Publication

CRAIGIE AITCHISON
SUSAN ALDWORTH
OLD BIG SCHOOL
OLIVER BASS
ALEXANDER BENJAMIN
PAUL BUSH
CHARLOTTE CHISHOLM
ELEANOR CROOK
JO DE PEAR
STEVE DILWORTH
24 JANUARY - 9 MARCH 2014
TOBY DUNCAN
TRACEY EMIN
HELEN GANLY
DEBORAH GLASS
EMILY GLASS
ANTONY GORMLEY
GONKAR GYATSO
ROMILY HAY
YAN HUANG
HITOMI KAI YODA
VIRGILE ITTAH
PATRICE MOOR
HENRY MOORE
SIDNEY NOLAN
CHRIS OFILI
CORNELIA PARKER
THOMAS PARKHOUSE
MAJOR POWELL-COTTON
VALENTINE SCHMIDT
SALLY SPINKS
NORIHIRO USUI
ATALOGUE OF ORKS
LEE WAGSTAFF
WAYNE WARREN
BRONWYN WAUGH
TIM ZERCIE
GALLERY
IN THE FLESH
C
W
1
In the Flesh is a snapshot of the way artists have used and continue
to use the body as a starting point to explore themes and ideas;
the frailty and joy of existence, the need to make sense of our lives
through religion and ritual, the relationship between body and
mind, and the sensual pleasure the body can give us.
And yet there is a huge diversity of interpretation within these
themes. There are images of death as visceral and shocking as well as
part of the natural cycle of existence; the child in need of protection
but also eager to push the boundaries of that safety; a celebration
of the body in movement alongside striking portrayals of its
disintegration.
What draws them together are the ways in which the hand of the
maker is very much present within these artworks. There is a strong
emphasis on their materiality; the ooze of wet clay, the warmth of
melted modelling wax, the energetic stroke of a brush or the heave
of the crank of a printing press. These works have been made by the
bodies of artists examining their own physicality.
This is the first major exhibition in OBS Gallery and it is open to
students, staff and the wider community. We hope that In the Flesh
will create thought and discussion as well as a space for reflection;
inviting you to find within these walls, artworks that make you feel,
as well as think.
We are very grateful to the Art Collector Wayne Warren for lending
us so many wonderful pieces from his collection and to all the
people, within and outside the school who have helped make this
exhibition possible.
Emily Glass
In the Flesh Curator
2
Craigie Aitchison
3
Craigie Aitchison
untitled. 2000
Screenprint
Imaage © OBS Gallery
Craigie Aitchison
Craigie Aitchison’s work is characterised by the use of intense,
pure colour to describe shape and form in extremely spare
compositions. His subject matter is traditional, featuring religious
themes, landscapes, portraits and still-lifes.
In 1955 Aitchison was awarded the British Council Italian
Government Scholarship for painting and travelled to Italy,
where the clear light and natural ‘Biblical’ landscapes had a
profound influence on his work. Aitchison’s religious scenes are
not of an ecclesiastical discipline, but have a timeless, poetic and
mysterious atmosphere reminiscent of 15th-century miniatures.
In his portraits colour and composition are key; Aitchison has
often shown a predilection for black models, enjoying the way
colour reflects against dark skin.
4
Susan Aldworth
5
Susan Aldworth
Reassembling the Self 5, 2012
Lithograph made at the Curwen Studio
Image courtesy of the Artist
Susan Aldworth
Aldworth’s lithographs reflect on the general condition of
schizophrenia. As anti-portraits, their use of found imagery
– generic anatomical prints from medical folios, the ear as a
visual shorthand for schizophrenia and hearing voices – at
once interrogates individual identity and situates individual
consciousness within a provocatively depersonalized
symbolism...
They explore and celebrate the fragility of identity in its
relationship with and dependence on the physical self.
They ask questions – of who we might be and of what
we are made – in a voice at once spiritual and sensible,
philosophical and profane; and they steep us in a
conversation as old and elemental as consciousness itself.
Julia Beaumont-Jones, Print Curator, Tate Britain, 2012
Susan Aldworth studied Philosophy at Nottingham University and
Fine Art at Sir John Cass. She has exhibited widely both nationally and
internationally and her work is held in many public and permanent
collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, The British
Museum, The Wellcome Collection, Williams College Museum of Art
and the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University.
Reassembling the Self 5 is one of the prints from a suite of lithographs
made at the Curwen Studio with the printer Stanley Jones in 2012.
This was during Aldworth’s residency at Newcastle University where
she carried out research into some of the scientific, clinical and personal
narratives of schizophrenia.
http://susanaldworth.com/
6
Oliver Bass
7
Oliver Bass
Shango, 2011
Oil, acrylic and pencil on Canvas
Image courtesy of the Artist
OliVER Bass
“Can we trust the painter who paints nothing? On painting
formless mass, one is encouraged to analyse the flesh to its minutiae.
With a practice that has long since had an interest in form I have
over time nurtured and distilled a passion for this visceral subject. On
exploring this in parallel with a long standing interest in abstraction
and materiality, drawing influence from artists including Philip
Guston and Hans Josephsohn, I have come to realise that often this is
the best means of portraying this endlessly varied form.
