Felt not Thought…Works on Paper began with an introduction to the works by Anthony Corner through VeniceArtFactory. Corner had been working with them for several years. Through a collaboration with VeniceArtFactory, Shh…what’s that? was exhibited in Vestry St. in 2024. Here the works were taped to the gallery walls, by removing the frame, there is an instant fragility, the barrier between the viewer and the work becomes intimate and approachable.
The title Felt not Thought is taken from an essay and dialogue with Corner’s paintings which will be released alongside the exhibition, written by Professor Michael Bannisy. For curator Rebecca Scott, it acted as a starting point, a spectrum. On one end we have “felt”, spontaneity and intuitiveness, and the opposite end we have “thought”, rational thinking and/or conceptual thinking.
For instance, the meticulous decisions of Gerard Hemsworth are very considered, each painting carefully designed bringing together signs and representations of modernist art alongside cartoonish narratives to create contradictions between the serious and absurd ending in an uncanny and subversive outcome (1).
Corner’s paintings are the opposite, rigorously worked, the marks shifting, erased, and repeated, evolving from marks of scripts. “Anthony’s artistry evokes a profound and often unconscious merging of the senses. While visually captivating, his work delves deeper by alluding to the realms of touch and sound, creating a synaesthetic-like experience for the observer” (2).
From there the conversation broadened and Scott began thinking about the contrast between the artists, the way they use mark-making to create a dialogue. The vagaries of watercolour are evident in Barbara Nicholls’ works, the masterful controlling of a fluid medium, emerging through the manipulation of behaviour of pigment in ever-increasing quantities of water (3). These are also seen in the soft mystical watercolours depicting whimsical plants and/or otherness by Stella Whalley. The medium changes within the works by Ashley Beerdat, oil pastel, less fluid, yet the movements instinctual, moving freely and without decisive thought, the immediate contact on paper creating a vulnerability and allowing creation without hesitation.
Spontaneous and immediate mark-making is evident in the collaborative and performative drawings of Sarah Kent and Sharon Leahy-Clark who will be creating a live performative piece at the private view in Cross Lane Projects. The vibrant strokes created in the moment allow the visitors to view an aspect that is usually hidden away in studios, the vulnerability to the piece will be on display from creation and the finished piece will be directly installed once completed.
Rebecca Scott’s work sits in the middle of the spectrum, a bridge between the felt and thought. The text, excerpts from A Sport of Nature by Nadine Gordimer and The Tao of the first grandchild by her late mother Prudence Scott written as Marie Scott. The emojis, light and whimsical, a universal language are glued onto the paper followed by the off-set stencils making the final version arbitrary.
Sitting alongside these at the centre of the spectrum are John Plowman’s drawings exploring the dynamic between two and three dimensions, the made and the yet to be made. His drawings feature sculptural forms that are yet to be physically created and is a key element to his art practice, using paper as a constructor’s tool. At first glance, the construction drawings are meticulous, the lines straight and clear. As the eye draws closer, the line becomes more chaotic and feel more spontaneous.
Starting in geometry, Alex Giles’ paintings are bold and graphic, hard edges that exist to emphasise the colour fields within the work. His use of this adds a narrative that expresses a love of movement and the incidental beauty of the mundane. Similarly to Hemsworth, utilising simple shapes and lines that often show whimsy.
(1) http://www.gerardhemsworth.com/
(2) Michael Banissy, 2024 - https://www.veniceartfactory.org/pagina-mostre/over-and-over-and-over-%2F%2F-anthony-corner
(3) https://www.barbaranicholls.co.uk/biog
Felt not Thought: Works on Paper press release
Download