SARAH PURVEY: Boundaries 12th March to 16th April 2022 by Twenty Twenty Gallery

SARAH PURVEY Boundaries

12th March to 16th April 2022

TWENTY TWENTY GALLERY

4 Quality Square Ludlow SY8 1 AR

Sarah Purvey: Boundaries Foreword by Dr. Ian Massey

Approaching the studio where Sarah Purvey is currently artist in residence at Corsham Court in Wiltshire, one passes an enormous cloud hedge made of yew, a spectacular work of nature sculpted by human artifice. One is able to walk into the underside of the hedge, at the point where it ends, close to the main house. To do so is as though to enter a hushed private realm, in which are seen the ropes and pulleys of trunks and branches that form the infrastructure of the dramatic green cumulus outside.

Sarah Purvey

Throughout, the process is instinctive and organic. In clay there are vessels and deeply encrusted relief pieces, the latter roughly circular or square. The vessels are not functional but are highly distinctive sculptural objects, their surfaces earthy and tactile. They are made from one of two types of clay, both containing grog, which provides additional body and emphasises materiality. One is red, and becomes black during firing; the other, named crank, is paler, and retains its rather fleshy tone after leaving the kiln. Each vessel begins with a round or oval base, to which long coils of clay are pressed into place, structure built up in short bursts of intense activity. The artist strives to work meditatively and at speed, listening, feeling, responding, finding herself ‘lost in the making’, each pinch of clay equivalent to a single heartbeat. As she progresses, words and conversations surface from an internal dialogue, as though from the intermittent babble of a crossed telephone line, often prompting her to pause in order to note them down. One is struck by the idea that these fragments of

language might effectively become written into the work, as inflections within the overall design. For one senses – and this becomes apparent in conversation with the artist – that there is a private language, of thought and meaning, underlying the work in its entirety. The vessels vary in shape, encompassing round, oval, and bulbous neo-classical forms in black clay. Their outer surfaces are painted in gloopy slips of black, white, and grey, sometimes with additions of pale Naples yellow, in conglomerations of overlapping arcs, hoops, or circles, their curvilinear shapes made more emphatic by scoring into the body of the clay. The artist will also incise deep radial lines and groups of suture-like gashes with a rough knife blade, its rapid trajectory disrupted by bits of grog. Along with vessels and relief works are a recently produced group of enclosed, balloon-like pieces which, while resembling architectural finials, also suggest the human head. With them are associated drawings in black silhouette, atypical in their simplicity.

Purvey has described drawing as a physically and emotionally charged act, a statement one might extend to the whole of her practice. The artist’s drawings are not studies for three-dimensional pieces but works in their own right, made in mixed media on paper of various weights and textures. Multi-layered, their starting point is in dilute black gouache, applied directly from the bottle and worked over with a small roller to establish an initial broken texture. The drawings employ the whites, blacks, and greys of the works in clay, along with a wider palette of yellows, ranging from pale ochre to deep egg yolk. Occasionally another colour appears, such as an incursion of vermillion or of scribbled orange. Many are spatially complex, with partially submerged pockets and delicate traceries of darkness and light. The abstract motifs deployed echo those of the ceramics, but are more expansively gestural, many of the sheets covered edge-to-edge, so that they appear as though fragments of a larger, potentially endless script or score. The dense blackness of certain drawings is comparable to those made in tarry paint-stick by the

American Richard Serra, whilst their loping calligraphy, scribbled in horizontal lines like so much automatic writing, has something in common with that of another American, the painter Cy Twombly, at his most abstract. In writing these notes I kept returning to the idea of the cloud hedge at Corsham Court, with its outward display and hidden interior; it seemed a fitting metaphor for the dualities in Purvey’s work. For the theme of revelation and containment is surely central here; not solely in the vessel forms themselves, but in their layered surfaces, and in the artist’s drawn vocabulary of curvilinear shapes. In each work, be it in clay or on paper, fragments of histories of thought and action are as though partly excavated in a form of ambivalent retrieval. The body of work is both decorative and at the same time intensely personal, its layered meanings operating somewhere between disclosure and concealment.

