They say

Giorgio de Chirico: Mystery and melancholy of a street

that you should not judge a book by its cover; but I'm certainly glad that I did with this one!

Not only, but also

Although uncertain as to what the sculpture exhibition would be like, I was certainly looking forward to seeing Eileen Cooper's collages in the Friends' Room at the Royal Academy. EC is an artist whose work has attracted me for many years, and I always enjoyed seeing her paintings and prints, and was curious to see what her collages would be like. I particularly enjoy seeing work while I am taking time over tea and sandwiches, or a cup of coffee. Somehow I find that work stands a greater personal test in those circumstances rather than in the crisp white halls of a gallery setting.

The collage form interests me, and examples often disappoint me because so many folks' work is similar to that of so many other folks. The one illustration which was available on the RA site at the time I looked intrigued me because it looked just like a straightforward print. That is true of all the further illustrated examples they now have on the page. There was also no mention of collages on her website.

However, my curiosity was satisfied when I saw that Eileen Cooper has approached collage with a slightly different technique. She has indeed used printed elements: printing several versions of the same image, be it a bird, a body, pots, etc. in different colours, and then stuck them into several individual but similar compositions. It made for an interesting group, each of which also works well on its own.

On my way back to the car, my mind full of both exhibitions, I stopped to peer into the windows of the Marlborough Gallery and saw the above painting, My mother by Celia Paul.

There were only three paintings visible from the street, and unfortunately the gallery is closed on Sunday, but the website shows a rich vein. Yet another life-enhancing day out!

Anticipation, disappointment, reluctance, ... elation

A controversial replica

The reproduced Merz barn which once contained Schwitters' work was the first piece of 'sculpture' to greet us on our entrance to the Royal Academy courtyard on Sunday. We had gone to see the Modern British Sculpture exhibition. Last September, when I first read of the exhibition, I was delighted. There have been and are so many wonderful modern British sculptors who tend to become forgotten, that I looked forward to an exhibition devoted to that subject. Just like me, the reviewers should have paid more attention to the curators' words which said that they 'would have done their job if the public left the show questioning what is modern, British, and sculpture.

Curtis and her co-curator Keith Wilson, a practising sculptor, said the aim was not to have a traditional survey but to have a series of visual arguments or dialogues.' (From the Guardian, 8 Sept. '10)


As the exhibition approached, I was anticipating a thought-provoking, inspiring, and most enjoyable outing when the reviews started appearing. The first was by a reviewer with whose opinion I usually agree: Laura Cumming in the Observer. Then came Waldemar Januszczak's vitriolic review in the Sunday Times (which one has to pay to access online), and a general wave of annoyance, disgust, anger, such as here. Some reviews that I have found since are more explanatory: here, here, here, and especially here, and the BBC has an interesting video on the exhibition.


Anyway, it was not exactly with reluctance, but prepared for disappointment and even perhaps disapproval we set off.

Epstein: Adam

Well, Wow! I have said before that over the many years that I've been going to exhibitions, the catalogues have improved an enormous amount, becoming stand-alone educational documents as well as illustrative accompaniments. I have always been keen on finding out, learning more, being given more doors to open, corridors to explore, and here was an exhibition whose purpose was to feed and further facilitate that curiosity.

This show poses questions about modernism. It looks at the routes of abstraction and figuration - are they clear cut or not? It looks at influences, whence and when they came, from the same or different mediums.

Philip King: Genghis Khan

For instance, I loved seeing a room of 'minimalist' Chinese ceramics and thinking about the work of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson presented alongside. For me this exhibition represents the equivalent of a whole term's worth of input at some institution of art education; so much more than a simple survey of all or most of the British sculptors from the modern period till now.

Barbara Hepworth: Pelagos

I bought the catalogue, and although I want to finish On line first, I can see by just flicking through that my mind is going to be buzzing for some time - just what I need. In fact Tony Cragg's Stack is an apt visual representation of what was going on in my brain as I left the show.

