Colour and Light at Abbot Hall

Last Saturday we drove up to Kendal to take a look at the current exhibition at Abbot Hall. “Colour and Light”

presents the art and influence of the Scottish Colourists centred on masterpieces from the renowned Fleming Collection, the finest collection of Scottish art outside public museums and institutions. 

The Scottish Colourists were a group of four artists S.J.Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, and F.C.B. Cadell. They were all strongly influenced by French Avant-garde art from the early Twentieth Century – the Impressionists, Post Impressionists and Fauvists – putting their own Scottish stamp on the styles.

I’d first come across their work when watching a TV documentary about the group by Michael Palin some years ago and also at Manchester City Art Gallery who have a painting by both Fergusson and Cadell in their collection. Following that I’d seen exhibitions of work by both of these artists during visits to Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The Colourists’ philosophy is perhaps best summed up by this quote from John Fergusson

“Everyone in Scotland should refuse to have anything to do with black or dirty and dingy colours, and insist on clean colours in everything. I remember when I was young any colour was considered a sign of vulgarity. Greys and blacks were the only colours for people of taste and refinement. Good pictures had to be black, grey, brown or drab. Well! let’s forget it, and insist on things in Scotland being of colour that makes for and associates itself with light, hopefulness, health and happiness.”
— J. D. Fergusson, Modern Scottish Painting, William MacLellan, Glasgow 1943.

Although there were close similarities in their style and influences, they were not a close knit group with a specific set of aims, and only exhibited together on three occasions while they were all still alive. In practice, all four artists had their own individual styles, but the French influences come through, particularly in their early works. The Colourist label is applied because they all used bright, vibrant colours.

S J Peploe, Luxembourg Gardens, c. 1910, oil on panel © The Fleming Collection

There are over  50 works in 3 galleries, including paintings, drawings and sculpture by all four Colourists – S.J.Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, and F.C.B. Cadell. The first two works are devoted to the group with the third gallery showing works by later artists from the Fleming Collection to try to demonstrate the influence of the Colourists.

F C B Cadell The Feathered Hat (1914) oil on panel © The Fleming Collection

George Hunter Peonies in a Chinese Vase c 1928 The Fleming-Wyfold Art Collection

From what I’ve seen of the Colourists I think that John Ferguson was the most significant artist. The other members of the group mainly concentrated on landscapes, still lives and society portraits, whereas Fergusson’s works are more radical and imaginative as illustrated by the following two works

J D Fergusson Blue Nude c 1909-10 goache on paper © The Fleming Collection

J. D. Fergusson Estre, Hymn to the Sun c 1924

Joan Eardley

Salmon Nets 1 (1961-3)by Joan Eardley

While we were last up at Abbot Hall Gallery in Kendal a couple of paintings included in the display of works from the Gallery’s own collection on the first floor took my eye. The Gallery have a large collection but limited space so they only have a limited number of works on display at any one time, which change from time to time. I couldn’t recall seeing these particular paintings previously, so had a closer look. They reminded me a little of the work of the Irish artist, Camille Souter, whose paintings I’ve seen during my visits to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.

It turned out that they were paintings by Joan Eardley a 20th Century artist,
s born on 18 May 1921 in Sussex but whose family moved to the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden in 1940 when she was 19. She enrolled at Glasgow School of Art the same year.

She became known for her portraits of local children near her studio in Glasgow. In the late 1950’s she started to visit the Scottish seaside village of Catterline, in Aberdeenshire, moving there permanently in 1961, where she painted seascapes and landscapes. The Abbot Hall paintings are from that period.

According to the National Galleries of Scotland website she was

one of Scotland’s most popular twentieth century artists. Her powerful and expressive paintings transformed her everyday surroundings, including the rugged Scottish coastline and Glasgow’s street children. During her lifetime she was considered a member of the post war British avant-garde, who portrayed the realities of life in the mid-twentieth century.

She became well known for her work in Scotland and probably would have become more widely recognised but died in 1963 from breast cancer when she was only 42.

