SUNDAY, 28 AUGUST 2016
Happily, given that the deadline is fast approaching the hot weather has speeded up the drying of my surfaces (at least to a workable dry) and I have been able to work on this piece a bit more. Some of the surface is still wet so there is a waiting game until I can see the working sheen. May the good weather return, it is a bit wet today….
I am making a new work for a private show I have been invited to put on in an unusual venue. Situated by the river near Fulham Palace I am making one new piece which is site specific to the residential block where the whole show will take place. The start…
then adjusted by adding some high gloss media to create more sheen and an area where something has disappeared into the depths
The piece relates to the idea of the Thames as a repository of our history; a grand Lethe running through our centre sweeping things away, sometimes revealing them to others years later. Lost passions sometimes rediscovered, embedded in it is the notion of transience and mortality.
This is a work in progress, and I have to get a move on to ensure its not too wet for the opening…. eek. So I am busy putting together the show, the statement and the price lists. Getting some additional lighting….
SUGAR AND SPICE AND SOUTHERN LIGHT SHIFTING INTO NORTHERN VASTENESS
SUNDAY, 21 AUGUST 2016
All the work is delivered and hung and ready to view at Sugar and Spice. come along and meet the artists on Tuesday 6-8pm.
In the rural south at night, when the sun went down there was something so gorgeous and velvety about the truely dark night, where the newly cropped fields were black washed with yellow and the forest retained the tinest hint of green until it all becomes a solid black and only the stars shone… or sometimes the windows….
While in Cahors a glipse of a locked up instrument in the same courtyard where there was a beautiful Steinway out in the open being practiced on, reminded me of William Henry’s stringless instruments in the last Plastic Propaganda show: Music locked away.
And on my return up through France I was struck not only by the changing landscapes as we moved North, but also the changing lightscape. I commented last year about the blue on the distant horizon reminiscent of Leonardo landscapes in the background of his portraits. As you move north the colour scene is much more familiar to a southern English person, the blues less intense, the shadows softer, the edge of the horizon closer to black than blue, although the vaste flatness of the Loire is something else to behold. Fields and fields of crops in swathes of colour across flatness, so that even though there is a sense of just how enormous it is, the sky takes up most of your field of vision. It reminded me of Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” in MOMA.
Anyway I have been tweeting like crazy and spending far too much time online and it is still the school holidays, so along with some paper work I need to do, I also need to prioritise my children and some more holiday fun and a bit of painting squeezed in.
I also became facinated with all the apertures in the medieval buildings, and what were they for, but I’ll write about that another time.
The marketprices in France show the effect of inflation, as despite the fantastic growing season Euro prices were up from last year. Even normal market prices compared with Borough rather than normal UK street markets. Today I discovered the bargains to be had at Borough Market at the end of the day, and so we made fig jam. Lots of sugar and spice! Enough for 4 jars of jam and only £4.
SUGAR AND SPICE WWW.PLASTICPROPAGANDA.CO.UK, @PLASTICP1, @PLASTICPROPAGANDA, @STKATS @WAPPINGLONDON @CITYOFLONDON
THURSDAY, 18 AUGUST 2016
Yesterday the sun shine was on my side as I added the last coat of paint to my plinth for Mr Equines scales, so now just a last check of the transparencies and it is ready, along with two paintings to wrap to make it along for the Saturday hanging.
Mr Equiano’s Scales
repurposed objects,gold leaf, transparencies
2016
I am really excited to be showing in this exhibition which deals with our relationships to commodities and trade, I have had some sneak previews of other works on show which look fantastic.
Last of the 10
oil and indigo on canvas
100x100cm
2016
My work is concerned with the hidden and exposed narratives of slavery and how they were bound up with progressive changes in our society and some late developments in the British legal system related to abolition. They ask questions about whose stories get heard in culture and historical dialogues…. How at times artists have preserved stories: Turner and his depiction of the Zong massacre….
Resistance
oil and indigo on canvas
100x100cm
2016
and how stories are sometimes lost.
