Tag: exhibition

Ponderings on Patience and Perfection… plus a little more

angela findlayLeave a comment

It only dawned on me what I have been doing for the past year on the final night of our exhibition and festival, Dialogues with the Severn. As we closed three days of art, talks, music and poetry, I realised that the whole process had, for me, been one long love song to the River Severn.

You may recall my 27-year history with the river from previous blogs about the Severn or its mud. These past months have seen me re-engage with it with renewed intensity in order to make new works based on the essence of my current relationship with it: as a silver sliver that can be seen from my garden or bathroom while brushing my teeth.

Severn’s Silver Sliver

Though more long distance than it once was, my heart still beats in rhythm to its tides and responds to the peace I experience when I visit its banks and enter the ballroom of its eternal elemental dance. 

It is a space that exists both within and without. The huge sky, sunlit water or moody mud reflect spaces I seek when I want to retreat from the world. This Philip Gross poem captures what I experience better than anything I myself could write. 

Dialogues with the Severn wasn’t perfect. But with 17 contributors donating their time, work, hearts and engagement with the river with such generosity, this was not the occasion to be looking too closely at what was wrong with it or our rivers or the wider world. This was the time to celebrate the things that are so much bigger than all of us. The things that will ultimately triumph while we humans busy ourselves finding new ways to destroy the natural order of pretty much everything.

Some of Dialogues with the Severn contributors

Last night, I camped in Romany Rouge – my camper van – in one of my favourite spots on the banks. Once a little-known destination at the end of a long grassy avenue, the solitude and peace are now rapidly disappearing in a building frenzy of patios, fences and climbing frames by the new owner of the original 17th century passage house. Flocks of birdsong compete with the sound of planes, cars and trains making their way on the other side.

So, just like our event, this place is also not perfect. And yet, in the space of just 12 hours… I was immersed in the pinkening light and darkening silhouettes of a sunset and sunrise, a full moonrise and set, plus two large in-coming tides.

This morning was a lesson in patience.

The stillness of the low tide held tight, perfectly mirroring the far shore. I thought I heard the incoming tide seeping through the mud. A discernible breeze, a flurry of seagulls, the blurring of crisp reflections and water that appeared to flow in both directions. But the bore is a deceptive trickster, for it was a false alarm. The slack tide would endure many more chimes of the church clock.

Dew-damp grass seeped through my shoes. Summer has most definitely passed. I begin to doubt the tide will come up this far.

Then I remembered my first encounter with the rewards of patience.

Back in the late eighties, an art tutor had taken my class to Ravenna to see the oldest blue and gold mosaics in the Byzantine Mausoleo di Galla Placidia by the Basilica di San Vitale. There was a February freeze, but inside the ancient church it was even colder. The tutor told us to look and wait; to override the shivers and barriers of boredom, irritation and impatience. It would be worth it.

Everybody left after five minutes, preferring cappuccino and panini to catching their deaths. Untypically for me, a notoriously disobedient pupil at school, I remained. I trusted this tutor, so I battled through the desires to bolt and stared at the stars set in the cobalt dome.

And then, all of a sudden, they began to sparkle. I hadn’t seen stars twinkle so avidly since I first tried magic mushrooms. But here it was more magical.

The same happened in front of a Rembrandt self-portrait at the National Gallery. Basically a brown painting with a pinkish face of an old man. I placed myself in front of it and waited… and waited… and then it too came alive. Or rather he came alive.

The translucency of meticulously applied layers of red, ochre, sienna and umber began to breathe and with it the elderly artist himself. His inner reflectiveness and the self-doubt of his later years became tangible. His eyes met me somewhere deep inside. From brown painting to masterpiece…

I taught this practice to my students in prison. To look at a still life intently until it became just shapes and shadows and light. I remember one young man, a heroin addict on treatment, struggling to comprehend what I meant. The analytical left brain is impatient to name and reluctant to let go of what it knows. But suddenly it surrendered and he saw it.

‘Woah,‘ he said, ‘this is better than a fix!’ And it is. I agree, not that I’ve ever had heroin. It is like seeing the world in all its connectivity and aliveness.

It is half an hour before the high tide’s due-time further downstream and I am cold and struggling with doubts. Maybe it won’t come up this far? Keen to warm up, I begin to walk downstream to meet it.

And there it was, the sea, without its usual white heralds or swell to announce its arrival. Only the undoubtable movement of water flowing in the wrong direction, making its way to Gloucester rather than Bristol.

I turn and accompany it, by now a fast-walking bride trailing a long lace veil in her wake, sweeping away the pristine reflections as if they were chalk drawings on a pavement.