The Cornfield (1962) by Joan Eardley

There’s a good article about her life and work on the National Galleries Scotland website and also here.

The two Abbot hall paintings, although figurative, have a strong abstract quality to them. Apparently, she liked to paint outdoors, working quickly to capture the changing light and conditions, in all sorts of weather, and would sometimes add vegetation to her thickly textured paint.

It’s always good to discover the work of an artist I’ve not really come across before during a gallery visit. And I’ll certainly be trying to find out more about Joan Eardley and her work.

Alison Watt: A Shadow On The Blind

The main exhibition currently showing at Abbot t Hall at the moment features the work of the Sottish artist, Alison Watt. During our visit last week, perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t attracting as much attention as the tapestries by the much better known Grayson Perry, but we spent some time looking at her meticulously painted pictures.

The Abbot Hall website tells us:

Her work first came to public attention in 1987 when she won the National Portrait Gallery’s coveted annual award, and in the late 1980s and early 90s she became known for her paintings of figures, often female nudes. In the late 1990s her focus shifted away from the figure and she began to explore the possibility of painting drapery as a surrogate for the human body.

They were mainly monochrome trompe d’oiel images of relatively simple objects – mainly plain fabrics and electrical flex. They were very convincing, particularly when viewed from a few feet away. Simple, but very effective. They really need to be seen “in the flesh” to be properly appreciated.

Alison Watt: A Shadow On The Blind from Lakeland Arts on Vimeo.

The Life of Julie Cope at Abbot Hall

Last week I managed to take a day off and we decided to drive up to Kendal to have a look at the current exhibitions at Abbot Hall in Kendal. They’re currently showing a pair of linked tapestries by Grayson Perry illustrating the life of Julie Cope, a fictional heroine from his home county of Essex. Her life from her birth during the floods on Canvey Island back in the 50’s through growing up in Basildon, getting married and having children, separating from her husband, becoming a mature student, finding a new partner and being killed in her early sixties in an accident with a moped.

The tapestries have been acquired by the Crafts Council, and they’re touring them round the country. They’re on display at Abbot Hall until 16 February next year, audio recording The Ballad of Julie Cope, a 3000 word narrative written and read by Perry himself telling the story illustrated on the tapestries.

A Perfect Match, Grayson Perry, 2015. Crafts Council Collection: 2016.18. Purchase  supported by Art Fund (with a contribution from The Wolfson Foundation) and a donation from Maylis and James Grand. Courtesy the Artist, Paragon Press, and Victoria Miro, London. © Grayson Perry

In Its Familiarity, Golden, Grayson Perry, 2015. Crafts Council Collection: 2016.19. Purchase supported by Art Fund (with a contribution from The Wolfson Foundation) and a donation from Maylis and James Grand. Courtesy the Artist, Paragon Press, and Victoria Miro, London. © Grayson Perry

In a way, Perry has reinvented the tapestry for the 21st Century, taking modern themes and telling stories through a traditional form of woven comic strip. He’s a very astute observer of society and this is reflected in many of his works which are commentaries on various aspects of contemporary British life and society, of which these tapestries are another good example.

Rather like the animator, Nick Park (of Wallace and Grommet fame) there are many small details incorporated into Perry’s works that really bring out the flavour of the times and the places he’s illustrating – everyday objects, architectural features, musical logos, fashion to mention a few.

In conjunction with the Abbot Hall exhibition, Blackwell, 20 minutes drive away, are showing three of Grayson Perry’s pots which they have on loan. We drove over later in the day to take a look. No photos allowed of these works but they do have a press photo of one of them

Melanie, (2014) On loan from York Museums Trust

Elisabeth Frink: Fragility and Power at Abbot Hall

Last week we went to have a look at the latest exhibition at Abbot Hall in Kendal. It’s devoted to the work of the sculptor Elisabeth Frink.

