ACQUISITIONS 2019–20
EDWARD ALLINGTON3 JONATHAN B A L D O C K 7 D E R E K C A R R U T H E R S 11 S H E L A G H C L U E T T 13 D A N I E L L E D E A N 15 J E S S I E F L O O D - P A D D O C K 17 P A T R I C K H O U G H 19 G H I S L A I N E L E U N G 23 C H A R L O T T E M O T H 25 D U N C A N N E W T O N 27 R O Y O X L A D E 29 E M I L Y R I C H A R D S O N 31 H A N N A H R I C K A R D S 33 G R A C E S C H W I N D T 35 P A T R I C K S T A F F 39 A L I A S Y E D 41 E M M A T A L B O T 43 A L I S O N W A T T 45 A L B E R T A W H I T T L E 47 C L I F T O N W R I G H T 49 P A R T O U Z I A 53
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CONTENTS
The Arts Council Collection continues to grow through the purchase of new work every year. In 2019–20, 38 artworks by 21 artists were acquired for the nation. Recommendations to purchase works of art are made by a changing group of external advisors to the Arts Council Collection Acquisitions Committee. For 2019–20 they were: Ryan Gander, artist; Helen Nisbet, Curator and Artistic Director, Art Night; Sally Shaw, Director, Firstsite and Fato Üstek, Director, Liverpool Biennial. The chair of the Acquisitions Committee for 2019–20 was Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England. The three permanent members of the Acquisitions Committee are: Jill Constantine, Director, Arts Council Collection; Peter Heslip, Director, Visual Arts, Arts Council England and Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery, London.
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INTRODUCTION
Edward Allington b.1951, Cumbria, UK; d.2017 Edward Allington was fascinated by the presence of classical forms in everyday life, such as fragments of artefacts displayed in museums or kitsch reproductions of antiques. His work is full of references to now discredited forms and styles, from baroque and rococo architectural ornaments to identically cast Greek and Egyptian statues. He said: ‘Sculpture is looking at real things by making real things. It is making poetry with solid objects’. The Silent Song of the Shell, 1983 is part of a body of work made by the artist using found objects, which aimed to examine beauty through opulent imagery. They are known as his ‘cornucopias’, after a classical symbol of abundance and nourishment: the horn of plenty. In Allington’s works, pristine plastic fruit cascades from ornate golden shells; the juxtaposition of massproduced objects with gilded forms suggests a response to the dominance of minimalist art in previous decades. His later work Metropolitan Egypt from the East / of London, 1987 features cast reproductions of museum shop sphinxes, which neatly adorn three columns. While they resemble some ancient ruin, the artist is less concerned with the objects’ actual past than the larger history that they symbolise. Allington advocated a regenerative, circular vision of history, in which ideas and forms return with constantly renewed meanings.
The Silent Song of the Shell, 1983 Plaster, paint, steel and plastic 140 x 100 x 100 cm Metropolitan Egypt from the East / of London, 1987 Wood, paint, plaster 122 x 164 x 135 cm Untitled, 1986 Ink and emulsion on ledger paper 38.3 x 55.6 cm Gift of the artist’s estate Images courtesy of Thalia Allington-Wood © Estate of Edward Allington
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2019–20
Edward Allington
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2019–20
Jonathan Baldock b.1980, Pembury, UK Jonathan Baldock’s practice incorporates sculpture, painting and performance. His work often takes a biographical form, addressing the trauma, stress, sensuality, mortality and spirituality around our relationship to the body and the space it inhabits. While his work is steeped in humour, it also has a macabre quality, which reflects the artist’s long-standing interest in folklore and primitive art. His series of ceramic ‘maskes’ teems with bright colours and outlandish expressions: ripples of clay allude to folds of skin, whilst incisions and abstract protrusions reveal features such as eyes, ears and nostrils. Here, Baldock toys with a cognitive process called pareidolia, a phenomenon that causes people to see faces in inanimate objects. The masks’ painterly finishes emphasise the playfulness of certain expressions, while rough, pumice-like surfaces hint at feelings of melancholia. Baldock’s research took him to the British Museum to study its collection of Mesopotamian clay tablets, which trace the linguistic evolution of pictograms into cuneiform script, the world’s oldest writing system. Inspired by these, the artist plays with clay’s communicative potential. He is also keen to explore the symbolic function of masks in his work. Invested with spiritual values, one can imagine the works being used as part of a pagan ritual.