In the painting Shango, we see a dichotomy forming between the
gestural and intuitive, off-set by the hesitant and considered. This
acts to intersect the natural rhythm of the painting, mirroring the
awkwardness of the body - the economy of mark further compounding
this feeling. The painting’s two elements sit uncomfortably together,
as if forced onto the same canvas.”
Oliver Bass, 2014
Oliver Bass graduated from Tonbridge School in 2012 and enrolled
on the CCW Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. He is currently
reading Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art,
University of Oxford.
8
Alexander Benjamin
9
Alexander Benjamin
Enka, 2013
Pencil on Paper
Image courtesy of the Artist
Alexander Benjamin
Alexander Benjamin graduated from the Ruskin School of Drawing and
Fine Art, University of Oxford in 2013 and has since exhibited in London
with the Society of Graphic Fine Art, and in Kent as Tonbridge School’s
Artist in Residence. During her degree she was awarded several prizes,
including the John Farthing Prize for Human Anatomy and the Vivien
Leigh Prize, awarded by the Keeper of Western Art of the Ashmolean
Museum.
Enka (2013) is part of a series of drawings that she has produced
intermittently over the past few years. They are small sections, usually of
no more than a square centimetre, of human forms taken from found
images which she has isolated and transformed. She severs these fragments
from their original context, so as to create highly ambiguous, sculptural
drawings which adopt curious new qualities from the majestic to the
uncanny.
http://project127.co.uk/
10
Daniel Bragin
11
Daniel Bragin
Glossy Matter, 2013
PVC, sand and metal
Image courtesy of the Artist
Daniel Bragin
No Cure No Pay, 2013
PVC, sand and metal
Image courtesy of the Artist
Daniel Bragin
Daniel Bragin graduated from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in
2011 and recently completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal
College of Art, London. He has exhibited extensively in London
and the Netherlands and has work in the Saatchi Gallery Collection.
His artworks come from an enjoyment of making in a realm “where
boundaries are hidden far away from the human eye... without any
limitations or rules.”
Bragin describes Glossy Matter as an experimental development of an
earlier work entitled Lady, made in 2010. He pursues an interest in the
physical synthesis of black PVC as a material together with the chosen
shape and volume. Its relationship with the gold-coloured chains
which are draped smoothly over the surface creates an unsettling and
somewhat fetishized sculptural landscape. He finds a ‘poetic liquidness’
in their forms, and is interested in the viewer’s understanding and
interpretation of their nature; ominous and predatory or feeble and
compliant. No Cure No Pay is a piece made during his BA for which
Bragin proposes a double-edged interpretation. On the one hand its
dripping skin is the sickly-sweet temptation of thick caramel and on
the other, a repulsive and toxic mutation as disconcerting to behold
as the painfully awkward posture of the figure.
http://danielbragin.nl/
12
PAUL BUSH
The secret preoccupation of these films, finally, is
beauty. It may be the case that the film-maker, in
focusing so relentlessly on issues of time, narrative,
history, the intersection of the graphic and the
cinematic, and the question of clarity of presentation,
doesn’t himself see it but the viewer does. As if
beauty were a necessary by-product of these
investigations, beyond the intention of the artist,
yet an inevitable result of his rigorous control and
passionate pursuit of meaning.
Leslie Dick, Artist and Writer
13
Paul Bush
still from Lay Bare, 2012
HD Video
Image courtesy of Paul Bush and LUX, London
Paul Bush
Lay Bare is a composite portrait of the human body assembled
from details captured by close-up photography of over five
hundred men and women of all ages and from all over the world.
The surface of the human body is revealed as it is rarely seen
except in the most intimate relationships we have with our family
or our lovers; a portrait of the body that is both sexy and tender,
elegant and witty.
Paul Bush studied Fine Art at Central School and Goldsmiths
College, London. He taught himself how to make films while a
member of the London Film-makers Co-op and Chapter Film
Workshop in Cardiff.
http://paulbushfilms.com
14
Charlotte Chisholm
15
Charlotte Chisholm
Ghost, 2014
Liquid Emulsion on Somerset paper
Image courtesy of the Artist
Charlotte Chisholm
“This photograph is part of a series that I shot from old
super-8 cine film. The original film was a 30-second snippet of
me and my sisters charging around our garden in the summer of
1969. I don’t think I remember the event in itself but thanks to
our annual Christmas showings throughout the 70s and into the
early 80s it crept into my visual lexicon.
The film was shot by my parents - shaky, hand-held, direct,
innocent… intended to be nothing more than a personal record
of a time and a place. I took the photographs from a projection of
that film thirty-five years later: images of myself as a child, taken
by myself as an adult. Displaced from time and context, they
belong nowhere; they become like ghosts.”
Charlotte Chisholm, 2014
Charlotte graduated from the University of the West of England
in 1995 and is currently Head of Art at Tonbridge School.
