Scottish Executive, Edinburgh and the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. Her work has attracted a number of awards and prizes, notably the Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers, 2008 & 2009, nomination for the Dulux Let’s Colour Award in 2015 and winner of the international Cordis Prize for Tapestry in November 2016. “Current work is part of an ongoing series of tapestries exploring themes initially inspired by qualities and patterns of light. Transient and ephemeral starting points translated slowly into woven form. I am interested in the contradiction of the contrast in materials between the flowing nature of ink and paint and the illusion of fluidity translated into soft, rich yarns. The designs originate from simple gestural brush strokes in paint or ink with smudges of pastels. I am interested in our hands. In the spontaneous mark made by a simple gesture; traces of an event, a fleeting moment. The marks are digitally manipulated and then captured in the slow considered construction of tapestry weaving, built up gradually by hand. A clear incongruity, but one that I find intriguing. The design has been a guide. The tapestry then takes on its own life. The finished images are consciously abstract and ambiguous. I want to create a sense of something as opposed to an identifiable object or picture.” https://jobarkertapestry.co.uk
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A Considered Place
Fleeting Glimpse 76 x 167cm Wool, cotton, embroidery threads
Jo Barker
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Jo Barker
Swirl 75 x 75cm Wool, cotton, embroidery threads
Fleeting Moment 76 x 147cm Wool, cotton, embroidery threads
Jo Barker
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SARA BRENNAN Sara Brennan initially completed a first year general course at The National Arts School in Papua New Guinea. This was followed by a BA Hons at Edinburgh College of Art in the Tapestry Department. She works from a studio in Edinburgh where she has continued to develop her tapestries and her drawings for over 25 years. Her work is exhibited widely and it is represented through galleries in the UK and USA. It is held in both public and private collections including the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, Aberdeen City Art Gallery, HBOS Headquarters Edinburgh, and a Richard Meier designed house, Connecticut, USA. Her numerous commissions include the First Minister’s Suite, Scottish Executive, New St. Andrews House, Edinburgh. Sara has received major awards such as Jerwood Contemporary Makers, 2008 and Polish Artist Union Award, Tapestry Biennial, Lodz, Poland 2001. Both of these awards were through invitation to participate in the accompanying exhibitions. Sara’s work is an unspoken response to the landscape, in particular a northern Scottish landscape. Using a refined and reduced approach to colour and form, her work takes two routes; weaving from her drawings or reacting and responding in smaller works to yarns as they are placed directly next to each other. Sara obsessively explores the meetings that occur through the surface quality and by a manipulation and an exploitation of the line. “I work from a series of drawings and paintings, often repeatedly exploring the translation of a surface or mark into tapestry. I also work as a direct response to the reaction and relationship between yarns, with a disciplined and restrained approach to colour, tone and form. The choice of the yarn is as important as the decision of what is woven. Overall this is a very time consuming and slow medium.”
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A Considered Place
Two Forests with Old Green 120 x 120cm Linens, wools, cottons and sewing threads
Sara Brennan
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Sara Brennan
Deep Forest with Old Grey/ Blue 74 x 94cm Linens, wools, cotton and sewing threads
Two Black Linen Verticals with Old Grey Green 34 x 38cm Cottons, silk, linen, wool and sewing threads Black Cotton Horizontal with Dark Green 38 x 35cm Wool, linens, cotton and sewing threads
Sara Brennan
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A Considered Place
A Considered Place
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JANE BUSTIN Jane Bustin was born in London, studied at Portsmouth University and now works from her studio in London. She is represented by Copperfield, London and FoxJensen Sydney. She has had solo shows in London, Berlin and New York as well as group shows at Whitechapel London; Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh; Salon 94, New York; Royal Academy, London; Walker Gallery, Liverpool and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner and British Council awards and has work in public collections including V&A Museum, Ferens Museum, Yale Centre and Zabludowicz collection. A performance project - Faun including live music and dance was presented for Art Night 2018 at London County Hall, Southbank. Jane’s work comprises of painting, ceramics, textiles, text and performance and is concerned with deconstructing the formal components of abstraction. It explores the properties and arrangement of materials, extending the links between craft, concept and movement. These concerns are woven through various research projects, including medieval female saints, the iconic ballet dancer Nijinsky, modernist and European literature and design, 20th century feminism and domesticity. The work shown in A Considered Place is from her series Modern Domestics. The work is an unravelling of what takes place in the private space of the studio and the home, an exchange between the outer and inner worlds, poetics, play and labour expressed through material matter. http://www.copperfieldgallery.com/jane-bustin.html
