GEORGINA COBURN REVIEW
Kilmorack Gallery SEA exhibition (Scottish Artists inspired by the sea) is up and runs the end of October 2016. There are fantastic works, from WILL MACLEAN's oceanic reminisces and JOYCE W CAIRNS Footdee works to the immersive wave studies of JANETTE KERR, LOTTE GLOB's ceramics and cliffscapes of ALLAN MACDONALD. Some of these have been reviewed by the always insightful Georgina Coburn... many thanks. I have attached the review below as links to the Geogina Coburn's original.
17 September – 29 October, Kilmorack Gallery, by Beauly.
Kilmorack Gallery’s latest exhibition features work by some of Scotland’s finest artists inspired by the convergence of land, sea and memory. Forces of Nature and mind are powerfully brought together in an exciting show including work by; Joyce W Cairns , Steve Dilworth, Kate Downie, Lotte Glob, Marian Leven, Will Maclean, Allan MacDonald, James Newton Adams, Mary Bourne, Ruth Brownlee, Helen Denerley, , Gail Harvey, Janette Kerr, Sian MacQueen, Lynn McGregor, Illona Morrice and Beth Robertson-Fiddes.
On entering the gallery Lotte Glob’s large ceramic tile seascapes; Seascape, Seascape – Tidal and Seascape Stormy Sea, unleash an incredible intensity of colour in a molten fusion of elemental forces and raw materials. Brilliant ultramarine and turquoise create a feeling of depth that the viewer cannot help but dive into. In Seascape-Stormy Sea, water, earth, air and fire meet, unite and divide; cracking and separating like a microcosm of the earth’s geological record. There’s a sense of mindful physicality in this artist’s work based on being in the landscape in the most expansive sense possible. This is combined with a lifetime’s understanding of Craft, unsurpassed in her chosen discipline. Along the coastline of the UNESCO Northern Highlands Geopark that the artist calls home, the ancient Lewisian Gneiss rock, 3,000 million years old, meets the full force of the Atlantic Ocean. Shore, land and mountain are a rich source of found materials, transformed by fire in Glob’s masterful ceramics. The strength, beauty and delicacy in her work is visibly distilled in Flower of the Sea; a living being of fired clay; anemone-like fingers extended around blooms of glassy blue/ green rock pools, tempered with the hue of a subsiding tide of red kelp. In Rock Flower, an outcrop of white clay blooms emerge from what feels like a monumental cliff face, a fused piece of immovable white stone balanced on top of the sculpted clay in counterpoint with the pale, mortal transience of flowers. The handling of materials and form is supremely sensitive and a celebration of an artist at the top of her profession. Reef is another superb example, a rocky outcrop emerging from a disc of ocean which feels like the entire globe; minerals and pigments ebb and flow to the edges of the ceramic, into the deepest sea of mind, time and space imaginable. Another signature piece is Secret Pool; a sphere resembling a meteorite flung from space, which when opened reveals an interior teaming life forms, shoreline colour and vivid joy. Lotte Glob’s responses to her environment are pure and instinctual; her spirit is as adventurous as the experimentation in her Art and in walking the landscape she has come to understand Nature and human connectivity with the environment in ways that never fail to inspire. She’s an artist who always makes me smile for the wisdom, vitality and sheer energy of her practice, intimately connected to the Northwest land, sky and sea from which she is inseparable.
One of the most moving works in the exhibition is Farewell to Footdee (Oil on panel 122cm x 183cm) by Scotland’s most significant figurative artist, Joyce. W. Cairns. In many ways the painting is an act of commemoration and remembrance, a strikingly poignant composition of memories which make a life. In frozen white, blue greyness, articulated by the pure warmth of cadmium /vermillion a masterful sense of composition emerges, in the structural diagonal and vertical uprights of the washing line, refracted light on the icy ground and the emotive placement of the human figure. As with all of Cairns’ work we are pushed psychologically to the edge of the frame and beyond it; by design, the distilled palette, the interior positioning of the figures and by the artist’s innate sensitivity. The acute subtlety of winter light upon the rooftops and gently nuanced expression on the face of the foreground female protagonist portrays a moment of vulnerability and sadness at the end of an era. The painting also acknowledges profound loss; of those who have passed, phases of life and aspects of self. Around the foreground protagonist’s neck is a medal of honour, engraved; “Footdee 1979-2014”, marking the artist’s departure for Tayside and a new chapter in the battle of a creative life. I always try to refrain from purely autobiographical readings of this artist’s paintings, because my sense of her work is that like all Great Artists she always transcends herself. It is true that most of Cairns’ female figures physically resemble the artist and that many of her paintings respond to life in the old fishing village of Footdee and the port of Aberdeen, past memories and familial experiences, but equally her field of reference is more widely European in painterly terms and in subject matter. In her extraordinary body of work; War Tourist, Cairns certainly begins the journey re-tracing her Father’s steps through WWII Europe, but the visual statement that emerged out of this research over the following decade crosses all borders into contemporary conflict, the nature of war and the eternal human condition. There are few artists that share her command of large scale figurative composition, save German Expressionists like Beckmann and Grosz. It’s the emotional gravitas and conscience in her work that is immediately and monumentally striking. Look closer and the balance of elements in her compositions are breath taking; a perfect synthesis of instinct, control, ideas and technique. Cairns’ familial memories are ever clothed in wartime dress, like the younger sister in red beret, gloves and shoes, who looks on in the mid-ground as the foreground Self departs the scene. However Farewell to Footdee is more than an image of individual/ autobiographical commemoration, remembrance or grief. The head and shoulders of the central female protagonist connects powerfully with the viewer’s space and the sense of loss we all feel when we leave part of ourselves behind in the places we have lived and in the people we have loved. Her tilted hat, crowned with a white boarded cottage whose chimney almost transforms it into a house of worship, carries emotional weight; like the posture of the tiny female figure leaned within the doorway, head downcast and hands in pockets. Time collapses into the line of cottages that frame an inner courtyard of the soul; the yellow warmth of light from open doorways in the background illuminating scenes of romance, isolation and loneliness re-enacted in the farewell. It is impossible to see this painting and not be affected by its raw, profound emotional stillness or by the artist’s consummate skill.
In Messerschmitt Over Footdee (Oil on ply, 152cm x 122cm) Cairns assumes the role of an ARP (Air- raid Precaution) warden. Pushed into the foreground she is flanked by WWII ephemera; Lucky Strike cigarettes, anti-gas ointment and a gas attack leaflet arrangement of museum pieces. The phosphorescent glow of the sea merges with the sky in the heightened perspective of the composition. The illuminating presence and bisecting geometry of searchlights, lighthouses, washing lines and the boundaries of the safe harbour are invaded by an enemy bomber. Again the central protagonist is positioned in the foreground, standing in the viewer’s space as witness, clutching a wreath of poppies to her chest. Out of a first floor window a woman waves a union jack, whilst below a naked female figure emerges from an illuminated doorway. The idea of “keeping the home fires burning” and the anxiety of war on the domestic front can be seen in the pallor of her expression, articulated by the memories , stories and artefacts gathered by the artist, assimilated within her psyche as part of the War Tourist retrospective body of work.
click for full Coburn review
Link to KILMORACK GALLERY SEA EXHIBITION PAGE
click for full Coburn review
Link to KILMORACK GALLERY SEA EXHIBITION PAGE
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