16
Eleanor Crook
For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities,
men and things... One must be able to think back to
roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and
to partings which one had long seen coming; to days
of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that
one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and
one did not grasp it (it was joy for someone else); to
childhood illness that so strangely began with a number
of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms
withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the
sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on
high and flew with all the stars...
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
17
Eleanor Crook
Think back to partings which one had long since seen coming, 2014
Wax and mixed media
Photograph Antonio Perricone, Image © OBS Gallery
Eleanor Crook
Eleanor Crook is a contemporary British artist and an expert on
anatomy. She was trained in sculpture at Central Saint Martins and
the Royal Academy of Arts, and subsequently studied under Richard
Neave, who taught her the techniques of forensic facial reconstruction
modelling.
“Think back to partings which one had long since seen coming takes its
title from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and is a meditation
on the inevitability of change and loss, both of loved ones and also
the final parting that is death, the separation from oneself. Wax is a
symbol for the impermanence of flesh, with its translucency, liquidity,
fragility and pallor; it can be consumed by flame, weakened by heat,
and has the greasy and tactile surface of a feverish skin. Its tints can
be imparted from inner staining or external maquillage, Historically
it has been used to make vividly lifelike medical models and images
of saints, because of its affinity with the body and illusory human
presence. Sculpting with it has the feeling of a séance, as the substance
coalesces slowly and, with apparently little guidance, assumes a form
and personality. The source or origin of the character the effigy
becomes during making is obscure to me, but unfailingly a character
does emerge, some remembered or yet to be encountered individual,
summoned perhaps from the ancient clothing and furniture which I
gather to generate an ambience.”
Eleanor Crook, 2014
http://eleanorcrook.com/
18
Jo de Pear
19
Jo de Pear
Be Still, 2013
Etching
Image courtesy of the Artist
Jo de Pear
Be Still is a series of etchings taken from an old medical journal.
Each of the carefully selected images were a personal response to
specific ailments affecting family and friends over a short period
of time.
Jo de Pear is a professional printmaker. She studied for her BA
at Edinburgh College of Art and her MA at Chelsea College of
Art, London. Her work can be seen in several publications on
contemporary printmakers. She has exhibited both nationally
and internationally and has a selection of prints in the collection
of the British Museum.
http://jodepear.com/
20
Steve Dilworth
21
Steve Dilworth
Dance of Death, 2007
Bronze
Photograph Steve Russel, courtesy of Gallery Pangolin
Steve Dilworth
Steve Dilworth studied at the Maidstone College of Art and
has spent the majority of his working life in the Isle of Harris; a
remote region of Scotland where he is surrounded by a sublimely
beautiful and ancient landscape. He uses a vast range of natural
materials within his work, which have mostly been found there.
Dilworth is known to have used ‘once-living’ objects in his work,
sometimes to the point of actually encasing natural objects
within his sculptures, instilling them with a mystical quality and
emphasising the importance of both interior and exterior.
Dance of Death is a bronze sculpture which Dilworth describes as
two bodies “frozen forever in a dance of death on a white bronze
moon”. The cat is over one hundred years old; a gift to Dilworth
from a museum in Vienna. Its demise was the consequence of
eating a vast quantity of rats poisoned with arsenic, which also
served as a preservative for its body, so enabling Dilworth to turn
it into a remarkable work of art.
http://stevedilworth.com/
22
Toby Duncan
Pressure falls. A pendulum pauses to return. The
imperceptible kick, between in-breath and out-breath,
as a wave lingers at the shore
and again; they contract.
Toby Duncan, 2014
23
Toby Duncan
Diastole, 2013
Earthenware clay, glazes and hand-painted enamels
Image courtesy of the Artist
Toby Duncan
Toby Duncan studied Fine Art Painting at Norwich School of
Art and Kingston University, graduating in 2001. He has since
exhibited regularly in the UK, Finland, Argentina and Spain.
His work examines our relationship with entropy, and the rich,
confused nature of our everyday perception of reality. Each piece
purposefully avoids direct representation or illusion as an attempt
to harness the viewer’s mind and ‘make’ the piece afresh each time
it is seen.
He has developed an assemblage process where pre-fired ceramic
elements are combined with raw clay before being re-fired. Each
piece is fired several times and may be cut, ground, sand-blasted,
or re-assembled into a new piece. This cyclical process allows the
work to evolve from offcuts and fragments, and also acts as a
simile for the process of ‘re-membering’ the world at the moment
of perception.
His recent pieces combine the raw, gritty, ceramic materials
of stone and mud, with delicately hand-painted enamel and
precious metal lustre.
http://tobyduncan.net/
24
Tracey Emin
Most public sculptures are a symbol of power which
I find oppressive and dark. I wanted something that
had a magic and alchemy, something which would
appear and disappear and not dominate.
Tracey Emin
25
Tracey Emin
Roman Standard, 2005
Bronze with wooden plinth
Image © OBS Gallery
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events as
inspiration for works ranging from painting, drawing, video and
installation, to photography, needlework and sculpture. Emin
reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid
and, at times, excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and
humorous.
Tracey Emin was born in London and studied at Maidstone
College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has
exhibited extensively internationally including solo and group
exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Japan, Australia and America.