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A Considered Place
En l’air 20 x 18cm Porcelain, tuille
Jane Bustin
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Jane Bustin
Fly 50 x 20cm overall Fly, pearl pin, porcelain, oxides, oil, chiffon, wood
Spill 56 x 34cm Oil, acrylic, wood, copper, varnish
Jane Bustin
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S U S A N M O WAT T Originally from Perth, Susan Mowatt studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, before completing her Master of Fine Art in Tapestry. After graduating she worked in the Fränkische GobelinManufaktur in Bavaria and later in the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, as an invited Weaver on the Federation Tapestry. Susan is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Interested in the act of weaving itself, Susan’s work has included live performances of weaving and unweaving in a gallery space (during a solo show at GalleryGallery, Kyoto, 2012) and an exploration of weaving through other media including drawing and moving image. Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Susan has been the recipient of numerous awards and most recently won The Cordis Prize for Tapestry in February 2016. “The world is made up of lines. A length of yarn has two ends: a start and a finish, or vice versa. Weaving for me is thinking: a place where the past, present and future come together in one action.”
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A Considered Place
Black/time/lines/white/time/lines 100 x 200cm Two panels: wool, linen, cotton, mohair, chenille, silk, polyester thread
Susan Mowatt
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Susan Mowatt
Grey Lines 50 x 40cm Wool, cotton, linen, polyester
Green Lines 50 x 40cm Wool, cotton, linen
Susan Mowatt
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A N D R E A WA L S H Andrea Walsh is an artist based in Edinburgh. She studied fine art before completing a masters degree in glass, and set up her studio in 2005. A significant contribution to her practice has been the award of residencies, notably the ‘Artist Into Industry Residency’ through the British Ceramics Biennial (a project with the ‘Minton’ brand based at the Wedgwood ceramics factory in Stoke-on-Trent), and the ‘International Crafts Residency’ at Cove Park, Scotland. Andrea has established a growing exhibition profile in the UK and internationally. Her work has been shortlisted for the British Ceramics Biennial Award on three occasions, is regularly represented at COLLECT, and selected as a finalist in the BBC Radio 4/Crafts Council/V&A Museum Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2017, and the LOEWE Craft Prize 2019. Her work has been purchased for private and public collections worldwide, including National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, and the V&A Museum in London. “I make considered objects that are intimate in scale and place an emphasis on the interrelation between components, and the concept of presentation. My work investigates ideas of containment, materiality, preciousness and value - through the box and vessel form - intriguing the viewer and encouraging a tactile engagement. Using a palette of related materials, including ceramics, glass and metal, I am influenced by their alchemic nature and rich historical associations. Making by hand, using traditional casting techniques, helps to create exquisitely crafted pieces that are each unique - celebrating the inherent material qualities alongside emotional concerns within the work.” http://andreawalsh.co.uk
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A Considered Place
Contained Box (Square) - Clear Frit and Gold 2015 7 x 13 x 13cm Lost wax cast glass, black fine bone china, 22ct burnished gold
Andrea Walsh
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Andrea Walsh
Contained Box (Rectangle) Nude and Platinum 2018 6.5 x 10.25 x 7.5cm Lost wax cast glass, fine bone china, burnished platinum
Contained Box (Soft Oval) Black and Black 2019 7.5 x 11.5 x 10cm Lost wax cast glass, black fine bone china, 22ct burnished gold interior
Andrea Walsh
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A Considered Place
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jo, Sara. Andrea, Susan and Jane for the continuing conversation.
Thanks also to Vikki Duncan, James Henderson, Aidan McAleese & Morag Evans, National Trust for Scotland; Christina Jansen & Kirsty Sumerling, The Scottish Gallery; Will Lunn, Copperfield; Amanda Game; Miranda Harvey & The Cordis Trust.
www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/drum-castle
ISBN 978-1-5272-3941-8
Š D Williams All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photography or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holder and of the publisher.
Photography by Shannon Tofts except page 4, The National Trust for Scotland, Drum Castle and pages 19 & 21, Copperfield, London.
Designed by Michael Dancer
Printed by Allander Print Limited
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