Maske XVI, 2019 Ceramic 31 x 23.2 x 6.6 cm
Mask XXVIII, 2019 Ceramic 39 x 28.4 x 6.2 cm
Maske XVII, 2019 Ceramic 31 x 23.7 x 11.2 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Maske LXX, 2019 Ceramic 31.5 x 25 x 4 cm
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2019–20
Jonathan Baldock
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2019–20
Derek Carruthers b.1935, Cumbria, UK Derek Carruthers’ artistic practice spans over 60 years. His early works include constructivist-style mobiles made up of brightly coloured, abstract shapes, which move to create new configurations of form and pattern. In addition, he has produced an extensive series of paintings of lay figures, or wooden mannequins, a motif that has preoccupied him since the late 1980s. These figures seem to stand for humanity, their jointed limbs hinting at themes of oppression, confinement and pathos. In Snakes and Ladders, 2016–19 a large number of the dummies are seen attempting to climb ladders, as if fleeing a terrifying fate. They clamber desperately over each other, one fallen figure covering its face with its fingerless hands in despair, while snakes coil below. This sense of constraint and limitation creates a mood of underlying horror, perhaps a metaphor for the struggles of modern existence.
Snakes and Ladders, 2016–19 Oil on canvas 75 x 38 cm Image courtesy of the artist
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2019–20
Shelagh Cluett b.1947, Dorset, UK; d.2007 Shelagh Cluett’s early sculptures range from ambitious room-scale installations to elegant vertical structures crafted from wire, thin steel, aluminium, brass and copper. Accompanying her larger works are smaller ‘thinking pieces’, which explore different colours, shapes and ideas. Untitled, c.1981 operates as a dynamic, three-dimensional drawing. It seems ephemeral, finding movement and fluidity through the delicate choreography suggested by its monochrome lines. In the mid-1980s, Cluett’s work began to move away from linear forms, to explore the influences of her travels in the Far East. These trips provided her with a new wealth of imagery and an intensified palette, lending greater freedom to her sculpture. Colours gained greater importance; applied to her hammered metal surfaces, they cause the work to shine and glisten. Light of My Life, 1984 is a small wall-based sculpture, crafted from a single sheet of sculpted metal and painted blue. A series of drilled holes offer a glimpse of copper beneath. The piece forms a shimmering fish’s tail; Cluett’s ideas around the sea and coastline were far-reaching and she was specifically interested in the flux and instability of the strand, the space between land and sea. This fish could be viewed as a treasure, beached on a vertical shore.
Untitled, c.1981 Aluminium, steel 25 x 45 x 10 cm Light of My Life, 1984 Painted and gilded aluminium, copper 25 x 14.3 x 5 cm Images courtesy of the Shelagh Cluett Trust and greengrassi, London © the Shelagh Cluett Trust. Photos: Marcus Leith
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2019–20
Danielle Dean b.1982, Alabama, USA Danielle Dean works with drawing, installation, performance and video. Born in Alabama to a British mother and a Nigerian-American father, and raised in a working-class suburb of London, Dean’s multinational background informs her practice. Her previous role as an art director at an advertising agency led her to consider how race, class and gender are constructed through targeted marketing strategies, a theme that recurs throughout her work. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, version 2, 2018 is a suspended sculpture that takes the form of a child’s mobile. Constructed from Perspex and wire, it features a combination of marketing imagery. Baby products, such as nappies and lotion, hang alongside pest-control products used to kill flies and cockroaches. One set of the products is about taking care and maintaining life, while the other is about taking life. Using images that at first glance appear innocent or even funny, the piece investigates how these regimes of life and death are enforced through everyday consumer objects. It also considers the notion that, more sinisterly, advertising companies construct the very idea of what it is to be human. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, version 2 was commissioned for KNOCK KNOCK: Humour in Contemporary Art at South London Gallery, 2018.
KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, version 2, 2018 Print on Perspex and metal 241 x 381 x 381 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles
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2019–20
Jessie Flood-Paddock b.1977, London, UK Jessie Flood-Paddock’s sculptures explore the emotional exchange value of objects. Her series Snacks was initially sparked by the artist reading a conversation between writers David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace, which is recounted in Lipsky’s memoir of his friend, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. Here, the two men discuss the role of snacks as a social lubricant, noting the way people may gather around a bowl of nuts at a party. Flood-Paddock’s works take inspiration from Japanese peanut crackers: assorted nobbled pieces in a colourful palette of varied greens, oranges, whites and reds. She notes how small black strips of seaweed, applied at random intervals, may resemble facial features when they are turned upside down. Constructed from silk, dip-dyed cotton, resin and paint, the works sit atop plinths, delectable outsized morsels waiting to be picked and a focal point to ease social awkwardness.
Snack 16, 2015 Silk, dip dyed cotton, epoxy resin, jute, Jesmonite, spray paint 39 x 23 x 22 cm Snack 20, 2015 Dip dyed cotton, epoxy resin, Jesmonite, spray paint 39 x 24 x 24 cm Images courtesy of the artist and Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate
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2019–20
Patrick Hough b.1989, Galway, Ireland Patrick Hough’s work considers how the interpretation of historical events in cinema has the potential to construct new narratives with a life of their own. His point of departure for And If In A Thousand Years, 2017 was the discovery of the remains of the massive Hollywood set for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments, which had lain buried under sand dunes in California for nearly 90 years. Hough’s video combines location footage with CGI to stage the ‘awakening’ of props from the movie. Questions about the value of originality and authenticity permeate Hough’s film, embodied by the figure of an enormous plaster sphinx, once part of the décor of the fabulous set, now trapped in a ghostly limbo. For the film series Object Interviews, 2013–15, Hough collaborated with specialists: a curator from the British Museum, a psychoanalyst and a master prop maker. They interpret and discuss a range of film props which, as they take centre stage, become perhaps more powerful and relevant than the historical artefacts on which they are based. The work provides an insight into not only the significance of these items, but also into how we read the world of objects through a layer of preconceived ideas. And If In A Thousand Years was commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards: Neither One Thing or Another, a collaboration between Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Film and Video Umbrella.
And If In A Thousand Years, 2017 HD video, 5.1 surround sound 21 min Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP
Object Interviews (Parts I, II, & III), 2013–15 Three single-channel HD videos, sound 6 min 7 sec 5 min 15 sec 5 min 56 sec Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist and narrative projects, London
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2019–20
Patrick Hough
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2019–20
Ghislaine Leung b.1980, Stockholm, Sweden Ghislaine Leung’s works often attempt to redefine the interior space of the gallery through a series of playful interventions, using elements of sound, light, scale and temperature. Much of her work is concept-dependent, existing only as ideas rather than physical objects. Shrooms, 2016 consists of LED nightlights in the form of mushrooms, which when displayed fill all available electrical outlets in the space. These, which the artist notes must all be of the same style and colour, then seem to sprout from walls, ceilings and floors, a creeping fungus. The work is only considered to exist when every available outlet in the room in which it is shown has a plug adaptor and nightlight. It is the act of the mushrooms occupying each outlet that forms the artwork. For Shrooms, Leung draws upon our emotional response: the warmth to the piece evokes the security of a child’s bedroom protected by a plug-in nightlight.