In 2007 Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale,
was made a Royal Academician and was awarded an Honorary
Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, and a Doctor
of Letters from the University of Kent and Doctor of Philosophy
from London Metropolitan University.
http://traceyeminstudio.com/
26
Helen Ganly
27
Helen Ganly
Rabbit Bones, 2011
Acrylic on Glass with handwritten text
Image courtesy of the Artist
Helen Ganly
Helen Ganly graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, University
College London in 1962. She has since won numerous awards and
exhibited extensively throughout the United Kingdom and mainland
Europe, including a solo show at Modern Art Oxford in 2008, and
the 2013 group exhibition Co-Pozostaje (What Remains) in BWA
Sokól, Poland. Her insatiable curiosity regarding the fragility and
unrelenting flux of the world around her is a huge part of what
informs and inspires her work; what can be seen of it today spans
across a broad range of disciplines including painting, printmaking,
installation, and writing.
The loss of her studio in the 1998 made the destruction of much
of her work necessary, and Ganly burned her large scale pieces. This
prompted ten years of making ephemeral work, during which she
excluded colour in favour of light and shade on white. Rabbit Bones
(2011) comes from this period; it is a sensuously executed drawing
accompanied by Ganly’s handwritten account of the events that led
to her discovery of the bones. It is part of a record of events spanning
many years in which strange incidents, often witnessed by others, had
coincided with the making of new work.
28
deborah Glass
29
Deborah Glass
untitled, 2000
Watercolour on Paper
Image © OBS Gallery
deborah Glass
Deborah Glass was born and raised in North Carolina in the
United States. She studied at the Art Students’ League, New York,
before moving to London and attending St Martins College of
Art.
Depicting the figure in a range of media proved to be a life long
passion and she was known for her striking use of colour and
extensive drawing skills. This was evident in the exhibition of her
paintings Way down south where I was born in, which took place
in the Tunnel Gallery at Tonbridge School in 2011.
This painting is one of a series based on found photographs. It
won the Royal Watercolour Society’s own prize in 2000.
30
emily Glass
31
Emily Glass
Waiting, 2013
Wax and mixed media
Image courtesy of the Artist
emily Glass
“I am interested in exploring the world of in-between;
animal and human, real and imaginary, appealing and disturbing,
life and death. My ideas are often developed through the process
of making and I’m inspired by experimenting with new materials.
I create site specific installations in places that have a very
particular atmosphere and lend themselves to a multi-layered
reading of the work.
Recently I have been studying the specimen collections in the Royal
College of Surgeons and I was intrigued by the vervet monkeys.
Vervets have often been used as a model for understanding human
behaviour as they share many of the same characteristics. These
include anxiety and strangely, alcohol consumption.”
Emily Glass, 2014
Emily Glass studied Art History at Edinburgh University and
Fine Art at Middlesex University and Goldsmiths College. She is
an artist, teacher and curator.
http://emilyglass.co.uk/
32
Antony Gormley
33
Antony Gormley
Untitled, c. 1999
Steel
Image © OBS Gallery
Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures,
installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship
of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential
opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical
engagement with both his own body and those of others in a
way that confronts fundamental questions of where human being
stands in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually
tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which
new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise.
In this work the artist challenges traditional ideas of sculpture
as being composed of masses and volumes. The use of steel
dipsticks soldered together creates a sense of weightlessness and
creates interconnected spaces. The artist invites the audience to
consider the work from different views in order to discover the
relationship between purely abstract shapes and the depiction of
a human head.
http://antonygormley.com
34
Gonkar Gyatso
35
Gonkar Gyatso
Buddha@hotmail, 2006
Mixed media
Image © OBS Gallery
Gonkar Gyatso
Gonkar Gyatso was born in Lhasa, Tibet and undertook a BFA
in Traditional Chinese Painting in Beijing. Following this, he
moved to London, where he completed an MA in Fine Art at
the Chelsea College of Art. Also founder of the Sweet Tea House,
a pioneer project mainly dedicated to promote Tibetan artists
in the West, Gonkar Gyatso´s innovative and irreverent work
tackles the issues of identity, culture and mass media, and has
been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.
Buddha@hotmail playfully considers the popularisation of
Buddhism in the West. Gyatso presents the silhouette of a
Buddha made using hundreds of brightly coloured stickers from
popular culture, presenting an image that blends commercialism
with spirituality and causes his audience to consider two diverse
notions of iconography at once. As Gyatso’s previous work
has often done, Buddha@hotmail subverts stereotypical ideas
regarding Tibetan culture by combining mass media ‘noise’ with
traditional craftsmanship.
36
romily hay
37
Romily Hay
Trap, 2009
Oil on Canvas
Image courtesy of the Artist
ROMILY HAY
Romily Hay was the Artist in Residence at Tonbridge
School in 2009. She completed her BFA Fine Art at the
Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, and her MFA
at the Slade School of Art. She has exhibited in London,
Kent and New York.
