Skin Deep !
26 February - 6 April 2014
Salisbury Arts Centre
Cover image: Wanderflower Harriet White
Creeper #2 Clare Chapman
 
The seed of the idea for Skin Deep grew from a broad theme of Artificial Things for the 2014 programme at Salisbury Arts Centre. We bring together four contemporary artists whose painted surfaces play tricks with appearance and reality. Naomi Frears was invited to ponder on the role of painting today from her personal stance as a painter.
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Fiona Cassidy Visual Arts and Exhibitions Manager
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THE TROUBLE WITH PAINTING Naomi Frears
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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Dr Seuss
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Painting is such an odd thing to do. To engage in an activity that appears to be so limited is fascinating. There is always another way to examine and consider the world, or one’s experience of it, using paint.
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The act of painting is, unsurprisingly, quite detached from the presentation of finished work in a gallery space. I’m probably not alone in experiencing a peculiar, somewhat disconnected sensation when I see my work in an exhibition. It’s as if someone else has made these images although, curiously, I know every millimetre of the surface and the entire history of each painting as if I’m looking at a whole film all at once. There’s elation at having turned one thing into another and a creeping excitement that the adventure will start again quite soon. Notwithstanding this thrilling part of being an artist, I feel that the real mystery and the core of painting happens behind the studio door. I am interested in how painters work with ideas and how an idea, a thought or a feeling becomes paint.
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Without wanting to add to the mystery, I am not sure I can explain precisely what happens in my own studio – how unhelpful. I cannot isolate the moment when an idea is translated from a sketchbook or some other source into paint and onto a canvas and I’m not exactly sure how it happens. The decisions I am making to determine whether that image stays and is developed or is destroyed are instinctive. I know I want to make paintings I don’t already know how to make – and that I must be tough - but I’m never sure what will occur when I apply paint to the surface in front of me. Maybe it’s the not knowing that makes a studio practice so compelling.
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Whatever a contemporary painter’s practice, how should we approach their work? Some painters in the past sought to elevate painting above other art forms. It’s clear that it can be difficult to make thoughtprovoking paintings so we all have to work extra hard to have any chance in the world of contemporary art. This is a good thing. It’s much healthier, I believe, for painting to have to fight for a place in the art world on equal terms.
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So, painting gets no special dispensation but it does occasionally have attached to it certain assumptions about how paintings should be made and what the subject matter should be. Every generation produces wonderful painters who develop innovative ways to explore the world within and beyond the familiar genres of landscape, portrait and still life. If Francis Bacon was right that an artist ‘is involved with making the sensibility open up through the image’, it could be more interesting to be surprised – to be witnessing something new so that our reaction is new and unfamiliar too. Painting may no longer be revelatory in that it is no longer used as it once was, to show people heaven and hell, but it can still reveal other realms regarding the materiality of paint or the erotic charge of pure colour.
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When looking at contemporary painting we also have to deal with the contentious issue of ‘skill’. Traditionally, perceived skill in drawing or painting may have delighted and re-assured but we might be missing the point if we focus our attention there when ideas can take other, perhaps more exciting, forms. If we just remove the skill test from the equation, we may be more open to understanding and appreciating many paintings made today as they actually appear in front of us without worrying about a set of rules being broken.
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In this exhibition, when I look at Clare Chapman’s work, I can see that she seems to have found a way of unlocking soft volume with paint – that her subject might be the possibilities of paint itself. I am alarmed and captivated simultaneously by the figures in Harriet White’s paintings; they invite close scrutiny and wonder. Throwing figures recognisable from contemporary life into the ring with art historical references in startling tableaux, Heather Jane Wallace lets the characters fight it out and dispenses with all affectations. In the work of Mike Newton everything looks so fresh, it’s as if the brush has just been put down. While demonstrating a sensitivity in his handling of paint he shows he has an eye for unlikely juxtapositions of colour and ambiguous space.
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Hopefully you are in front of the paintings in this exhibition – if so you are at an enormous advantage. You will find out so much about what these artists are showing you, what their obsessions might be, how they use materials and maybe how their thoughts become paint simply by looking.
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Naomi Frears is a painter and printmaker based in St Ives.
CLARE CHAPMAN
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Clare studied Fine Art at Falmouth before completing her MA at the Slade. She lives in London and for the past ten years has been working from her studio in Hackney.
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There is an evolutionary feel to Clare’s work both in the subject matter of her paintings and in the way they have morphed over time. Clare works instinctively in a fairly restricted colour range and says that even when she tries to move away from fleshy, violent pink she is excited when she returns to it. Many hours are spent creating quick studies on paper alongside the longer practice of working on canvas. Despite the seemingly precise final paintings they are made intuitively, often incorporating accidental marks. They can be worked and reworked over a number of months sometimes changing completely with each layer of paint until they come to a state of rest and Clare no long feels the need to change them again.