A lone heron waits out its patch on the mud. A flock of gulls swoop down to feast on rich pickings and hitch a free ride upstream. Little ripples break away from the main thrust north to nibble and gobble up the flats, the mud gently snap, crackle and popping like cornflakes in a fresh covering of milk. A new urgency and determination pushes the growing body of water forward as if it knows it is late.

When the water reaches a low vertical cliff of mud, it crashes against it as if with a battering ram, then furiously licks it like an ice cream to wear down its defences. The heron now stands up to its knees, the shortest reeds up to their necks.

With still a lot of ground to cover, the tide becomes a ruthless army of unstoppable might. Violent, unpredictable and almost certainly lethal. The roar of lapping waves drowns out any notion of cars, planes or trains. Even the church bells have become muffled time.

The speed causes feeding frenzies of whirlpools and currents as the river battles against the sea, tumbling and stumbling in a wrestle that it can only lose.

It sends a shudder of fear…

And still the massive body of water keeps coming.

My soggy feet reap the dividends of my patience as I let out the long breath held in my chest. Finally the water is slowing down… slack tide will set in. And then the fully-mingled salty sea and freshwater river will begin their harmonious journey south, only to repeat the cycle this evening… and tomorrow… and forever…

That’s the perfection of this place. It connects you to the enormity of what cannot be destroyed by silly little us.

Right, breakfast.

Rock, Paper, Scissors and AI

angela findlay6 Comments

Last week I met a man who is drafting a book along the same themes as mine. He too has German roots and his is a remarkable story that I hope will one day be published. We discussed the fascinating process of researching historical content, and the more arduous one of finding an agent or publisher. In my case, both involved huge quantities of time, trawling through books, websites and the brick-like tome that is the handbook for writers. For him, information and guidance were more at his fingertips in the form of AI. The difference got me thinking. 

Part of me feels glad to have completed In My Grandfather’s Shadow before the tools of Chat GPT or Open AI became widely available, or indeed unavoidable in the case of search engines. The temptation to constantly tweak my own imperfect writing voice according to the suggestions of an entity that has absorbed millions of other people’s work – including my own by now – might have been irresistible. But how much time I would have saved. And online searches might have discovered my grandfather’s movements on the Italian front, all records of which at the time lay buried in the silence of Italy’s complex and unresolved history of collaboration and resistance. 

There is no doubt AI is unbelievably brilliant and useful in many areas. I am not anti-AI per se. But when it comes to making art, I worry about the loss of essential skills and faculties to a desire for ease and instant answers. What happens when colours and shapes are made by the same keyboard clicks that generate words, mathematical equations, spreadsheets, drone attacks or hacks? Of course, great art will come out it. Artists have always embraced modern technologies and fashioned them to express their own visions. David Hockney’s iPad works spring to mind. But how many of our multi-sensory human skills – coordination, balance, weight, instinctive rightness – might we lose?

While AI chatbots are becoming terrifyingly advanced, Grayson Perry’s insightful 2-parter on Channel 4 – Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future – reveals how physical robots are still lagging in emulating the complexities of simple actions we take for granted – like making a cup of tea. So much is involved to get brain and body to work together. When painting was part of my main profession, I revelled in the mixing of colours. Hands squeezed tubes, rinsed brushes, and spread paint onto canvas like buttering bread. Taste buds sprang into action, the tongue searching like a cook for the missing flavour… a little more darkness, a bit more warmth, maturity, or contrast. Colours needed to ‘sing’ particular harmonies or discords. The eye would journey over a terrain of textures while the nose inhaled the same oily odours of centuries of masters gone by. 

Maybe I am nostalgic. That could well be. Equally possible is that I am frustrated that though I have an all-singing iPad, I have not mastered the brilliant tools of Canva, Procreate or iMovie. Instead, I sit in my studio with scissors, glue, sticky fingers, and paper images strewn across the floor. I assemble and reassemble in contortions that resemble games of Twister. I destroy, lose and abandon works… often wishing there was a Command Z key I could tap to undo the error that led to ruination and the bin. 

I have no wish to be a fuddy-duddy doom monger like those who thought our heads would blow off when the motor car was introduced, or who mourned the loss of letters when the telephone was created… though there is loss as well as gain involved in both inventions. But my forthcoming exhibition CONVERSATIONS ACROSS TIME is distinctly handmade. And like IN PROCESS last autumn, it is experiential, small and intimate. 

Part of Stroud’s brilliant annual SITE Festival, it continues to tell the story of my intrepid great-great-aunt, Joan Margaret Legge, while exploring, in a variety of media, intergenerational relationships and the legacies of those who have gone before us.