Shrooms, 2016 Nightlights and adapters Dimensions variable AP 1 from edition of 3 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist and ESSEX STREET, New York
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2019–20
Charlotte Moth b.1978, London, UK Charlotte Moth is fascinated by the spaces and objects among which we live, from apartment blocks to empty streets to striking interiors. Working with photography, film, slide projections and sculptural arrangements, she aims to discover the mysterious in the familiar. Still Life in A White Cube, 2019 refers to Brian O’Doherty’s series of three essays Inside The White Cube (1976), in which he considered the artificiality of the standard gallery space with its four white walls. Moth’s film is made in response to an invitation from CA2M (Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo), a contemporary art centre in Madrid, Spain, to work with the venue’s two collections. The works she created here interrogate the physical properties of the third floor and the staircase that winds through the building, as well as responding to specific works from the collections. Moth was inspired by Leonor Fini’s (1907–96) painted textile works Decorados de fondo para la obra “Sonatina”, 1956, featuring monkeys and exotic birds adorning a tree, as well as by Madrid’s botanical gardens, where she captured footage of a vibrant parrot and sultry black cat. The supposedly sterile gallery space becomes an organic spectacle where natural and artificial feathers, hair and foliage connect with Fini’s interest in animality and transformation.
Still Life in A White Cube, 2019 16 mm digitally transferred film 8 min Edition 2 of 5 + 1 AP Images courtesy of the artist and Marcelle Alix, Paris
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2019–20
Duncan Newton b.1945, Surrey, UK; d.2019 Duncan Newton’s philosophy as a painter contended that images can be altered and elaborated in endless combinations, as the artist further develops their own repertoire. His work is derived through a process of trial, error and adaptation before it arrives at a final resolution – which is in fact a deliberate irresolution. Newton considered painting to be unique among other art forms, in that its access is uninhibited by time: ‘Painting, compared with other arts, can be seen instantly. In that is its generosity’. Trigon, 1999 and Thursday, 2001 are from his experimental series Abstract Pictures (1999–2002). Their colour palette is subdued – offwhite, yellows, browns and black – and both works spill beyond the usual rectangular frame of a painting. In Thursday, irregular contours mimic the effect of a torn piece of paper; broad brushstrokes loop across the surface of the canvas, along with flurries of intersecting lines and layers, hinting at both conflict and balance, to provoke the question: ‘What am I looking at?’ Thus, these works are about the act of looking and celebrate the act of painting, rather than the conclusion.
Trigon, 1999 Oil on linen 73 x 103 cm Thursday, 2001 Oil on linen 237 x 367 cm Gift of the artist’s estate Images courtesy of Estate of Duncan Newton © Estate of Duncan Newton
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2019–20
Roy Oxlade b.1929, London, UK; d.2014 Roy Oxlade worked across six decades to produce paintings and works on paper which were rooted in his experiences of the physical world around him. Domesticity and ritual are central to his oeuvre, which uses motifs such as scissors, jugs, lemons and lamps, which Oxlade selected for their aesthetic and functional qualities. The artist’s wife, fellow painter Rose Wylie, also appears regularly in his works. Oxlade’s creative process was fuelled by instinct and immediacy. For him, the future of art meant going back to basics. Drawing was a critical tool, and he referred to the medium as the essence of his practice. In Rose and Painter, 1987 the figures of artist and muse are portrayed using quick, decisive brushstrokes. While creating clarity on the canvas was an important objective for Oxlade, the possibility of interpretation was also vital: ‘I have no interest in the window-on-the-world kind of painting’, he commented. As a result, the artist described his pictures as offering a synthesis of thought, feeling and poetic imagination.
Rose and Painter, 1987 Oil on canvas 120 x 152 cm Image courtesy of Alison Jacques Gallery, London © Estate of Roy Oxlade
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2019–20
Emily Richardson b.1971, Oxford, UK Emily Richardson’s films explore our relationship to personal histories and the spaces we inhabit. Traversing a diverse range of landscapes – including empty East London streets, forests, North Sea oil fields, post-war tower blocks and Cold War military facilities – her works offer a dazzling deconstruction of place and time. They focus the mind and eye on detail, finding transcendence and emotion in everyday subject matter. Over the Horizon, 2012 takes its name from a failed radar system which was developed on Orford Ness in Suffolk, UK during the Cold War. The building that once housed it and its field of aerials are now used to broadcast the BBC World Service to Europe. The film revisits the site of Richardson’s earlier work Cobra Mist, 2008 and through photographs and sound explores the memory of a place, the remnants of history and evidence of stories true or rumoured.