An artist concerned with human inter-connectedness, and the interplay between the personal and the universal as expressed though the material of pigment. Artist’s Statement I start with the way in which pigments leave material colour across human history and geography leaving traces of our interactions. The projects chosen have resonance with the now. The form of the work is abstract spaces to fall into. I make oil paints by hand from the relevant pigments. Each collection has an historic or geographic specificity: I have visited the 20,000 year old cave paintings in Pech Merle and learned about the material traceability of ochres and that a prehistoric artist might have travelled long distances: Researching the British Library archive I found the historical spread of cobalt based glass and glazes through archaeological finds, which illustrated the expanse of cultural exchange during classical and pre-classical times. Researching the pigments listed in the Bristol Library’s Presentiment Papers (1770Jan-June), I found evidence of transatlantic indigo just like St Katharine’s (see below) , but also of madder, ochre and verdigris in a little pocket of peaceful trade between the European wars. I looked through The Admiralty papers at the National Archive, to find pigments in ships captured by privateers during the Anglo Dutch Wars. Inspired by Turner’s Slave ship I have researched the pigments imported into St Katharine docks at the time of the abolitionist movement, and found indigo, a slave trade product, making it a colour of exploitation as well as beauty: I have looked at the evidence of Turner’s palette at the Tate, for the new pigments, at the turning point from a predominantly Colonial and alchemical to an industrial and scientifically based society. Always looking in these points of change for relevant echoes of our current flux. The form my work takes is abstract spaces, spaces to fall into to get lost and to remember. I owe a debt to twentieth Century artists for the freedom to play in these colour fields, to Rothko and Frankenthaler, to Kandinsky, to Sonia Delaunay and breakthroughs with colour as substance. But also to the unnamed Church painters of the Middle ages for whom pigments had their own symbolism. Technically the medieval dislike of palette mixing, which was a question of material interference, echoed for me in retaining the integrity of a pigment for the story which it holds. And to the developments of oil painting by the Northern Renaissance artists and into the Southern Renaissance, and the technical traditions of glazing which allow me to layer and lends me understanding of paint as a suspension of pigments which can be layered like strata. My understanding and expression come through the exploration of these colour traces of our thought and history and the way in which the material holds its own story. That we must remember our human story, how we got here, how this society came into being and what the costs were is a given. There is a sense in which these colours hold more than the formal record, they hold nuance and space for connection, for potential and extant symbolism and for the stories never told. Coming Up Summer Exhibition at Silson Contemporary, Harlow Oval, Harrogate June to August 2021 The Affordable Art Fair with the Kahn Gallery, Battersea, London 7-11th July 2021 Mixed Exhibition at The Kahn Gallery, London July 2021 Three person show at Irving Contemporary, Essex Street, Oxford, 10 July- 7 August 2021 Solo Exhibition of work at Vintners Place, for selected by Eleni Polycarpou for exhibition at Vintners Place, viewing by appointment. May-November 2021 Earlier in 2021 Letters From a Strange Year Pop up 1, the first real world pop up the artist project at Vout Vintage ,95 Colombia Road, London E2, 26-29 April. 2021 Sarah Needham Solo, curated by June Frickleton, a solo exhibition at 1,Tower View, Kings Hill, Kent, and a group show at the Control Tower Gallery, Kings Hill, Kent. Viewing currently by appointment only. Feb10 - May 2021 Online Letters From a Strange Year, joint artist project with Paul Anderson Morrow launching on line with an e-salon on Thursday Jan 21 at 7pm, and a virtual exhibition exhibition, real world exhibitions and venues with dates to be announceddates to be announced 2020 The Other Art Fair, The Truman Brewery, London October 8-11 2020- Cancelled Autumn Show, Silson Contemporary Art Gallery, Harrogate, October-Jan 2021 Water | Land, Irving Contemporary Art, Oxford, November15 Nov20 -Jan21 Artist Walks, 4a Sutton Road, N10 1HE, 14Nov-14Dec20, community Art Project responding to the lockdown exhibiting in domestic windows across North London. Summer Show, Gallery Artists, Silson Contemporary Art Gallery Summer show August-September 2020Unframed Highgate Contemporary Unframed online show May 2020 V-Art.Show Online open studios April/May /June editions 2020 Art on a Postcard with Highgate Contemporary Art in aid of Feed NHS sold out April 2020 The Other Art Fair Online Studios, on Saatchi online April to October2020 Beyond Other Horizons: Contemporary paintings made in Britain and Romania, Iasi Palace of Culture, Iasi Romania. 1st- 31st March 2020. The exhibition will open on 3rd March 2020 with a British Council Symposium. Funded by the British Council, curated by Anna McNay, Peter Harrap and Florin Ungurianu closed early due to CV then extended to April Mid-Winter Show, Silson Contemporary Art Gallery, Harrogate, Yorkshire, Mid Jan-April 2020 Moved online Many of the planned shows and fairs were delayed postponed or as in the below cancelled due to Corona Virus Affordable Art Fair New York with Kahn Gallery, Spring: Cancelled 2020 The Other Art fair London, postponed to October 2020 and again to June 2021 Late 2019 Makers and Craftsmen Project, curated interior by Bergman and Mar, Chiswick to winter 20 Kahn Gallery at the Affordable Art Fair, Hamburg 14-17 November 2019 Luminaire Arts Gallery, Beyond Abstracts, 7 Denbigh St London SW1V 2HF Nov-Dec 2019 Recent Competitions and Juried Shows 2019 Makers and Craftsmen, Curated by Bergman and Mar, 2018 The Black Swan Open selected by Johnny Messum, of Messums Wiltshire, Michael Eaves of Glastonbury Festival, Steve Burden Artist, Debbie Hilliyard of Hauser and Wirth, Sue Conrad Artist 2018 Long listed for the Secret Art Prize selected by gallerist Eleni Duke 2017 Creekside Open- selected by Jordan Baseman senior tutor at The Royal college of Art Representation: Galleries Thomas Spencer Fine Art, London and Dorset UK Highgate Contemporary Art Gallery, Highgate High Street, London, N6 The Kahn Gallery, London exhibits globally at The Affordable Art Fair Luminaire Arts Gallery, Vauxhall, London SW1V 2HF Silson Contemporary Art Gallery, Harrogate Yorks Irving Contemporary, Oxford Online Sales Platforms with Art Agencies Saatchiart EPORTA Artling Artists Agents Cramer and Bell, London, UK Luminaire Arts, London, UK Artistic Brief, London, UK The Art Register London Frickleton Fine Art DAC Art Consulting, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Artling, Singapore Artful London UK Collections: Held in private collections in the UK, Switzerland, France, Australia, USA, the Middle East and Japan Education Graduated with a degree in Fine Art and Education from Hatfield Polytechnic 1989, a Masters Degree in Development Studies from South Bank University1994 and studied traditional Chinese Sumi-e ink painting under Prof Ding in Jiangxi China 2015-7