The Pea hand built stoneware, slips,oxide 37cmH x 40cmW

The Space Between gouache, chalk, pencil, oil pastel 76cmH x 55cmW

Fringe acrylic, gouache, chalk, pencil 76cmH x 55cmW

Twilight gouache, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cmW

Still Point acrylic, gouache, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cmW

Gatekeeper II hand built stoneware, slip 56cmH x 33cmW

Gatekeeper I hand built stoneware, slip 54cmH x 28cmW

Every Cloud acrylic, gouache, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cmW

Fairytale acrylic, gouache, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cmW

Gateway hand built stoneware, slips, oxide 49cmH x 28cmW

Boundaries gouache, oil pastel, pencil 38cmH x 28cmW

Holding Time gouache, pencil, chalk 38cmH x 28cmW

Brace hand built stoneware, slips, oxide 49cmH x 38cmW x 22cmD

Constant gouache, chalk, pencil 78cmH x 61cmW

Here and Now gouache, chalk, oil pastel 60cmH x 50cmW

Crest gouache, chalk, pencil 29cmH x 21cmW

Core gouache, chalk, pencil 29cmH x 21cmW

Belong gouache, chalk, pencil 29cmH x 21cmW

Confines gouache, chalk, pencil 29cmH x 21cmW

Home gouache, chalk 59cmH x 42cmW

Fractured gouache, chalk, pencil 59cmH x 42cmW

Borderline gouache, chalk 59cmH x 42cmW

Shallow Support (detail) gouache 64cmH x 51cmW

Shadow Form gouache 64cmH x 51cmW

Open gouache 64cmH x 51cmW

Flat Spin gouache 64cmH x 51cmW

Standing Form gouache, chalk, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

Echo hand built stoneware, slips 36cmW x 4cmD

Periphery gouache, chalk, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

Long Story Short gouache, chalk, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

Between Here and There gouache, chalk, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

All at Sea (detail) gouache, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cmW

Holding On hand built stoneware, slips 46cmW x 13cmD

Mass hand built stoneware, slips 54cmW x 8cmD

In a Nut Shell hand built stoneware, slips, oxide 46cmH x 30cmD

Blur gouache, chalk, pencil 59cmH x 42cmW

Buckle Up gouache, chalk, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

Accidentally on Purpose gouache, pencil 64cmH x 51cmW

Lead Balloon hand built stoneware, slips, oxide 57cmH x 50cmW

Witness gouache, acrylic, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cW

Belonging gouache, chalk, pencil 76cmH x 55cW

Trigger gouache, acrylic, chalk, pencil 70cmH x 50cW

Sarah Purvey

Study 2009 1991 1988 Exhibitions 2009 - 2021

MA Ceramics, Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University BA Ceramics, Bath College of Higher Education BTec Ceramics, Plymouth College of Art & Design Since completing her MA Sarah Purvey has exhibited every year. Exhibitions have included group shows, prizes and awards, art fairs, solo shows and residences with independent and public galleries in the UK and internationally. A full list is available on request.

Public Collections 2021 Pallant House, Chichester: Ceramic 2021 Chippenham Museum: Hand finished print 2020 Chippenham Museum: Drawing 2019 Chippenham Museum: Ceramic 2019 Swindon Museum & Art Gallery: Drawing 2017 BSAD Corsham Court Collection: Ceramic 2016 Swindon Museum & Art Gallery: Ceramic 2012 BSAD Corsham Court Collection: Ceramic

Selected Publications and Articles 2020 Modern & Contemporary Art, Chippenham Museum Catalogue 2016 Ceramic Review Issue 282 Fresh Space Article 2016 From Where I’m Standing: Catalogue Swindon Museum & Art Gallery 2016 Sculpture For Furniture, Michael Pennie 2015 Inspirational Magazine- Feature John Hopper 2014 Palette Pages interview- Lisa Gray 2013 Ceramic Review Bath Abbey Hospitality Show Review by Ian Wilson 2013 New Ceramics: Sculpting and Hand Building by Claire Loder (A&C Black), June 2012 Aspect Magazine, Front Cover Image, Ecclesiastical Annual Art & Heritage Review 2011 Museum of International Ceramics(Mic)Faenza, presentation Mirco Denicolo, September

Purchasing work Works are available for purchase on receipt of this catalogue and will also be available online from Saturday 12th March.

Contact Email: sales@twenty-twenty.co.uk Telephone: 01584 875363 www.twenty-twenty.co.uk

Visiting the exhibition The exhibition will be open 12th March to 16th April Wednesday to Saturday 10.30am to 4pm (Monday & Tuesday by appointment)

Works by Sarah Purvey Photography studio shots: John Taylor Foreword: Dr. Ian Massey

Twenty Twenty Gallery 4 Quality Square, Ludlow SY8 1AR Ludlow railway station is a 10 minute walk to the gallery. Public car parking at Castle Street is a 2 minute walk.