Over the Horizon, 2012 HD video 20 min Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist
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2019–20
Hannah Rickards b.1979, London, UK Hannah Rickards’ work deals with how to translate an encounter, be that with a sound, an object, a space or an image. Key to her practice is the relationship between the temporary and permanent elements in a landscape, with the sites concerned being used as both a vantage point and a stage for examining our verbal, spatial and gestural relationship with our surroundings. One can make out the surface only by placing any dark-coloured object on the ground, 2017 shows two performers interacting with photographic materials on a large stage. The images on the scattered papers are drawn from early scientific photographs, and depict celestial phenomena and geological surfaces. The work is decidedly non-narrative and never settles on a fixed perspective. Its title describes the difficulty of navigating whiteout conditions in a snowy landscape without visible horizon lines. By continuing to place objects in front of themselves as they move forward, the performers create a pattern, composed with musical structures in mind, to consider how a landscape might be read as a score. One can make out the surface only by placing any dark-coloured object on the ground was commissioned and produced by the Curtis R Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre (EMPAC), Renesslaer Polytechnic Institute, with additional support from The Leverhulme Trust, Arts Council England Grants for the Arts and the Elephant Trust.
One can make out the surface only by placing any dark-coloured object on the ground, 2017 Single-screen video, seven-channel sound 40 min 25 sec Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist
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2019–20
Grace Schwindt b.1979, Germany Grace Schwindt’s practice is focused on performance and film. More recently she has also produced drawings and sculpture. Many of her works explore aspects of historical events, with an emphasis on social relations. Bird with Stretched Neck, 2018 is part of Schwindt’s investigation into the fragility of the body in relation to a world driven by capitalist motivations. Her research began with a trip to the Shetland Islands, where she interviewed local people about the effects of the oil industry on their community. Specifically, she focused on her conversations with a ‘birder’, who described picking up injured, oiled birds, refusing to wear gloves. The artist imagined herself flying, her arms around a bird’s neck, stretching and thinning its body with her weight, then landing on the ocean. Resting, 2018 combines the bird figure with that of a dancer. It reflects on a conversation between the artist and her grandfather, who aimed to dance each day after the Second World War; even on his deathbed, he performed brief dance movements with his feet and hands. The bronze bird figure lies draped across a smooth, oval base. Cobalt oxide mixed with a transparent glaze marks where the figure meets the stand, emphasising the moment of encounter between the two.
Bird with Stretched Neck, 2018 Bronze, ceramic, oxide glazing 23 x 28 x 49 cm Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP Resting, 2018 Bronze, ceramic, oxide glazing 25 x 15 x 15 cm Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP Position, 2018 Bronze 17 x 15 x 31 cm Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP Images courtesy of the artist and Zeno X, Antwerp
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2019–20
Grace Schwindt
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2019–20
Patrick Staff b.1987, Bognor Regis, UK Patrick Staff interrogates the cycles of violence, desire and repression that are embedded in contemporary culture. Through a range of mediums, they explore dream-like transgressions of law and order, and the fraught spaces where queer desires manifest. The Prince of Homburg, 2019 is based on Heinrich von Kleist’s play of the same title. Written in 1810 but set in 1675, Kleist’s drama begins with a disoriented prince sleepwalking through his royal gardens, and soon develops into a nightmarish narrative that questions the limits of state control versus individual freedom. Staff’s video cuts together a narration of Kleist’s play with interviews, found footage, hand-painted animation and song. In a series of fragmented ‘daytime’ sequences, a range of artists, writers and performers reflect on contemporary queer and trans identity and its proximity to desire and violence. Intense flashes of colour reveal items such as a glove, knives, blades and chains, intercut with the sun and sky, city streets and text. Staff reconfigures Kleist’s play to focus on the symbol of the exhausted, sleepwalking figure as a political protester. The Prince of Homburg was co-commissioned by Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, and IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Ireland. Video work produced by Spike Island, UK. Special thanks to producer Ali Roche and Humber Street Gallery, UK.