We’re quite familiar with her work – there’s a good selection of her sculptures, including the three Riache Warriors, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and I’ve seen other sculptures in various locations including Tate Modern, Paternoster Square in London, Chatsworth and Merrion Square in Dublin.

The Abbot Hall exhibition has 50 works from throughout her career on display, including sculpture, maquettes and works on paper. The majority are in the main galleries on the first floor but visitors are greeted by a Riache Warrior in the lobby and there’s a Walking Madonna in one of the downstairs rooms in amongst the Georgian furniture.

As usual, no photos allowed, but these are a selection of Press images.

This is an early work Portrait of a young man (1962)

There were several of her animal sculptures, including Harbinger birds

Many of Frink’s sculptures I’ve seen in the past are statues or busts of men and there were a number of the latter in the exhibition including Easter Head

and this rather disturbing and frightening Goggle Head, one of a series produced while she was living in France from 1967 to 1970 and which were influenced by events in Algeria and other parts of North Africa.

The Goggle Heads were inspired by media coverage of Moroccan General Mohammed Oufkir, who had been accused of ordering the assassination in Paris of the exiled politician Ben Bark, and was usual seen in photographs with his eyes hidden by sunglasses.

Goggle Heads are no longer warriors or soldiers but sophisticated criminal types, their identities hidden behind polished goggles, displaying a bullish arrogance and suaveness. The double edged point of these glasses however, is that these men lack vision and they mask a vulnerability, as Peter Shaffer wrote: ‘the constant wearing of dark glasses always speaks of impotence to me: a fear of having scrutiny returned – the secret terror of the torturer’ (Southeby’s)

The first room in the exhibition features work by sculptors and other artists who were working around the same time has Frink, including Barbara Hepworth, FE McWilliam, Lynn Chadwick Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Reg Butler. Apparently, the latter was dismissive of Elisabeth Frink, believing that women could not be successful as sculptors. Well, he got that wrong.

LAND | SEA | LIFE at Abbot Hall

A couple of weeks ago we finally made it across to Abbot Hall to see the latest exhibition Land|Sea|Life which features works from the Ingram Collection, and which was coming towards the end of it’s run. The exhibition include 70 “Modern British” works by over 40 artists , including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Graham Sutherland and Laura Knight.

The collection has been put together over the last decade by media entrepreneur Chris Ingram. He’s been lucky enough to indulge his passion amassing over 650 works. But he doesn’t simply display them all in his home (probably homes, being a millionaire!). The Collection is currently housed at The Lightbox – a gallery and museum in his hometown of Woking. His taste very much aligns with my own. There wasn’t a work on display at Abbot Hall I didn’t like and looking at the 2 volume catalogue from the Collection confirmed this view.

No photographs, so I’ve restricted this post to images available on the Abbot Hall website, which are only a fraction of the works displayed. This is a drawing by Barbara Hepworth and is clearly a preliminary for a work, the “plaster” of which, is in the Hepworth Gallery collection.

The Ship by John Piper

Most of the exhibits were 2 D works –  paintings, drawings and prints. But there were a number of sculptures, including this attractive vase like bronze object by Kenneth Armitage which rather reminded me of Barbara Hepworth’s work.

Although I was familiar with many of the artists included in the exhibition, there were some new discoveries (always good!).  One of these included John Tunnard who had several works on display. I particularly liked his tempura painting, Installation from 1942.

Another discovery was Edward Burra. One of his works Near Whitby, Yorkshire (1972)features in the video introduction to the exhibition (above) by Jo Baring, the Collection’s Director and Curator. The other works on display were probably more typical of his work; caricature like paintings of people, many of them workers. These included Figure Composition No1 (1976) which features a group of ordinary people going about their everyday business on a busy street, and Seamen Ashore, Greenock (1944) which does what it says on the tin!

