Jacqueline Poncelet | Now and Then

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Jacqueline Poncelet Now and Then 21 September 2020 – 09 January 2021

I have wanted things to be as complicated as they could possibly be

- Jacqueline Poncelet, 2020

Jacqueline Poncelet: Now and Then 21 September 2020 – 09 January 2021 The New Art Centre is delighted to present a survey exhibition of work by the British artist Jacqueline Poncelet. The exhibition traces the last 35 years of Poncelet’s practice, which have seen her making both intensely private objects and large-scale public artwork.

Jacqueline Poncelet: Now and Then begins with a crucial moment in Poncelet’s artistic trajectory in the mid-1980s. Acutely aware of falling into ease of habit with any material or process, Poncelet moved away from ceramics and began to work with wood, bronze, hair, and textiles of various types, creating work that was increasingly composite in nature.

Moving between media and processes, whilst referencing the structures and accoutrements of cultural and social norms, Poncelet’s work describes a lifelong internal discourse. The habit of post-modernism’s ‘anytime, any place, any culture’ is second nature to Poncelet, who uses her work to reappraise hierarchies assigned to objects, and by extension, societal attitudes and expectations.

Poncelet explores the possibilities of pattern and repetition in sculpture, weave, watercolour, wallpaper, carpet and painting, using these as methods to complicate and conceal, express and obscure meaning, and to change the way we read form or space. Through her use of pattern, meaning is subverted, emotion is sublimated, narrative becomes nuanced: the complicated and the composite take over.

Developing each particular form of expression step by step, Poncelet often facilitates two kinds of making simultaneously and in dialogue. ‘Composite’ or ‘unstretched’, her paintings evade the conventions of the medium. This is mirrored in the elaborate inlay patterns of Poncelet’s carpets. Details of some motifs appear to suggest fraught emotional scenarios that take on a different emphasis in repeat, and come to dominate on a larger scale, in wallpaper and dress fabric.

Watercolours and weaving, as well as ‘small objects’, constitute Poncelet’s most recent work. Her watercolours, made over the last decade in London and Wales, are serial observations of the intricate moods and temperatures of the nature of the city, and nature in the countryside. The weavings, begun in Wales, are inspired by a love of Welsh narrow loom blankets, and have come to fruition during these recent weeks of isolation - bringing together colour in layers and detail that are, the artist says, “as complicated as the countryside”.

In addition to this solo exhibition, Jacqueline Poncelet has specially curated the other side of the coin, a small exhibition of works by peers and friends. Here she brings together objects and painting which key directly into her emotions, and demonstrate absolute confrontation, or the artists’ ability to “be close to the awfulness” including through works that appear quiet and poetic.

The exhibition presents us with a mix of suggestive imagery and overt declaration. This includes Barlow’s challenge to both domestic and art spaces; anxious figuration in Milroy’s paintings; transgression into the unacceptable by Ford; Pope’s abject knitted and shrunk ‘sin’; subsumed, trapped fragility in one of Wilding’s two sculptures; and McNicholl’s bitter parody of ‘Freedom and Democracy’ realised in vessel form.

The character of the two rooms in which this small exhibition is displayed is pivotal. The rooms are the original bedrooms of the old house, before it was incorporated by architect Stephen Marshall into a larger contemporary dwelling. These rooms are the most overtly domestic in scale, carpeted, with smaller proportions and windows, somehow separate from the architecture elsewhere in the house.

It is important that the other side of the coin is read as a prelude to the larger exhibition of Poncelet’s work. With disturbing subjects so boldly accounted for at the beginning of the journey through the Design House, Poncelet is asking us to then proceed with encountering her work, acknowledging that these other artists have taken care of expressing what she might not.

Jacqueline Poncelet (b. 1947 Belgium) attended Wolverhampton College of Art and the Royal College of Art Ceramics and Glass MA, where she graduated in 1972, part of a loose cohort of women who disrupted long established notions of ceramic practice in Britain. She continued to work in clay, with major solo exhibitions of increasingly abstract vessels at the Crafts Council in 1981, and wall and floor based ceramic sculpture at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1985.

Poncelet has been an influential teacher and lecturer worldwide. She is represented in important public collections including the British Museum, London, Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Stedeljk Museum, Amsterdam, National Museum, Stockholm, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of Victoria, Australia.

Jacqueline Poncelet Hair leather lace 1988 Hair, leather and lace 80 x 48 cm 31 1/2 x 18 7/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Handbag 1985 Ceramic, embossed and painted 84 x 41 x 17 cm 33 1/8 x 16 1/8 x 6 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet watching 1994 Oil on canvas 61 x 102 cm 24 1/8 x 40 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet 5 Objects 7 spaces 1995 Paint, textile on canvas 96 x 191 cm 37 3/4 x 75 1/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Red Dog 1989 Paint and fabric 96 x 200 cm 37 3/4 x 78 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Interlocking forms 1988 Bronzes 35 x 33 x 40 cm 13 3/4 x 13 x 15 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Bronze with hair 1988 Bronze, hair 43 x 36 x 18 cm 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 7 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Tartan 1993/4 Assembled carpet fragments 271 x 416 cm 106 3/4 x 163 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet line up 1994 Oil paint and fabric on canvas 184 x 51 cm 72 1/2 x 20 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet 21 + 1 1995 Paint, fabric, photography 140 x 153 cm 55 1/8 x 60 1/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Bryn I 2020 Narrow-loom handwoven blankets, wool 160 x 200 cm 63 x 78 3/4 in Edition 1 of 2

Jacqueline Poncelet Bryn II 2020 Narrow-loom handwoven blankets, wool 160 x 200 cm 63 x 78 3/4 in Edition 2 of 2

Jacqueline Poncelet battle lines no. 3 2016 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Passing no. 7 2016 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Here or There no. 4 2009 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Cwm Ogwr no. 14 2009 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Mawrth (March) no. 14 2013 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet tu mewn (inside) no. 3 2011 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Object in 4 parts 1984 Clay, embossed and glazed 20 x 139 x 66 cm 7 7/8 x 54 3/4 x 26 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Untitled drawing 1985 Coloured wax crayon and graphite on paper 200 x 300 cm 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Merry-go-round 2009 Wallpaper 500 x 10000 cm /roll 196 7/8 x 3937 1/8 in /roll

Jacqueline Poncelet Rib 2008-2012 Printed fabric (dress) 105 x 61 cm 41 3/8 x 24 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Man and Boy 2008-2012 Printed fabric (large shirt, small shirt), two coat hangers 80 x 65 cm 31 1/2 x 25 5/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet every which way 2008-2012 Printed fabric (shirt) 80 x 66 cm 31 1/2 x 26 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Gaudi Welsh no. 5 2016 Watercolour on paper 64 x 84 cm 25 1/4 x 33 1/8 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Chink 2017 Clay 6 Ø x 2 cm 2 3/8 Ø x 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Heap 2017 Clay 15 x 43 x 35 cm (variable) 5 7/8 x 16 7/8 x 13 3/4 in

Jacqueline Poncelet Shy Objects 2018 Two cast iron objects and a table 15 x 10 x 8 cm (each) 90 x 80 x 76 cm (table)

Jacqueline Poncelet House 2017 Found Rocha roof tile, ceramic twist.

23.5 x 76 x 23.5 cm 9 1/4 x 29 7/8 x 9 1/4 in

Roche Court East Winterslow Salisbury, Wiltshire SP5 1BG

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