The Prince of Homburg, 2019 Single-channel HD video, colour, sound 23 min 4 sec Edition 2 of 5 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles
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2019–20
Alia Syed b.1964, Swansea, Wales, UK Alia Syed’s experimental film works explore politics and life in multicultural societies. She creates non-linear and disjointed narratives, combining these with her interest in storytelling. Swan, 1986 was filmed on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. Syed’s inspiration for the work was her discovery of the body of a swan which had choked to death on fishing tackle. Nearby, construction work was taking place, with huge cranes operating near a family of the birds. The artist was struck by the similarity between the sweep of the swan’s neck and the movement of the cranes. Initially, she intended to capture both of these elements, but during the course of filming she became increasingly compelled by the swans. She found she was able to get very close to them, allowing her an intimate perspective. Her concentration shifted from established depictions of regal creatures gliding across glistening waters, to a more abstract representation. Building on this through repetition, she re-filmed selected shots at various speeds, forwards and backwards, from a 16 mm projector. The brightness of the projector bulb used was inconsistent, resulting in pulsating, rhythmic footage.
Swan, 1986 16 mm film 3 min Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist and LUX, London
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2019–20
Emma Talbot b.1969, Worcestershire, UK Emma Talbot’s practice spans drawing, painting, installation and sculpture. Her work is often made up of autobiographical imagery, developing narratives around the difficulties of contemporary life, interwoven with vibrant patterns and motifs. Her painting on silk, The Mountain, Time After Time, 2016 is an honest reflection on the relationship between Talbot and her teenage son. Displayed as a double-sided hanging, the piece is based on the form of a mountain and includes lyrics from Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 song ‘Time After Time’. The artist’s son, an avid rock climber, is portrayed ascending a wall, as well as in his bedroom with the door shut. There are also tender moments: an image of the boy in a cot just after his birth appears at the bottom of the piece, or ‘base camp’ of the mountain. Punctuated with the lyrics ‘If you’re lost you can look and you will find me… If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting, time after time’, it’s an account of letting go of a child and allowing them to scale their own heights as an independent adult.
The Mountain, Time After Time, 2016 Acrylic on silk 309 x 155 cm Images courtesy of the artist
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2019–20
Alison Watt b.1965, Greenock, Scotland, UK Alison Watt’s work often interrogates the genre of still life, specifically the technique of trompe-l’oeil, a style that depicts objects in such realistic detail it ‘deceives the eye’. Her paintings negotiate a position close to abstraction, yet they are firmly rooted in her studies of drapery, light, the human form and old master paintings and sculpture. Her starting point for Warrender, 2016 began with an extended meditation upon the only known painting by Thomas Warrender (1662–c.1715), Still-life, which is on display at the Scottish National Gallery. This work illustrates a letter rack holding items such as feathers, envelopes and folded pieces of paper. Watt’s painting depicts a sheet of crisp white paper, creased as if it has been neatly folded twice. While it initially appears to be monochrome, closer inspection reveals it to be full of delicate modulations of colour and light, articulated through Watt’s carefully worked surface. It summons a sense of calm and familiarity, while on the other hand creating an air of mystery: a blank sheet of paper that seems to invite the viewer to pen their own message, a story untold.
Warrender, 2016 Oil on canvas 122 x 91.5 cm Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund Image courtesy of the artist and Parafin, London
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2019–20
Alberta Whittle b.1980, Bridgetown, Barbados Alberta Whittle’s practice aims to develop a visual, oral and textual language to question accepted Western constructs of history and society. Her work frequently reflects on the legacies of slavery, colonialism and the current climate crisis. She connects black oppression with meditations on survival, championing the idea of healing as a form of self-liberation. At the time Whittle began making between a whisper and a cry, 2019, the Caribbean had experienced three consecutive years of devastating hurricanes and storms. The artist was struck by how people she spoke to in the UK responded apathetically to this global notion of instability, and hoped to open up conversations about what was happening in the Caribbean communities of which she is part. The work speaks of memory, trauma and tensions between the land, the sea and the weather, revealing the precarity and privilege of geography. It explores theorist Christina Sharpe’s characterisation, in her book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, of ‘the weather’ as an ‘anti-black atmosphere’ in which we all live. The soundtrack and visuals seek to evoke the feeling of being caught and submerged within a wave, asking us to consider our bodies as falling beneath the threshold, and how we can come up for air when the current is dragging us under. between a whisper and a cry was commissioned for the 2018/19 Margaret Tait Award.