A sculpture that took my eye was Ghost Boat  (2003) by the Irish artist, John Behan

Three of my favourite works in the exhibition were by an artist I had come across before, Keith Vaughan. They were ink/gouache and ink/watercolour drawings of buildings from the industrial region of the West Yorkshire Pennines – Village in the Hills (1943), Schoolhouse, Yorkshire (1945) and Industrial Landscape III, Morton Mill (1943). They rather reminded me of landscapes by John Piper.

There were plenty others I could mention, but I think that’s enough for now! Although there wasn’t one specifically for the exhibition, here were a couple of catalogues from the collection on sale at Abbot Hall which include the works on display and many more. Images can also be browsed on the Collection’s website .

People on Paper at Abbot Hall

To finish off our short break in the Lakes we drove over to Kendal to visit the latest exhibition at Abbot Hall. People on Paper , as the title implies, features drawings of people by British artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from the Arts Council Collection with loans from the British Council Collection.

The show includes drawings by nearly 50 artists,  from the early twentieth century, including Gwen John (with the earliest drawing in the exhibition), Augustus John and Walter Sickert, right through to more modern artists such as Euan Uglow, Lucien Freud, David Hockney and Antony Gormley.

Drawing of a Girl, Alice (1974) by Lucien Freud

Drawing people is inevitably figurative but there were some more abstract approaches, particularly this sketch by Mimei Thomson (Liquid Portrait 4, 2008)

The works included simple sketches (some unfinished), more complex drawings, watercolours and even some incorporation of multi-media as in Kate Davis’ drawing Partners Study (Figure 1) from 2005 which incorporates a ceramic “telephone” made from small slabs of white clay.

Walking into the exhibition, the first drawing I saw, almost facing the door, was a rather creepy sketch by L S Lowry Woman With Long Hair (1964). The other drawings in the first room, from the early part of the 20th Century were a little more “normal”, including Gwen John’s simple sketch of the head of a young woman

Head of a Woman (c 1910)

and this drawing by Harold Gilman,

Woman Combing Her Hair (1911)

although there was also an early work by Antony Gorman.

The second room brought us forward in time and included works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth

Reconstruction (1947)

The third room included some later works, including this simple sketch by Euan Uglow

Girl Close To (1968)

Another enjoyable exhibition at one of our favourite Galleries. A good selection of artists with works encompassing a wide range of styles and approaches.

Make Yourself Comfortable at Chatsworth

During our recent visit to Chatsworth we bought a combined House and Garden ticket for although our main motivation for visiting was to see the Beyond Limits exhibition in he gardens, we also wanted to have another look around the house to revisit the collection of Modern Art on display. We’d also read that there was an exhibition of contemporary seating taking place. Initially I wasn’t sure it would be of much interest, but, as it happened, I was wrong!

The Chatsworth website told us that:

Make Yourself Comfortable at Chatsworth will see items from the private collection of the Duke and Duchess showcased alongside furniture by internationally acclaimed and innovative designers – from Thomas Heatherwick and Amanda Levete, to Marc Newson, Tokujin Yoshioka, Piet Hein Eek and Moritz Waldemeyer. The exhibition will also showcase thought-provoking, specially commissioned pieces, including Raw Edges’ End Grain seating which will become part of the Sculpture Gallery, and Synthesis IV by emerging designer Tom Price which will be on display in the Chapel.

Chairs and other types of seating were positioned around the house and visitors were allowed to take advantage of them, try them out and rest their legs for a while.

Some of the chairs were very comfortable

Others less so!

These were the first we saw. Designed to spin around so you could view the painted ceiling in the entrance hall (if you didn’t lose you balance and fall off!)

These were chairs designed for readers (I think Milady would like these)

 

A bench made of coal

and one of resin infused with bitumen

both reflecting the Dukes of Devonshire’s association with the mineral extraction industries.

Some others we saw

Towards the end of the tour of the house, in the dining room, around the large dining table there were chairs designed by students from Sheffield

Finally, in the sculpture hall a very interesting collection specially created for the exhibition

(an) indoor landscape created by Raw Edges in the Sculpture Gallery, where benches and stools emerge like tree trunks from the coloured grid-like floor and offer new perspectives of the sculptures.