I try to find and depict a singular, contained image
that marks a crossover between human form and an
aspect of nature, or machinery, or a built structure
for example. I find starting points in literature and
mythology, and in the natural world, in trees such as
the ancient bristlecone pine and the weighty baobab;
in fallen, broken or burnt trees; in woods, and the
forest floor; in gardens and dry-stone walls, fences
and railings; in rocks and rubble; and in animals.
Romily Hay
http://romilyhay.com
38
Yan Huang
67
Yan Huang
Bamboo Tattoo, 2004
Digital colour print
Image © OBS Gallery
Yan Huang
Yan Huang graduated in 1987 from Changchun Normal University
in Jilin. Currently living in Beijing, Yan is a multimedia artist
particularly known for his series of landscape on body works. He has
exhibited regularly since the early 90s in Asia, America and Europe.
Although the face presented in Bamboo Tattoo was delicately painted
by the wife of the artist, Yan dislocates the idea of authorship by a
declaration that it is the photographic print which is the work of art.
He does this in order to critique the commodification of art, as well
as emphasise the power of the symbol over the object.
The landscape itself comes to symbolize ancient and
the intellectual values of the erudite class. Painting
these landscapes on his body or on objects of modern
culture then becomes an avant-garde revisionist
exercise of rebirthing a traditional art form in a modern
context. By choosing to have the painted landscapes
on human skin or commonplace objects he marries the
elite symbolism associated with landscape juxtaposed
against mediums of the working class.
Charlie Schultz, White Hot Magazine, March 2007
68
Virgile Ittah & Hitomi Kai Yoda
39
Virgile Ittah & Hitomi Kai Yoda
Daniel, 2013
Giclée print on Baritha paper
Image courtesy of the Artists
Virgile Ittah &
Hitomi Kai Yoda
“The series ‘Daniel’ is a meditation on the nature of power
and control, playing with various levels of clarity in relation to the
image and the viewer. We created installations and photographed
them with a large format camera and expired 10x8” Polaroid
instant film. The images became like infinite deserts surrounded
by water and played with the notion of representation by the
continual suggestion of human presence.
These portraits respond to each other in a dreamlike atmosphere,
whilst the watery landscape suggests a constant flux between
presence and absence, questioning whether it is ever possible
to reach a common ground. The process of damage and error
is saturated through the use of expired polaroids; in not having
the total control over the final outcome, each image becomes a
unique piece and finds its own life.”
Virgile Ittah & Hitomi Kai Yoda, 2014
Virgile Ittah and Hitomi Kai Yoda are recent graduates of the
Royal College of Art, whose collaborative work addresses issues
related to hybrid identities through moments of physical and
psychological shifts.
http://ittah.fr/
http://hitomiyoda.com/
40
Patrice Moor
This is a space where a spirit has dwelt. The skull is silent
but a story has been lived inside, one that will remain a
mystery to the viewer...
Patrice has reflected all her life on the subject of death, and
more recently she has had in mind the spiritual discipline,
common to many traditions, of studying a skull as a
reminder of one’s own mortality. Some Buddhists take this
further and meditate on the decomposition of their own
bodies, picturing the decay of the corpse, the cleanness of
the bones and finally their disintegration into dust. Patrice
has arrested this process at the point where the skull in all
its stillness and beauty is an object of contemplation.
41
Patrice Moor
Tête de Mort, 2010-11
252 paintings, Oil on Canvas
Image courtesy of the Artist
Marjorie Brown, 2011
Patrice Moor
The practice of Patrice Moor habitually encompasses an
engagement with life and death, particularly the cycle of life,
visualised overtly through the recurring motif of the human skull,
which she has spent the past four years investigating in paint,
and implicitly through her latest investigations of the natural life
cycle of plants for a residency at the Royal College of Physicians.
Her working process is organic and unplanned, with no definite
preconceived idea in place prior to beginning. It is a process
reliant on feeling and intuition that develops over time. From
immersion in the process an artistic path emerges. Typically
the focus is close, with attention to the tiny details of an object,
whether a skull, plant or human foot, or, as in Tête de Mort, a large
ensemble of 252 small paintings of the same skull, an attempt is
made to draw nearer to an object through repeated observation
over time.
http://patricemoor.co.uk
42
Henry Moore
43
Henry Moore
Family Group, 1950
Lithograph
Image © OBS Gallery
Henry Moore
As far as my own experience is concerned, I sometimes
begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with
only the desire to use pencil on paper, and make lines, tones,
and shapes with no conscious aim; but as my mind takes
in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea
becomes conscious and crystallizes, and then a control and
ordering begin to take place.
Henry Moore, The Sculptor Speaks, 1937
Henry Moore was a sculptor in stone, wood, plaster and bronze
and also a draughtsman. Non-western art was a majour influence
on his early work and he has said that his visits to the ethnographic
collections of the British Museum were more important than
his academic study. Later, artists such as Picasso, Bancusi and
Giacometti became influences.