Tony Crag: Stack

This blog has photos of the exhibition, showing the excellent room containing the pieces from the British Museum, as well as the glorious amount of space allowed for a thorough appreciation of the work and thoughts thereon.

About all the negative reviews: well, it is a 'difficult' exhibition in that it makes one think, is perhaps provocative, and is short on 'easy looking'. I also think that the title of the exhibition is rather misleading, at least without some qualifying phrase. But if you are within visiting distance, if you are interested in art and its development, go, make up your own mind!

Just like magic!

It is a time of joy when work returns from the printer - well, most of the time, because there can be some surprises. Those arise when the change of size alters the intensity of colour or the balance of scale much more than I had anticipated. However, none of my surprises so far has been a disappointment. Rather they have been a few happy accidents - and those always add to the dynamic of the creative process.

I design my work on the computer. Even if I have developed work on paper, or with fabric collage and/or stitch I will photograph or scan it in order to complete the design. Some pieces will remain small: my sketches in stitch, or work to be framed. However, some work is developed to be a quilt form: flat, whole cloth and larger than I can print for myself. Some of the designs originally developed to be small also beg me to be made large. Sometimes this works, and sometimes this doesn't - but I usually try them out. At the top of this post can be seen an A4 stitched piece with its newly arrived larger version.

I can afford to test the possibilities by tucking the designs in question into a file which contains a multiple of images. That way I can also use odd spare areas to print stuff for playing with. I usually now send a disc with a couple of multiple files, as shown here, and one large image which will become a big quilt. I choose a crisp white cotton poplin as the fabric onto which the designs are printed, and the width is 150cm. The printer I use is RA Smart.

The printed fabric arrives rolled round a tube, and this is the moment of anticipation. Have I completely blown it this time? Will the designs still please me? Will I still be itching to start stitching?

The roll is opened and unrolled over a table, and it is just like magic, because the last time I saw the designs most of them were on my monitor. The scissors then come out to cut along the spaces I have left for the purpose, so that I can see each piece whole. The files are printed on one continuous piece of fabric as this is most economical and leaves as little waste as possible - although I am still left with enough white cotton to wash and then use for heat transferred small work.

Then I am left with a pile of potential. I iron the one I choose to work on next, and make a sandwich with wadding and a backing of fine calico. The dense quilting is done, and then when the piece is ready for the final quilting I put the back on and stitch through all four layers.

I now have lots to keep me busy for many months, and I even still have prints from previous printings - I like to have work from which to make a choice, depending on my mood.

The green chair

Design in progress

Source of much thinking and inspiration

Silja Puranen: Aerialist

Over many years Lesley Millar has curated many exhibitions of exemplary quality, both in conception and participants. She has quietly presented art exhibitions which happen to consist of work which can all be described as textiles. The exhibitions have mostly been dialogues between pairs of makers, but the one which set me off and still remains the pinnacle in my memory was the very first: Textural Space, with all the makers from Japan.

The website Transition and Influence gives information about the past exhibitions and future ones in the pipeline. It also has a web gallery which includes Silja Puranen (shown above). More than any other Lesley Millar's exhibitions have spurred me on during this century to find my own voice, and to try my best to sing.

Dramatic accessory

I did not see the whole Telling Fortunes exhibition, only a couple of pieces which had been added to the Allegory show, and which excited and intrigued. I was however able to buy the catalogue, the designer of which has written this. I find hands fascinating, and telling markers of emotion, and so was further drawn to the subject of Alice Kettle's work as well as its visual impact. In the catalogue she says:

I am amongst many artists who are drawn to gloves. Loaded with the symbolism of touch and the haptic they are suggestive of the movement and gesture of the hand. They carry a sense of changing cultural attitude, when gloves must be worn, of the untouched and must not touch, and of relationships, when hands are to be held. They hold within their interior a sense of the hand within.

