One Paved Court →

A PAINTERS COLLECTIVE

2 Sept-15 Oct 2023

Curators: Sarah Praill, Emma Withers and Lucy Cade

An exhibition by a group of 26 painters brought together through the Turps Correspondence Course, showing recent work in three, two-week shows.

What lies beneath the skin of an artwork? What makes an artwork get under OUR skin?

As its definition as a protective barrier, the skin holds in and holds away; a permeable container that supports layers of life. Equally, the surface of an artwork can reveal or bely the journey of its making, the artist can choose how much or how little to share.

This show invites you to consider what goes on beneath. The life of the work in this exhibition lies as much in the viewers’ perception of them as it does in the minds of the artists who created them. As a collective we ask our audience to observe, reflect and allow the works under THEIR skin.

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.

Philip Guston

Link to Instagram for more information, events etc: 

@undertheirskin.exhibition

Fitzrovia Gallery, Material Presence

Curated the Turps Correspondence end of year show with 50 international artists, at Fitzrovia Gallery, London. November 2022

Agnes Martin

Favourite quotes by Agnes Martin

“A studio is not a place in which to talk to friends. You will hate your friends if they destroy the atmosphere of your studio. It is almost hopeless to expect clarity of mind. It is hopeless if your studio atmosphere cannot be preserved.”

“The best things in life happen to you when you’re alone. If you live by perception, as all artists must, then you sometimes have to wait a long time for your mind to tell you the next step to take.…When you’re with other people, your mind isn’t your own.”

“You must clean and arrange your studio in a way that will forward a quiet state of mind,” she explained. This cautious care of atmosphere is really needed to show respect for the work.”

Inside looking, Outside Looking

The Glass Envelope Residency

Mirror and light

This morning we moved our bodies to the sound of Arvo Part, Spiegel im Spiegel. The Mirror in the Mirror. Or is it glass in the glass? A different kind of letter for the Glass Envelope. Sally’s presence felt reassuring and safe. Andrei Tarkovsky made a loosely autobiographical Film “Mirror”. It remains with me. There is the feeling of a child looking out onto the world. Not inside looking but outside looking. The feeling of rain and its sound. How so? As I moved my body it was as if I found myself in my childhood body and I began to move my hands in the position of a ballerina. As I approached the paper I began to shave viridian pastel dust in the shape of the arc of my movements. I began to push this around the paper with my fingers. Chalk dust, catching the light. This is my earliest memory of being in the world. I was three years old.

The translation of one thing into another was at the heart of the discussion afterwards. How the movement translated itself into the image. How one thing is not the same as another but emerges and comes up out of it in a very different way. It is an evidencing of the experience but a translation of it. How does an image emerge? We talked about unknown and unfamiliar spaces and how we can trust and be open to the poke and the prompt of each other. I sense resistance in me at times but also a hunger for the poke.

Sylwia’s preoccupation with the photographic process and the pinhole camera investigates how light can bounce through darkness to create an image. Making a camera together out of a tea box, tin foil and tracing paper and finding our images on the screen felt magical. Pragya in India captured an upside down image of us all. Seeing through a tunnel of black to the image on the screen. Ean in the USA captured an image of the house opposite. Wonder.

Yesterday I interviewed myself and made a film whilst talking. I hadn’t planned out what to say or where to look or what to show. It just happened and it was very hard for me letting go and just seeing what emerged. It was a surprise to me and illuminating. Uncomfortable and exposing. Like a rabbit in the headlights. Trust is required when we allow ourselves to enter unfamiliar spaces. When we open ourselves up. To let go.

Subham, the artist in Nanpur, Odisha

I met this little boy Subham in a rural village in Nanpur when I was teaching there in January. He is 5 years old and had never seen a white haired woman before. He thought I was a ghost. He was terrified and utterly inconsolable. He had to be taken home from the morning school by his older sister. Gradually he lost his fear of me but it was clear he had a vivid imagination and a huge inner world. I gave him a piece chalk one morning and he drew and drew endless wheels on trucks. He was so delighted by his work he kept asking for more and more paper. I could see the makings of an artist.

The Tears of Things

Drawings made in France, 2019

Wall at St Hilaire Abbey in the Luberon.

I made these drawings last summer in France with my parents. They said it would be their last trip. I drew on egg boxes and bits of packaging, paper bags and card. I enjoyed the provisional nature of the drawings and propping them up at the end of the day. I made a large series of prints at Slaughterhaus  ‘The Tears of things’ from these drawings. They are all mono prints. I was drawn to Etching and printmaking because I love the embedding of marks in a surface. I have always loved the soft chalky pink walls of Saint Hilaire abbey, a Carmelite monastery in the Luberon. I have sat for many hours drawing in the cool interior of the simple space. I have returned to its spaciousness and mesmerising beauty in different ways.

I’m reading a book by Tim Ingolds called ‘Lines’. He is looking at lines, writing and music through an anthropological lens. He is articulating what I have always felt my work is about. Drawing, image, mark making well they are like sounds to me, notations, inscriptions, utterances. This series turned out all watery and I enjoyed the bleeding of the materials into the thin Japanese paper alongside smashing the stabilo pencil into the surface. Pushing the paper through the press is a tremendously forceful process but yet you can make something feel transient and light.

Monoprint on thin Japanese paper,