He returned again and again to the motif of the mother and child,
in both sculpture and drawing. This lithograph shows a clear
connection between both these ways of thinking, as the interior
contour lines of the figures create a sense of mass and volume.
http://henry-moore.org/
44
Sidney Nolan
45
Sidney Nolan
Untitled, (from the Ned Kelly Suite) c. 1950
Pen on Paper
Image © OBS Gallery
Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan was an Australian painter best known for his series
of works depicting the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. He was
influenced by the ‘primitive’ style of the French painter Henri
Rousseau and admired his strikingly naïve execution. He told the
writer Colin MacInnes that the main ingredients of the Kelly
series were: “Kelly’s own words, and Rousseau, and sunlight”1.
This also reveals the importance of the Australian landscape upon
his work.
In 1880 in a battle with the police, Ned Kelly dressed in a
home-made plate metal armour and a helmet, which gave him
a terrifying appearance. In this sketch we can see the outlines of
this armour and Nolan’s trademark depiction of the helmet as a
box with a tiny slit for the eye holes. Rather than being literal
illustrations of the life of Ned Kelly, Nolan’s work was more of a
reflection on the world of violence that had taken place during
the Second World War.
1
Kenneth Clark et al, Sidney Nolan, Thames and Hudson, London, 1961, p 30
http://sidneynolantrust.org
46
Chris Ofili
47
Chris Ofili
Celestial, 1998
Screenprint with fluorescent ink
Image © OBS Gallery
Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili is an English painter currently living and working in
Trinidad. He is internationally renowned for his huge, richly coloured
and emotionally loaded paintings and his work is exhibited in
permanent collections around the world. In 1998 he won the Turner
Prize for No Woman No Cry, a stirring portrait of the grieving mother
of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Ofili’s first prints were published in 1996 and were a significant
contrast to his larger paintings. They stripped the sensitive and
lyrical nature of his oeuvre down to its bare bones, revealing
abstracted impressions of European cities in meticulously worked
and deliberately Afrocentric patterns. Made two years later, Celestial
is a strikingly beautiful exploration of the use of fluorescent ink. The
same attention to detail runs through this work and the pattern exists
as much more than a backdrop; its aesthetic and cultural importance
emphasised as it is made one with the gloriously sanguine woman
looking proudly outwards from the foreground.
http://.victoria-miro.com/artists/_6/
48
Cornelia Parker
49
Cornelia Parker
Bullet Drawing, 2009
Lead from a bullet drawn into wire
Image courtesy of Frith Street Gallery
Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Parker graduated from Wolverhampton Polytechnic in
1978 and undertook her MFA at Reading University. She is an
internationally recognised artist who was nominated for the Turner
Prize in 1997, elected to the Royal Academy in 2009 and made the
subject of an episode of the BBC’s recent documentary series What
Do Artists Do All Day? She works in a variety of mediums and is best
known for large, site-specific works in which she explores, destroys,
resurrects and metamorphoses objects that have long since outgrown
their use-value, or which she has herself made redundant.
When Parker began to produce her Bullet Drawings, she was making
a clear and playful reference to early Minimalism. These bullets, once
so unsettling and laden with stigma, have been unreservedly stripped
of their authoritative power, dragged out to their material limit and
forced along a new trajectory: winding and bending in a way so
utterly contrary to their nature. The fragile grid of the 2009 Bullet
Drawing shown here is trapped between two layers of glass; arrested
for a silent contemplation.
http://frithstreetgallery.com/artists/bio/cornelia_parker
50
Thomas Parkhouse
51
Thomas Parkhouse
A complete failure of the electrical impulses which keep the heart
beating (detail of shirt), 2013. Ceramics & the artists’ shoes.
Image courtesy of the Artist
Thomas Parkhouse
A complete failure of the electrical impulses which keep the heart
beating (detail of insoles), 2013. Ceramics & the artists’ shoes.
Image courtesy of the Artist
Thomas Parkhouse
We cannot help but leave traces of our presence on any
space that we occupy, or object that we interact with. I
am intrigued by the materials that are marked with this
kind of poetic history, such as shoes that bear the scars of
their wearer or a plaster stained by bodily fluid; both have
become an extension of the body. I wish to make manifest
these unconscious deposits – stains, tears, scratches,
creases – and explore the human experience at a corporeal
and intimate level.
Thomas Parkhouse, 2014
Thomas Parkhouse was a student at Tonbridge School from 2008 until
2013, and is currently at Oxford Brookes completing an Art Foundation
Diploma. He is applying to read Fine Art.
The objects which he has cast in clay are those designed to be worn on,
or with, the body. They are also objects that he himself has worn or used
and are consequently marked with his own residue, formed over a period
of time. He has aimed to capture and solidify this process by casting
the unstable materials of leather, cloth and adhesive bandage into fixed
ceramic. With their initial function torn from them; it is instead their
history that becomes the ‘function’ of the work - a ‘passport’ for their
wearer, manifest in the folds and cracks that have been shaped over time.
52
Major Percy Powell- Cotton
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Major Percy Cotton-Powell
Skins drying, Giraffes 24B & 250
Taken beteen 1902 and 1903
Major Percy Cotton-Powell
Tusks of Elephants 141 & 142 at my house Zuga, West of Lake Albert
© The Trustees of the Powell-Cotton Museum, Quex House and Gardens.
