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On Sunday I am going to Brittany for 2 weeks, staying in a woodland gite near the village of Langourla. As well as looking forward to a great family holiday, I am especially excited about the opportunity to really reflect on The Ebony Tower project that I’m currently working towards.
Paimpont Forest, Brittany - setting of The Ebony Tower
Dean Melbourne and myself have plans to hold a joint exhibition of our work which will be heavily influenced by the John Fowles (1974) story, The Ebony Tower. It is an immensely stimulating story, rich in imagery, exploring the nature of art and the individual. A young artist visits a celebrated but reclusive painter and the two beautiful young women who share their lives with him. There is a conceptual clash with ideas of the nature of art (Williams and Breasley) and this is paralleled with a battle of the mind and body (Williams and Anne). The story is set in Manoir de Coetminais in Paimpont Forest, Brittany, which is only 50 minutes from where I will be staying. Dean and his family will be visiting us for part of the holiday so we will be able to take photographs and soak up some of the backdrop to the story.
165 down -135 to go
As well as ongoing sketchbook thoughts and ideas for this collaboration, there are a number of pieces that we are currently both working on that will hopefully be part of the end product. The bird nest piece within the glass box, for example, and a piece that I have been patiently working on for a while that involves sewing 300 peacock feathers together to form a blanket for an antique cast iron bed that I found. Dean is currently working on some paintings using the darkness and intensity of the story’s nighttime orchard walk and some photos he found of Bonnards nude models.
Bonnard's Garden, 2009, Dean Melbourne
I’m really excitied about the thought of showing our work together. Our work has common ground in the area of emotional impact, and I think the combination of his paintings and my objects will create a rich and layered narrative for the viewer to explore.
. . . to my good friend Dean Melbourne who has been accepted into this years Royal Academy Summer Exhibition! The exhibition runs from 8th June to 16th August and is, “the largest open submission contemporary art exhibition in the world, drawing together a wide range of new work by both established and unknown living artists.”
The Longing, 2009, Dean Melbourne
The piece accepted was a lino print called “The Longing” about the moments that we are alone with our truths and our secrets, when we remove our masks.
Fragile, 2009
Fragile, 2009
Fragile (detail), 2009
Fragile, 2009
Latest box – Glass, ink (bird designs from pigeon photos I took a while back), dried leaves and grass stalks, feathers, hand painted replica linnet eggs.
I have it in mind to use the piece as part of a larger narrative in a collaboration (more on that some other time) based on the story “The Ebony Tower” by John Fowles. The piece draws associations with the story in that they both consider the fragility and value of beauty, and a life not fully realised. I like the concept of a glass box – a place from which you have an illusion of freedom but are actually restricted. In the story the young painter comes to realise that the way he lived was compromised, he had “settled for the safe” and safety hid nothingness.
If the piece was used in the context of that narrative I would like it displayed in darkness (see bottom pic) with light casting the shadows of the exterior birds into the box.
Went to London on Friday for the PV of Travelling Light. During the day I met up with a friend and we went to see the Annette Messager retrospective at The Hayward Gallery. The exhibition shows Messager’s work over the last four decades from intimate pieces to large visually stunning installations including part of Casino (amazing!!!) which won the Golden Lion award at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Red billowing, illuminated silk created a lost world in the belly of a whale, taxidermied sparrows in knitted capes and bonnets, and inflatable “breathing” body parts. Travelling from room to room you found yourself in a fantasy world which swung between the nostalgic, funny, and nightmarish.
Them and Us/ Us and Them, 2000. Annette Messager
“I like to tell stories. I like cliches. .. Psychoanalytically, our entire society is encapsulated in fairy tales. I’ve always been interested in them and they are often one of my points of departure”- Annette Messager.
Thoroughly enjoyed getting emersed in her work and came away with so much to think about – especially how physical movement within a piece affects the viewers experience.
Following a few drinks in a Camden bar and a quick change into a sparkly top, it was off to the private view of Travelling Light at WW Gallery in Hackney.
before things got REALLY busy
The Throat of Venice, 2009, gilded bronze, wood. Lucy May.
58 artists were showcasted in the converted Victorian house – a setting that worked really well (and will be mirrored by a similar domestic space in Venice) with the interesting and intimate pieces. The work in the show felt brave and lively (much like the private view itself which was heaving!) often tending towards the subversive or humourous. Its quite incredible what they have achieved on an apparently tiny budget with a whole lot of hard work and inspiration. Really exciting and succesful show, with Venice installment still to come!
Travelling Light – WW Gallery, London 15th- 28th May; Venice 6th -10th June.
- Chiara Williams – one of the team of 3 women who organised TL
Yesturday I went along to check out the open studios at Art Space in Portsmouth. Art Space currently has 29 studios located at the converted Brougham Road Chapel in Southsea and a membership of 45 artists.
I always felt sorry for the monsters in the movies, Phil Illingworth
The artist whose work I found most inspiring, and one of the reasons I made the trip yesterday, was that of Natalie Dowse (you can check out her blog on my blogroll). Her paintings mix the traditional medium of oil painting with the temporal quality of snapshot photography or CCTV footage. Her resulting images have a fascinating draw and an unusual mix of beauty with a sense of disconnectedness.
Other artists whose work I particularly enjoyed included Phil Illingworth, Mike Barlett, Patti Gaal-Holmes (who unfortunately wasn’t showing work yesterday but I whose short film “despite the snow” I saw at ASPEX), and Andrea Stokes. Check out their work via the links on their names and you can also see the other artists who are part of Art Space via the main Art Space website.
Constellation, 2007, Natalie Dowse
One in a million, 2008, Natalie Dowse
work by Lucy Linder at windows204
More good news yesterday when I heard that I’d been allocated a slot to show my work at windows204 from 30th August to 13th September. windows204 occupies the windows of a shop on the busy Glouster road in Bristol. It provides artists with the opportunity to show work that may not suit the commercial gallery set-up, often using the space in innovative and experimental ways. They state,
” our aim is to bring art to all members of the community through display in the window and a continuing dialogue with the public about what art can be”
For me it will mean an opportunity to install work on a larger scale in a public place for the first time which is something I have been keen to do. The piece I submitted to show is still a bit of a work in progress but will be using a suspended vintage wedding dress that has been deconstructed through burning and stitching, and a collection of genuine love letters from the 1930’s.
By using these items which already carry heavy emotional weight and symbolism I intend to encourage questioning about the nature of love and longing, and our desire for romanticism.
I’ve wanted to try working with resin for a while now. I suppose the idea of preserving things in resin is just another symbol of trying to capture or keep hold of precious things, something I seem to be persistently drawn to do.
Like moments that are precious to me in my own life I feel compelled to box, preserve behind glass, and even attempt to breathe life back into forgotten objects that were once part of someones life story.
untitled, 2009. Side view of resin blocks showing flower partially embedded in first block, fully embedded in second, embedded and disintegrating in third.
detail of first resin block with partially embedded rose
I think I fear the unstoppable passage of time and its potential to take away beauty. Beauty in the sense of moments passing, becoming less vivid. I desperately try to cling onto these things and often mourn their passing. Futile and foolish because the truth is that much of their beauty is in their fragility and temporality. Just as the caged nightingales’ song would never sound as sweet as when heard for a fleeting moment from its branch so these precious moments of life come to us as unexpected gifts.
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