between a whisper and a cry, 2019 HD video, chairs, chain and screen 41 min
How Flexible Can We Make the Mouth, exhibition view at Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2019
Image courtesy of the artist
Photo: Ruth Clark
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2019–20
Clifton Wright b.1982, London, UK Clifton Wright has pursued portraiture for over a decade, working in response to family albums, newspaper and magazine pictures, exhibition documentation and characters from science fiction and popular culture. The faces in his drawings are often woven into and entangled with abstract patterns; his works Minotaur and Borrowed Picasso Portrait, both 2017, are made in response to Picasso’s cubist style. For Self Portrait from Mirror, 2018, Wright began by making pencil drawings of himself, observing within his face the tessellation of shapes. He said: ‘It is the shapes in the face and the colours in the face that tell me what the drawing is going to be. My work is more about that abstract stuff than who the person is […] I use the structure of how things slot in to the face, and continue it, like a jigsaw puzzle, across the rest of the picture’. Transferring this linear drawing onto four different sheets of paper, he used pencil, oil pastel, oil stick and charcoal to experiment with the pictorial puzzle of representation. The way that face and space fit, knot and flow together are as much the focus of his work as the specific forms of any particular face.
Borrowed Picasso Portrait, 2017 Pastel on paper 38 x 53.5 cm
Self Portrait from Mirror Three, 2018 Oil pastel, pencil and pen on paper 35 x 50 cm
Minotaur, 2017 Pastel on paper 66.5 x 46.5 cm
Self Portrait from Mirror Four, 2018 Oil pastel, pencil and pen on paper 35 x 50 cm
Self Portrait from Mirror One, 2018 Oil pastel, pencil and pen on paper 35 x 50 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and Intoart, London
Self Portrait from Mirror Two, 2018 Oil pastel, pencil and pen on paper 35 x 50 cm
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2019–20
Clifton Wright
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2019–20
Partou Zia b.1958, Tehran, Iran; d.2008 Partou Zia’s otherworldly canvases bring a fresh note to the long established tradition of storytelling. Her pictorial language features motifs and symbols including lovers, sleepers, dreamers and readers, placed in evocative interiors or luminous landscapes. Zia’s body of work represents a personal journey of self-discovery, with individual works manifesting as joyous acts of the imagination, gathering all experience and time into a vibrant present. Her use of colour was usually symbolic; for example, she associated yellow with spirituality. Zia often portrayed domestic scenes, incorporating into them her own selfportrait. In Green Breath, 2006 she is drained of colour, unlike her vibrant surroundings: a cloud of green, which is thought to represent growth and nature, surrounds the figure like an enigmatic aura. In Fenced Horizons, 2005 the figure is portrayed in a state of wakefulness, clutching a book, while her shadow sleeps peacefully beside her, seemingly capturing the transitional moment of conscious becoming unconscious.
Fenced Horizons, 2005 Oil on canvas 150 x 170 cm Green Breath, 2006 Oil on canvas 152 x 183 cm Gift of the artist’s estate Images courtesy of Estate of Partou Zia © Estate of Partou Zia
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2019–20
Unless otherwise stated, all works are Š the artist. Graphic Design by Narrate + Kelly Barrow, narratestudio.co.uk, kellybarrow.co.uk
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The Arts Council Collection is based at Southbank Centre, London and at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. For further information about the Arts Council Collection, please visit artscouncilcollection.org.uk To enquire about borrowing work from the Arts Council Collection, email loans@southbankcentre.co.uk To enquire about acquisitions and gifts to the Arts Council Collection, email acquisitions@southbankcentre.co.uk