© The Trustees of the Powell-Cotton Museum, Quex House and Gardens.
Taken on 8 June 1905
Major Powell- Cotton
These photographs were taken by Major Percy Powell-Cotton
during his expeditions in Africa from 1899 to 1939. He
conducted his expeditions in order to collect the skeletons and
skins of exotic animals which he then took back to England to
be mounted by the taxidermist Roland Ward. He also collected
cultural artefacts.
Major Powell-Cotton has been described as the epitome of a
Victorian collector. When his collection became too large to hang
as trophies on his walls he built a gallery to house it. He had
extraordinary dioramas created so that visitors could visualize the
wild animals in their natural habitats. Visitors can still see these
at Quex House, near Margate.
He documented his expeditions with diaries, journals,
photography and film. As his collection expanded, he became
more scientific in his approach and believed he was creating his
collection for scientific research.
http://www.quexpark.co.uk/museum/
54
Valentine Schmidt
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Valentine Schmidt
Elevate (Jack), 2004
C-type Print
Image courtesy of the Artist
Valentine Schmidt
Following a career in music, Valentine Schmidt completed
an MA Photography from the London College of Printing in
2002. A major early theme was a fascination with water in all
its different manifestations, particularly the ambivalent and often
challenging relationship people sometimes have with it: most
evidently illustrated in her portraits of Finnish ice-dippers and
those of female prisoners and prison swimming pools.
In the series Elevate, child divers stand on the end of Crystal
Palace’s highest diving board with the expanse of the sports
center as their backdrop. The high board - normally forbidden
- is the ambition of most young divers; during this first visit,
however, the boys look nervous and exposed. Elevate explores this
combination of aspiration and vulnerability.
http://valentineschmidt.com/
56
Sally Spinks
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Sally Spinks
Random Acts of Kindness, 2009
Wool on card
Image © OBS Gallery
Sally Spinks
In an age where the cult of narcissism is more prevalent than ever
before, Sally Spinks became intrigued by the notion of strangers
doing good deeds for others without the expectation of a reward.
She has produced three series of works called Random Acts of
Kindness - the works presented in this exhibition are from the
first in the series.
Sally Spinks makes work that is predominantly textiles-based,
and explores the changing nature of class and commercialism.
She completed her MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of
London in 2008 and continues to exhibit in the UK and the US.
http://sallyspinks.co.uk/
58
Norihiro Usui
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Norihiro Usui
Ex-friend, 2012
Mixed media
Image © OBS Gallery
Norihiro Usui
Norihiro Usui is a painter based in London. After studying
Fine Art in Japan, he continued to study Painting and
Sculpture at Central Saint Martins, London.
Many of his works use the cherry blossom flower as a motif.
It is a reference to his Japanese heritage and a symbol of life’s
fragility and transcience.
Ex-friend is a synthesis of the passion and joy of life contrasting
with its inevitable counterpart, the familiar and tragic fate of
death. The vanitas, an important concept in the history of art
and widely represented in European Baroque painting, is here
vigorously reactualized. Norihiro Usui blends the beauty of
cherry blossoms with the reminders of mortality.
http://norihirousui.tumblr.com/
60
Lee Wagstaff
61
Lee Wagstaff
I Baptism (from the Baptism series), 2002
Lithograph
Image courtesy of the Artist
Lee Wagstaff
Lee Wagstaff creates performative self-portraits which pursue Lee an
alliance between faith, space, geometry and anatomy. He has studied
printmaking and sculpture since 1987, and completed his MA at the Royal
College of Art in 2000. His work draws upon complimentary processes
from photography and drawing to tattooing and yoga
He has spent five years in collaboration with tattoo artist Barry Hogarth,
acquiring a full body suit of tattoos with designs based on cross-cultural
geometrical symbols; taking particular religious influence from his
Catholic-Baptist upbringing and Indian heritage.
I use my body as an arena for investigation,
experimentation and exhibition; a means of
supplication and contemplation. Through repetitive
technical processes and abductive reasoning I seek
a deeper understanding of my faith and scripture by
exploring an aesthetics of theology as part of my own
Christian journey.
Lee Wagstaff
http://leewagstaff.com/
62
Wayne Warren
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Wayne Warren
Ship of Fools (detail), 2013
Mixed media
Image courtesy of the Artist
Wayne Warren
“Ship of Fools is a group of singular human beings in various
shapes, sizes and colours travelling through life. Derived from
Medieval images, Ship of Fools is a potent reminder of the hazardous,
often futile and frustrating route mankind steers for himself.”
Wayne Warren, 2014
Wayne Warren is a contemporary British artist and collector. He was
educated at Exeter University and has exhibited across the globe.
Warren is a passionate collector. His studio
has been described as hung salon-style with
paintings and objects rubbing shoulders
indiscriminately. One might even describe it
as a contemporary version of the 16th century
Wunderkammar, those room-sized collections
of exotic objects whose categorical boundaries
had yet to be defined.