Memorious Earth: A Longitudinal Study

Last July, when we were on holiday in the Lake District, we visited and enjoyed an exhibition at Dove Cottage in Grasmere – The Walking Poets – inspired by William Wordsworth and the Japanese master of the Haiku, Basho. It featured older manuscripts books together with works by contemporary artists in various media.

Two of these artists were Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson who are partners and collaborators, who both had two works included in the exhibition. I was intrigued by their work, which formed pictures from words –  and afterwards did a little research to find out more about them.

Richard Skelton, who originates from Standish, just up the road from here, is an artist, musician and writer and produces visual works formed from words and “found objects”.  Autumn Richardson is a Canadian poet who also produces visual works. Together they have produced ‘Field Notes’, a series of poetic place-studies published as pamphlets by their own Corbel Stone Press. They also edit and publish ‘Reliquiae’, an annual journal of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, translations and visual art.

Some of Richards’s works were inspired by the West Lancashire Moors, specifically Anglezarke, very much my “stomping ground”, so I ended up buying, and enjoying a couple of his books. So I was particularly keen to see the exhibition of their works which extends across Blackwell and Abbot Hall and which opened recently.

Their work is ‘informed’ rather than ‘inspired’ by landscape. It is not impressionistic, but the result of extensive research into specific places, topographies, ecologies and histories. Pages from their book-works frequently spill with word-lists drawn from varied sources: pollen diagrams, dialect glossaries, cartographic records, archaeological tracts

The exhibition, features works inspired by their home in a remote part of south west Cumbria.  It includes

music, film, books, pamphlets, prints, artefacts and assemblages that engage with the natural history of this landscape, from the post-glacial wasteland to the present day.

So it’s a “multi-media” exhibition. Many of the works , in books and prints, are “poem-pictures” or “picture-poems” where the words and letters are arranged to create patterns and images that are representative of the theme of the poem. The visual work is often accompanied with a piece of music

Limnology, for example, which is displayed at Blackwell, a book accompanied by a print and music

The book assembles over 1000 ‘water-words’ from the dialect of Cumbria and its tributaries in the Germanic and Celtic languages, presenting them in a way which typographically imitates riverine processes.

Letters cascade down the page, overlap, merge and gather, forming pools and streams. Intermingled with these visual pieces are poems and texts which explore, among other things, water creation myths, the roles of water creatures, both real and imagined, and the paradox of waterless rivers.

This print of one of the images in the book looks like a waterfall of words and letters

At Abbot Hall “Relics” is a series of prints each one with an image formed by different words used for a specific tree arranged in a  circular pattern, like tree rings.

The work is inspired by the deforested landscape  around Devoke Water in south-west Cumbria where names related to the landscape refer to the names of the trees that were once there:

Birker Fell (birch), Linbeck (lime), Rowantree How (rowan), Storthes (brushwood), Withy Bottom (willow), Woodend & Wood Knotts

The artists have also collected various objects from the landscape – for example, fragments of bark, bone, twigs, leaves, seeds, pods, roots, animal pellets –  some of which are displayed in conjunction with their word works.

Richard Skelton was also given access to the collection of artefacts held by the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry (Also run by the Lakeland Arts Trust). From this he created the ‘Museum of Ferae Naturae’, produced in collaboration with the Notional Research Group for Cultural Artefacts.

One of the rooms at Abbot Hall has been devoted to this exhibition.

The museum will explore the customary persecution and exploitation of animal life in Cumbria, offering alternate historic, mythic and folkloric contexts for these artefacts which imply different attitudes towards the natural world.

Carefully selected objects are displayed in glass cases together with related texts.

There’s a catalogue of the works on display at both locations together with photographs here.