The exhibition consisted not only of embroideries, but also drawing on ceramics, and sculpture. Click the jace-face blog for a comprehensive range of photos from which the three here come.

I found the gloves-inspired pieces the most tactile-ly enticing of AK's work, not only because of their siren call to the hands, but because of the many beads which somehow for once to me - not especially mad about beads - demanded to be touched.

I could imagine spending many happy hours stitching those beads, and then pulling on the gloves to perform. Indeed before I had looked up the rest of the work in the Telling Fortunes exhibition I was immediately reminded of much loved images by Toulouse Lautrec of Yvette Guilbert - and I found this delightful site.

I was always especially intrigued by this last drawing because I could see a daring acrobatically raised right leg mostly hidden behind the curtain and the right arm's glove. I know it's not there - but it almost could be. And it reminded me to revisit a doodle I did many years ago, inspired by jazz singers and T-L's chanteuses.

Revisiting

Alice Kettle: Orothopendorosis 2007 (using a Schiffli machine)

Last year I went with great anticipation to see Allegory, an exhibition of recent work by one of my favourite artists: Alice Kettle. As is too often the case with great anticipations, I find, I was disappointed. Not only disappointed, but angry - and I could not fathom why. I found my reactions disturbing and wrote a post about it on Ragged Cloth Cafe.

My reaction was confined to me - here is a glowing review on Workshop on the Web. I loved most of AK's work on show; what gave me the strongest negative reaction were her 3D heads. I could not understand why I took agin them so fiercely. I wondered whether it was jealousy on my part - after all I have been pondering the question of how I could develop my own figurative work into 3D, and specifically thinking about heads. Was it simply the green-eyed monster and despair that someone so much better had got there before me? I did not think so, but I needed to find out.

I returned to the exhibition twice more, with different people. My duodidactic friend who also works in textiles disagreed with me; my husband saw what I was getting at, but it did not bother him. It was a difficult problem for me to think about because the heads seem to work in 2D, so looking at them in reproduction was not helping me. This was true of the paper heads in the exhibition too.

I worrited away at the problem until I happened to be thinking about the sculptor Anthony Caro and what I love about his work. A huge penny dropped for me: negative space. One of the reasons I find AC's sculptures so effective is that the positive and negative spaces buzz with the appropriate energy for the piece. I find that this is also true of the ceramic collection pieces of Edmund de Waal. It could well be true that I was annoyed that AK had come up with 3D heads before I had got my own thinking together, and that therefore I was going to be influenced - but the negative space thing sounded righter to me. Anyway, I had to see the heads again.

Luck was with me. The final venue for Allegory is in the town nearest to me, at the Willis Museum. I went there the other day and was bowled over. Some of the original pieces are still there - the pieces I admired, as well as the heads; but also there were pieces from AK's exhibition Telling Fortunes at the Gallery of Costume Platt Hall last year. So, I was doubly lucky. The two large pieces from Platt Hall Glove Fortunes (first four pix in the above link), and Glove Field (pix 10, 11 of the above link) are stunning.

My husband tells me that my faith was restored that AK's new work is living up to the standards which I expect of her, and that the heads fell short. That's why I was angry. I still do not like the heads. They do not work for me - not because of the approach, but I don't think they are quite there yet. As if the elements have been stitched not quite yet in the right position. I feel this because I don't dislike them all equally, nor each part of a head equally. Elements work for me.

I think that my husband was right: because I had always derived such immense satisfaction and inspiration from Alice Kettle's work in the past, it was a shock when I simply did not like some of her new work. I was also in a very low emotional state when I first saw the Allegory exhibition. I am so pleased that I have been able to take such time in revisiting the pieces, and thus in coming to terms with a more measured personal critique of them as well as of my reactions. It would be great if we could revisit exhibitions like that: not only within a few weeks, but also with an intervening span of a year.

This has been a fascinating experience - and is perhaps not yet over. I could fit in another visit before the tent is folded.