Gina Fairley, The Vernacular of Display, 2013
64
Bronwyn Waugh
65
Bronwyn Waugh
Bath Time, 2013
Digital colour print
Image courtesy of the Artist
Bronwyn Waugh
“As a child I would listen to my grandfather talking about
his childhood and the war, and would exchange ghost stories with
my cousins at the end of the garden. I loved gruesome tales about
saints, and the way these were told through religious paintings
and relics. The spookiness attracted me, while the blind faith
repelled and fascinated me at the same time. My work in recent
years reflects my interest in darker themes which might stem
from these early experiences. I like working with dark and light to
emphasise shape and pattern while creating a mood of ambiguity.
I am not concerned with sharp focus, more a hazy recording.
Since having children I have become more prolific in taking
photographs to record fleeting moments. I often set up a
staged situation and let my children play within this scenario,
recording them while being constantly aware of light, gesture and
composition. This love of childhood is common enough but I
think my work also reflects my interest in the darker side of our
nature. The muted tones of this picture create a sinister image
but in reality my daughter is listening to the sound of the water.”
Bronwyn Waugh, 2014
Bronwyn Waugh studied Fine Art at Auckland University, New
Zealand and teaches in the Art Department at Tonbridge School.
66
Tim Zercie
49
WARATAH BLOSSOMS
Seven are the veils of the dancing girl
in the harem of It.
Seven are the names
and seven are the lamps beside Her bed.
Seven eunuchs guard Her with drawn sword;
No man may come nigh unto Her.
In Her wine-cup are seven streams of blood
of the Seven Spirits of God.
Seven are the heads of The Beast whereon She rideth.
The head of an Angel: the head of a Saint:
the head of a Poet: the head of an Adulterous woman:
the head of a Man of Valour: the head of a Satyr:
and the head of a Lion-Serpent.
Seven letters hath Her holiest name; and it is
BABALON
This is the Seal upon the Ring that is on the ForeFinger or IT: and it is the Seal upon the Tombs of
them whom She hath slain.
Here is Wisdom. Let Him that hath Understanding
count the Number of Our Lady; for it is the
Number of a Woman; and Her Number is
An Hundred and Fifty and Six
Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies, p108
69
Tim Zercie
Seven Letters Hath Her Holiest name and it is BABALON (detail), 2013
Acrylic, oil, spray-paint, lacquer, salt, fabric & glitter on canvas
Image courtesy of the Artist
Tim Zercie
“I find inspiration in varied esoteric, mystical and
religious sources, such as Kabbalah, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism,
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, alchemy, Tarot, and
Enochian & Thelemic magick. These texts contain many symbols
that are deeply associated with rituals to help one connect with
the Higher Supreme Being. Within this investigation I interpret
this literature and symbols into physical entities, conjuring out
deities, angels or demons from a personal realm into the work,
whether it be, painting, drawing, performance or installation.
During the time I was painting this piece, I was reading Aleister
Crowley’s Book of Lies, in the studio. After completing the
painting, I resolved to title it after one of the the poems.”
Tim Zercie
Tim Zercie completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of
Art in 2013. He has exhibited in the USA and the UK, and is a
Visiting Artist & Lecturer at Wimbledon College of Art, London
http://timzercie.com
70
Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta
12:10 to 12:35
Puna caparaṃ, bhikkhave, bhikkhu seyyathāpi
passeyya sarīraṃ sivathikāya chaḍḍitaṃ
ekāhamataṃ vā dvīhamataṃ vā tīhamataṃ vā
uddhumātakaṃ vinīlakaṃ vipubbakajātaṃ. So
imameva kāyaṃ upasaṃharati: ‘ayaṃ pi kho
kāyo evaṃdhammo evaṃbhāvī evaṃanatīto’ ti.
Again, monks, a monk, when he sees a dead body
that has been thrown in a charnel-ground, dead
for one, two or three days, swollen, blue and festering, regarding his own body considers thus:
“Indeed, this body is of the same nature, it will
become like that and cannot escape it.”
71
Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta
“This text is from one of the most important and widely
recited Buddhist sutras, the title of which translates as Sutra on
the Four Ways of Establishing Mindfulness. Dating from around
the 3rd Century BCE, it is still learned by heart by Buddhists
in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma. Whilst secular mindfulness
is becoming increasingly popular in the West as a mental health
training, Buddhist mindfulness has a different ambition: nirvana.
Buddhists define nirvana as the ultimate liberation from greed,
hatred and delusion. To do this requires a complete unbinding
from the “I, me, my” construct which roots us in selfishness
by unashamedly confronting the inescapably perishable nature
of our own flesh. In this section of the sutra, a monk brings to
mind everything which makes up our body, reflecting on its
impermanence. He then considers, stage by stage, how the body
decomposes after death. Such reflections help release a monk
from more trivial, selfish concerns.”
Richard Burnett, 2014
72
I would like to thank the following people,
without whom tis exhibition would not have been possible.
Tara Benjamin-Morgan
Ignacio Casado
Georgina Ferns
Nicola Masters
Wayne Warren
Jonathan Wright
Catalogue design by Tara Benjamin-Morgan
Printed by Tonbridge School Reprographics Department
© OBS Gallery 2014