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In the Dark Places Clare Chapman
This method of working has seen the ‘objects’ in her images slowly transform over the years and the paintings in this exhibition present a miniature survey representing key points in that mutation. It is easy to be drawn in, to try to understand but to be a little repulsed by what we might be looking at. These works hover in a no-mans-land of painting, not quite figurative but not fully abstract and this is where their allure lies.
MIKE NEWTON
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Mike grew up in Middleton near Manchester. He left school at sixteen and started work in the chemical industry, which led to a degree in Mathematics. He proceeded to build a successful sales and marketing career in the oil and automotive industries, but in 2000 he decided to change tack and fulfill his ambition to be an artist. During his worldwide travels with work he had always been accompanied by his camera and on the strength of his photography he began an art foundation course.
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Mike went on to study Fine Art Painting at Bath Spa University, completing a PhD in 2013. During this time he developed a distinctive way of manipulating paint to portray his melancholic subject matter. Many weeks are spent carefully preparing his canvases and rehearsing his ideas on paper. The final paintings are then created quickly, moving wet paint around to create brooding, liquid compositions. Listening to music is an integral part of his process and often seeps into his titles.
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The five paintings in this exhibition are part of a larger series called A New Dawn Fades (the title of a 1979 Joy Division single) which all relate to specific personal memories. July Wakes recalls Mike’s teenage excursions into the Peak District searching for a connection with the area’s industrial past. Come Dancing prompts a childhood memory of waking alone in the night in a cramped Blackpool hotel room to see his mother’s ballroom dancing dresses hanging from the picture rail above him. Mike says that the minotaur in a New Dawn Fades is him as a teenager - Mr Sad and Lonely - and the memories of being compelled to express his individuality through music and clothes whilst knowing that his outward difference made him a target. Bully brings to mind the twisted metal still scattered throughout Manchester in the 60s and 70s, a reminder of the destruction of wartime bombing raids and Fleur du Mal ponders the contradictory sentiments in the gesture of cutting a living plant to give as an expression of love.
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Come Dancing Mike Newton
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HEATHER JANE WALLACE
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Heather Jane Wallace lives and works in rural Somerset where she has spent most of her life. She moved briefly to Birmingham to qualify as a teacher but then returned to the area to teach art, firstly in secondary schools and then for adult education classes. Ten years ago she made the decision to focus on her own artistic output rather than that of her students. She returned to university, completing her MA at London City and Guilds in 2008.
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Heather’s figurative paintings are a portrait of society itself rather than a portrait of the individuals they depict. Sometimes it is not entirely clear whether we are laughing with the subject or at them.
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A Rise in Inflation Heather Jane Wallace
For the past two years Heather has been working on the six paintings shown in this exhibition which chart The Life and Times of Chloe Klass. The series follows the trajectory of a young woman as she leaves the country and comes up to London to make her way in the world, all the while depicting the decline of a middle class idyll. Heather’s paintings merge art history and contemporary culture, basing this particular set on William Hogarth’s 1732 series The Harlot’s Progress. The spectacle within each frame is built up by layering images collected from magazine scraps, newspapers and adverts. As with historical paintings before them, they reward close inspection as every element has it’s associated meaning - look out for the dogs and flashes of red in each image.
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HARRIET WHITE Harriet White grew up in Somerset, began her art education in Falmouth then studied Fine Art at Bath Spa University. She now lives in Bristol and works from her space at BV Studios.
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Like many emerging artists, Harriet spent the first few years after graduation in 2001 fitting her painting around a variety of temporary jobs. About ten years ago she took a long break in France which allowed her to focus on her painting and on her return she began exhibiting her work more regularly, initially in Bristol then further afield. She has twice been selected for the Holbourne Portrait Prize and twice been included in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery. Most recently she was shortlisted for the prestigious Threadneedle Prize.
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The glittery close-up paintings in this exhibition belong to a series that Harriet began about five years ago. She had been working from naturalistic, candid photos for a while and one day snapped her friend Lucy putting on make-up. Harriet says that she loved creating the ‘glisten’ and was intrigued by the surface, pattern and seeing what the light could do. This exploration of painting light has continued, always beginning with a photograph. Her models are close friends invited to dip into Harriet’s ever growing collection of wigs and glittery make-up.
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Before the painting can start, the photographs are tweaked digitally to increase the intensity of the colour. The immaculately smooth surfaces are built up with many layers of oil paint, working across the whole painting up to ten times to create the finished picture. The resulting images play tricks on your perception: from a distance you might mistake them for photographs, but there is a point as you draw in close when the paint becomes apparent and the brush marks pop into view.
Establishing the Right Culture (detailI)! Heather Jane Wallace Fleur du Mal XVIII Mike Newton
Skin Deep was originated by Salisbury Arts Centre Artist biographies, studio photographs and booklet design by Fiona Cassidy With thanks to the artists and Naomi Frears
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Salisbury Arts Centre! Bedwin Street! Salisbury SP1 3UT! www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk! 01722 321744