I thought it was a marvellous exhibition, reinforcing my appreciation of the work of Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson. There was too much to take in in one viewing so we intend to return, especially as there are other exhibitions at both locations we enjoyed and would like to see again – a display of pots by Emilie Taylor and two rooms devoted to work by the Boyle family “collective” whose art also is inspired by landscape – Boyle Family: Contemporary Archaeology – at Abbot Hall

 

Hepworth at Abbot Hall

Barbara Hepworth – Within the Landscape is the latest exhibition showing at the Abbot Hall gallery in Kendal. We called in to see it on the way back home from our recent holiday in the Lake District. As the Gallery’s website tells us

Apart from Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 1994, this is the first significant exhibition of her work in the North West for over sixty years

A large number of her works, mainly sculptures but also some prints, were displayed in the rooms on the first floor which are used for the gallery’s temporary exhibitions, but there were also three larger sculptures  on the ground floor. There was also a display of photographs of and related to Barbara Hepworth in another one of the rooms upstairs.

Oval Form (Trezion) 1961-3

Abbot Hall doesn’t allow photography but they do have a number of photographs of the some of the works on display on their website. Some of the pictures used in the publicity for the exhibition show sculptures outdoors and this made me expect that some would be sited at Blackwell, as was the case with their exhibition of works by Lynn Chadwick last year, but that isn’t the case. they’re all indoors at the gallery in Kendal – except for the sculpture owned by Abbot Hall which stands on the lawn in front of the entrance to the Gallery (picture above- nothing to stop me snapping that one!). A pity, as the larger works, in particular, would be enhanced by being located outdoors in changing, natural light, rather than in the stark light of the gallery. And on the lawn at Blackwell it would be possible to observe the work from all angles, a problem with some of the works indoors and I noticed that a number of visitors had commented on this in the Visitor’s book. I have to say I agree with them, but a relatively minor quibble as I enjoyed the exhibition very much. It had a good selection of works, many of which I hadn’t seen before as they had been loaned by private collections.

This later work, Summer Dance (1972) greeted visitors to the Gallery as it was located in the entrance hall. It’s a very typical Hepworth work with large “curvaceous” pieces “punctured” with large holes. At first I though it was carved from wood, but on closer inspection it was apparent that it was cast in metal. The surface treatment was particularly attractive. A light silver on the front, but a darker bronze colour on the back.

There were examples of works in other media – stone, wood and thin metal plate, the latter sometimes twisted and manipulated into complex shapes, such as Forms in Movement (Galliard) (1956), made from a single copper sheet.

This is another one made from thin sheet metal, but in this case incorporating the strings which are a common feature of her work.

Stringed Figure (Curlew), 1956

I rather liked this simple work,  Disc with strings (Moon) from 1969

From a private collection, one of the loan conditions probably accounted for it being displayed in a perspex box. This led to some interesting effects due to light being refracted through the joins in the box and illuminating parts of the sculpture.

The smooth, curved forms of many of Hepworth’s sculptures, like this one carved from Nigerian wood, are crying out to be touched and caressed – strictly forbidden of course!

Configuration (Phira) (1955)

There were several stone sculptures too, including this one, a large piece carved from a distinctive two-tone coloured Ancaster stone

Rock Face (1973)

It stood out for me as it’s large rectangular form was rather “masculine” and rather different from the curvaceous works she typically produced.

There were also a number of prints which we’d seen before as they were on loan from the Hepworth in Wakefield who had them on display until recently (and where I snapped some photos).

Porthmeor (1969)

Genesis (1969)

So another excellent exhibition at the Abbot Hall. a good survey of Hepworth’s oeuvre, showing works in all the main media she worked in with a good number that are not normally on display to the public, so there was something new even for someone who is very familiar with Hepworth’s work. It is manageable too. A good number of works, but not too many to take in during a visit and enough to make me want to go for another look in the near future. I understand that the Tate are to hold a retrospective of Hepworth’s work next year. I’m sure that will be good too, but it’s likely to be much larger and more overwhelming. That’s one of the things I like about Abbot Hall – good exhibitions which leave you feeling satisfied but not overstuffed and overwhelmed which is often the case with the “blockbusters” in London.