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In The Frame: King's Lynn
In
The Frame: King's Lynn
By Will Teather
Green Pebble Juny/July 2010 issue
Crossing Borders
My first visit to the Eastern Open Exhibition was also my maiden voyage to King’s Lynn in Norfolk. The town is centred around a historic market place which I'm told was the setting for several grisly tales such as witch hunts, hangings and a rare account of someone being boiled alive. Happily, these days the good people of King’s Lynn seem very friendly towards visitors, with even the sun coming out for my arrival.
Only a short stroll from the market place is King's Lynn Arts Centre, housed in the 15th century Guildhall of St George. This beautiful venue has been hosting the Eastern Open exhibition for 41 years, one of the few events in East of England's calendar to attempt the ambitious task of providing an overview of the visual arts from across all seven counties. Short-listed from several hundred entries, the artworks are of a consistently high standard. Video art has been included in recent years and the 2010 show featured a book documenting performances by live-artist Dot Howard, showing the arts centre's mission to embrace contemporary trends. This could be enjoyed alongside a wide range of ideas and themes being explored in drawings, paintings and other two-dimensional works, amongst a predictably large number of works inspired by the region's landscape.
Kate Hodges/Elgie
An artist who takes an unusual approach to finding inspiration from her surroundings is Kate Hodges. For her artworks in the exhibition she collected pieces of wood which she came across and, by singeing marks onto them, created intricate drawings and patterns. This process is both sympathetic to the materials and tranformative of them, with her mark-making taking inspiration from the grain of the wood to create compositions that seem to reference both aboriginal art and art deco.
She describes her art as very ‘process led’, which seems the easiest way of linking her extremely diverse practice. On the previous occasions that I have encountered Hodge's work it has been in the form of conceptual installations and performances. Much as her wood pieces respond to the natural form, her more avant-garde explorations tend to be ‘site-responsive’ – created to enter into a dialogue with the environment in which the piece is situated, be it a car park or a warehouse.
Hodges herself seems slightly uncomfortable with the breadth of her practice, feeling that the craft element in the wood patterns is almost a guilty pleasure, akin to her secret liking of artists such as Andy Goldsworthy. In fact, she entered the artworks into the Eastern Open under the pseudonym of Kate Elgie. She tells me that craft and a formal consideration of beauty doesn't normally enter into her work; her priority is more to help people see the world around them in a different way. This is just before admitting that she is knitting a jumper whilst on the other end of the phone: something she would never describe as art. I ask her why she wouldn't consider using knitting in her work. After all, Tracey Emin makes quilts and, whilst the likes of Jeff Koons might not make their own artworks, Koons certainly makes sure that his assistants keep up high production values.
Nonetheless, I take Hodges' point that artists often end up sitting in a certain camp: one that is either more craft-driven, ideas-driven, seeks beauty, or tries to challenge our perceptions. She mentions a liking for James Torrell, a light artist whose practice provides a good example of both thought-provoking and beautiful contemporary art which often has an emotional effect on viewers.
If there really is a decision to be made about which road she should go down, she doesn't need to make it just yet. She is still early in her career as an artist, having initially used it as a form of self-therapy after a stressful period working with the ambulance service as a nurse. Maybe the decision to create a pseudonym could work to her advantage, giving her the freedom to explore both strands of her talent independently, without fear of persecution from the art police.
Karen Jones
Karen Jones is another exhibitor who seems to be crossing the borders between craft and art, as she journeys from being a successful book illustrator towards a burgeoning career as a fine artist. Fed up with working to briefs for the likes of Harper Collins and Dorling Kindersley, she recently made the decision to focus on a more personal body of work.
A natural route into this was to continue depicting narratives, but ones of her own choosing. Her painting titled The Bloody Chamber is based upon a book of the same name by Angela Carter. Carter explores themes close to the artist's heart such as the other worldly, the mysterious and macabre, and the trials of love. The sinister subject matter is lightened in tone by the meticulous comic book style that Jones uses to render these scenes and her zingy palette. She hopes that these elements bring a modern twist to the otherwise antiquated scenes depicted, also enjoying the contrast between the childlike and adult qualities to her compositions.
Jones's chosen medium is gouache, for which her style is perfectly suited. Although similar to watercolour, gouache is heavier and more opaque with greater reflective qualities, making it ideal for creating even areas of vivid tone with precise paintwork. Furthermore, it can be layered opaquely to add detail onto the characters' clothes.
Gouache is less suited to transparent glazes though, which are often used by artists to model form and depth. In Jones's case this is no loss, since it helps keep the focus on her exquisite line work. The lines are where Jones takes the greatest pleasure in her process, being inspired by artists and illustrators such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley and contemporary figures such as Patrick Caulfield. The latter's fastidious drawing style bears some striking similarities to her technique, although Caulfield deals with an entirely different subject matter.
My only reservation with Jones's work is that it is so meticulous and the tones so even that is hard to tell you are looking at an original painting rather than a reproduction. There is something to be said for paintings that have unique properties which can't be reproduced. In Jones's case this might be achieved through the introduction of gold leaf and elements of collage. Maybe this is an unfair complaint to leave at the door of an extremely talented artist who is, after all, from an illustration background where such qualities are a virtue. In any case, Jones would disagree, talking of a love for the velvety quality that goache brings to a painting. She also takes a certain pleasure in telling people that it is an original they are looking at, after all, maybe because it reveals the depth of her skill and the master of illusions that she undoubtedly is.
Will Teather lectures on drawing at Norwich University College of the Arts and is a trustee of the Anteros Art Foundation. He will be exhibiting new paintings at Colomb Art Gallery, London, in their Summer Show from 27th May until early September. For more details about the artist visit Website.
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