I invite you to physically immerse yourself in The Vaults in Stroud Cemetery, or attend one of the events below that are linked to the themes explored. Or simply benefit from the advances in technology that will allow you to see some, (but not all) of it with a few clicks here from the comfort of your home! 

More INFO and TICKETS to events: Use QR codes below or click here: TALK… WALK… IN CONVERSATION

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When big isn’t necessarily better

angela findlay4 Comments

Reflections on: IN PROCESS… a life, a film, a book, an exhibition, The Vaults, Stroud. Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

 

“We must, we must, we must increase the bust.

The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys depend on us.”

I remember chanting that with my boarding school roommates as a teenager, elbows flung back in a futile attempt – in my case at least – to inflate our adolescent chests. Bigger was definitely better, or so we believed.

Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Skyscrapers, cars, salaries, houses… In so many areas of modern society, ‘big’ still equals ‘better.’ More followers, more likes, more headlines, more sales. The biggest countries led by the most powerful leaders and largest militaries make the most noise. And yet we know, quantity doesn’t equate to quality. Magnitude doesn’t always reflect meaning or value.

This idea – that bigger isn’t always better – is something I’ve seen reflected both in the trajectory of my great great aunt Joan’s life and in my own development as an artist. (If you are new to Joan’s story, please see my previous blogs for background.)

Patshull Hall, Staffordshire

Joan’s tent

Joan grew up in a 147-room stately home in Staffordshire. Yet she spent her final weeks in a single, often soggy Meade tent pitched in a remote Himalayan Valley, surrounded not by grandeur but by shepherds, wildflowers and the sound of rain. She had traded scale for purpose. And her joy, it seems, had grown as her material load had lessened.

My own artistic journey has followed a similarly inverse curve.

Painting a mural in Sydney, 1987

I began large, unable to contain any drawing or painting within the boundaries of paper or canvas. My work spilled onto walls, first private then public, then grew further to fill stage backdrops for theatres or touring bands. Various mishaps including a paint-splattered boss’s car and a disastrous commission to paint the backdrop for INXS KICK album tour in 1987, which promptly cracked and fell off in large chunks when rolled up, nudged me toward the more forgiving surface of prison walls. There, no amount of damage could make the environment worse than it already was.

The light danced, 120x120cm

Years later, I turned my focus to canvases of my own, their size dictated by the available studio space and commercial considerations of galleries. And most recently, to works just 28x28cm – or smaller. I have replaced the vast audiences of art fairs with the quiet intimacy of just six or seven visitors at a time into the two vaults beneath my home in Stroud’s Cemetery.

The Vaults

Those vaults now house In Process… a deeply personal exhibition about Joan, her life and the resonance her death still holds for me, our family and small communities she encountered in India.

In one vault, where gravediggers once hung their tools and I now hang mine, visitors watch a short film projected into the open lid of an old trunk telling the story of Joan Margaret Legge.

In the other, where those same workers drank tea, ghostly white plaster casts hang like three-dimensional botanical drawings reminiscent of the specimens Joan collected and sent to Kew Gardens.

‘138 days’

A series of square sketchbooks chart the 138 days I followed Joan’s 1939 diary entries. Starting on 17th February when I stepped into her shoes as she boarded a ship to India, I step out of them again on 4th July, the day she slipped off the edge of a Himalayan path to her death. One photograph, one sketchbook page, each day a quiet re-embodiment across time. Not a recreation of her journey, but a chance to listen more deeply to the changing tone of her voice in the final months of her life.

At the heart of the exhibition is its smallest piece: a re-working of a first edition of Frank Smythe’s Valley of Flowers, the very book that inspired Joan’s expedition. Through collage, drawings and pressed flowers, it now tells the stories of three visitors to the valley rather than just one: his, hers and mine. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string like an archival package, the book invites visitors to wear white gloves to turn its delicate pages, not because it is precious in a monetary sense, but out of respect, Unlike most artworks, these ones are meant to be handled and engaged with.

‘Three journeys in one’

There is nothing for sale. No press campaign. No sponsorship. Just a quiet space, tucked away in a garden, found by invitation or chance. A strange but deliberate choice, and to me, a more authentic reflection of the humbleness of where Joan’s life ended than any traditional gallery could offer.

What Joan lost in material possessions, she gained in purpose and joy. Her life distilled into what nine porters could carry. She found a sense of completeness long before she had completed her journey.

That’s what I hope to convey in the improvised, immersive pieces shown in the warm belly of my limestone vaults. People forgive imperfection and lack of polish as they connect with Joan’s story through their hands, senses and bodies.

Just as artists learn to see not just form but negative space – the shapes between things – so Joan’s outwardly abundant life transformed into an inner world: slower, quieter, less visible, but not lesser in any way.

Maybe this is a natural outcome of ageing… the gentle decluttering of ambition and a reshuffling of values. Or maybe Joan’s story is a simple reminder that richness cannot always be seen and meaning doesn’t always require an audience.

The symmetry in our shrinking trajectories is just an observation.

But it feels strangely right.

IN PROCESS…

Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

The Vaults, 114 Bisley Road, Stroud

 

 

 

Creativity in times of destruction…

angela findlay8 Comments

“It’s brutal.”

That’s how a friend recently described being an artist. He had been a student at Goldsmiths in the late eighties and early nineties, during the rise of the Young British Artists (YBAs) like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, names that would go on to dominate the art world, thanks in part to the patronage of Charles Saatchi.

We ran into each other at the local paint shop—a regular stop for him in his current life as a decorator. Across a spread of tester pots and fillers, the conversation effortlessly turned to the day-to-day grind of being an artist. Over the summer I have been preparing for my forthcoming exhibition, In Process… (which opens today, 27th September!) and was feeling the impact of long, solitary studio days, wrestling with questions only I was posing and whose answers seemed only to matter to me. It can be a struggle: adhering to a discipline of showing up as captain to a ship with no passengers, steering a course to a nebulous destination, deep-diving into the depths of the soul, mind or body – wherever the well of creativity bubbles up – to haul tiny gems to the surface. Exhaustion and self-doubt often creep in.

‘What’s the point?’ is the main saboteur. The work seems irrelevant, the purpose elusive. There’s no financial gain, just costs. In the isolation of the studio, there’s no one to argue with those thoughts. Indeed it is easy to agree with them: Why bother?

And in times of widespread destruction – whether global or even personal – that sense of futility can grow.

This summer, for example, parts of my home were stripped back to their foundations. My life was overtaken by builders, noise, dusty cups of coffee and chaos. Creativity felt all but impossible. In the grand scheme of things, this was a minor inconvenience. Soon, things would return to normal. But what about those whose lives have been shattered by larger forces… wars, displacement, destruction and poverty on a massive scale? How does creativity find its place amidst the rubble of Gaza, Ukraine, or other war-torn regions? Or even amongst the devastating images that make their way into our minds?

History has shown that creativity can thrive in the moments when everything appears to be falling apart. Creative expression becomes a form of resilience, opposition, even survival. It can be a small act of regaining control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation; a conduit for grief, an out-breath for trauma, a balm for moral wounds. Marks on walls or scraps of paper cry out: I am still here.

In today’s news-filled world where conflicts and politics pitch people against each other while social media distracts and distorts, I feel the call to act. To do or say something that will make a difference. I contemplate taking to the streets and marching in protest. Or superglueing myself to a pavement. I wonder if ‘speaking out’ involves publishing endless blogs and posts on social media denouncing what (I feel) is wrong? Ineffectuality wears one down. 

But to me, the direction of the human race is a force majeure, too big for even the Trump to halt. We find ourselves swept in its rampageous current, both unwilling cogs in the destruction of things we once valued, and parts of an optimistic surge to re-build better. I feel feeble and impotent. When I can’t even open the lid on a jar of gherkins, how can I shift anything of significance? But maybe this disorientating maelstrom is precisely the context in which creativity becomes most vital. Maybe the internal orientation creativity demands provides a space for the mind to process, to breathe, to make light of the weight and sense of the senseless, and to find fragments of meaning in what frequently seems like an overwhelming mess.

Destruction can’t defeat creativity; it calls it forth, demanding that we seek beauty, purpose and points of connection. That process can feel ‘brutal’.  What’s the point? is never far away. But I try to remember: The point is not always to create something monumental. Nor is it to offer neat answers. Sometimes, the point is simply to make something that wasn’t there before, to keep moving forward and to hold onto the belief that every act of creation – however small and seemingly insignificant – is a counter movement, an act of defiance, a stand against that which threatens to destroy us. 

In Process… at The Vaults in Stroud

I have heaved my most recent exhibition out of a time of dark chaos. But as I – and it – clawed our way to the surface, it grew its own wings. Help came from unexpected places. Beauty emerged. And now it is there, in the Vaults, among the grapes on my vine, fruits to share.

There was a point!

You are so welcome to visit.

IN PROCESS…

In Process… Opening Times:  

  • Saturday & Sunday 27th/28th September, 11am-4pm
  • Monday 29th September – Friday 3rd October, 2-5pm
  • Saturday & Sunday 4th/5th October, 11am-5pm
  • Sunday 19th October 11am-5pm
  • And by appointment at other times throughout October (excluding 10th–17th and 22nd–26th October)

If you would like more context to the work in the exhibition prior to coming, please read my previous three blogs: Following Joan… Parts One, Two & Three.