ART FICTIONS

Guest artist KAREN McLEAN

joins Elizabeth Fullerton to chat about her work via Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel 'The Underground Railroad' published by Doubleday. The historical fiction tells of 19th century slaves Cora and Caesar and their attempts to escape to freedom in America's south west.

Starting with her intensely researched art practice, Karen McLean and Elizabeth explore stories of rebellion and suffering amongst individuals and the collective, including female power, body ownership, intergenerational identity, mental illness and a vast knowledge of plants used as a method of resistance. They also delve into the structural legacies created by the sugar, cotton and indigo industries; colonialism, covert operations, syncretic religions, and the rise of the blue devil.

(This episode is co-produced by Jillian Knipe and Elizabeth Fullerton with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

KAREN McLEAN

instagram karenmclean_art

karenmclean.co.uk

'Blue Power' 2021 Block 336

'Ar'n't I A Woman' 2021 Block 336

'The Precariat' 2017 Lewisham Arthouse

ARTISTS

Anish Kapoor

Donald Judd

Doris Salcedo

El Anatsui

Eva Hesse 'Contingent' 1968

Gees Bend Quiltmakers, Alabama

Ibrahim Mahama

Joseph Beuys

Kara Walker

Louise Bourgeois

Paul Goodwin

Sheila Gowda

Teresa Margolles

Theaster Gates

Tracey Emin

BOOKS ACTIVISTS THEORISTS

Alan Krell 'The Devil's Rope: A Cultural History of Barbed Wire' 2002

Alice Walker 'Everyday Use' 1973

Bell Hooks 'Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism' 1981

Deborah Grey White 'Ar'n't I A Woman' 1985

Edward Said (Professor of Literature, Columbia University)

Emily Zobel Marshall 'Anansi's Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance' 2012

Harriet Tubman, 'Harriet' film 2019

Hilary Beckles 'Natural Rebels' 1989

Homi Bhabha 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse' 1984

Jacques Lacan (psychoanalyst)

Sojourner Truth (abolotionist, women's rights activist) 'Ain't I A Woman' speech 1851

Toni Morrison 'Beloved' 1987

GALLERIES LOCATIONS RESOURCES

Afterprojects, Julie Bentley

Birmingham City University

Black Cultural Archives, Brixton UK

Block 336, Brixton UK

Gees Bend Quilting Retreat

Goldsmiths University of London UK

King's Cross Station, London UK

Shakespeare's House, Stratford UK

The Gale Plantation, Jamaica, Caribbean

The New Art Gallery, Walsall UK

The Steamhouse, Birmingham UK

Trinidad & Tobago, Caribbean

Guest artist DEAN KENNING

joins me to chat about his work via John Maxwell Coetzee's 2013 allegorical novel 'The Childhood of Jesus'. The story revolves around five year old David with his father-by-default Símon, on their quest to find a mother for the boy and a better life for the three of them. 

Winner of this year's prestigious Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, Dean Kenning, and I go on to discuss his clunky sculptures, social body-mind maps and his philosophical mish mash 'Metallurgy of the Subject'. We delve into the cracks between the flatness to explore ideas around satire, proliferation, bad infinity, socialist utopia, universal modes of seeing the world, common language, allegorical imagery, the importance of the father, avoidance of composition, a dislike for kinetic work, redundant technology, history as a bloody struggle and poo in sausages.

(This episode is produced by Jillian Knipe with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

DEAN KENNING

deankenning.com

instagram Dean Kenning notfairbear

'The Origin of Life' 2019

'Psychobotanical' 2019 Matt's Gallery

'Renaissance Man' 2017

'Metallurgy of the Subject' ongoing

ARTISTS

Antony Gormley 'Angel of the North' 1998

David Bowie (musician)

Emma Cousin 'Chats in Lockdown' podcast

English Heretic (musicians)

Hieronymus Bosch

Kiki Smith 'Her Memory' Fundació Joan Miró

Leonardo da Vinci 'Vitruvian Man'

Paul McCarthy 'Painter' 1995

BOOKS & THEORISTS

Benjamin Markovits (writer)

C L R James 'The Black Jacobins' 1938

Colm Tóibín 'The Testament of Mary' 2012

Franz Schubert (composer)

Immanuel Kant (philosopher)

J M Coetzee 'Disgrace' 1999

J M Coetzee 'Waiting for the Barbarians' 1980

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 'Erlkönig' 1782

Jacques Lacan (psychoanalyist)

Jean Fisher (professor, art critic, writer)

Jean-Luc Nancy 'The Inoperative Community' 1986

John Roberts (philosopher) 'Dean Kenning's Kinetics' 2019

Jorge Luis Borges 'Three Versions of Judas' 1944

Joyce Carol Oates 'My Life as a Rat' 2019

Karl Marx

Kazuo Ishiguro 'The Buried Giant' 2015

Plato 'Republic' 375BC

Russell Hoban 'Riddley Walker' 1980

Susan Buck-Morss (professor, philosopher, historian)

William Burrows (writer)

William Morris 'Useful Work versus Useless Toil' 1885

Walter Benjamin (philosopher)

William Playfair (engineer)

TELEVISION

'Day of the Triffids' from 1981 

'Dr Who' from 1963

Kenny Everett

Guest artist KATE MccGWIRE

joins Elizabeth Fullerton to chat about her work via American wildlife scientist Delia Owens' 2018 novel 'Where the Crawdads Sing'. In an ode to the beauty and violence of nature, the story centres around wild "marsh girl" Kya Clark. Abandoned and isolated from childhood, young Kya relies on nature to teach her the basics of survival as well as deluding her that one day she will be rescued. Interaction with other humans provides a whole different set of support and threatening challenges. 

Identifying with Kya's barefoot 'n' wild soul, Kate MccGwire and Elizabeth Fullerton share stories of herons, crows, eagles, magpies, blackbirds, turkeys, pheasants, tropicbirds and the confounding snobbiness around pigeons and doves who are both part of the Columbidae family. They go on to explore snakes, oozing, gushing, skin, bones, intestines and scrotum' as well as darkness, resilience, rapture, seductions, repulsion, calm, turbulence, obsessiveness, working intensely, choir singing and Kate achieving a distinction for her dissertation at the Royal College despite being dyslexic. 

(This episode is co-produced by Jillian Knipe and Elizabeth Fullerton with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

KATE MccGWIRE

katemccgwire.com

instagram kate_mccgwire

'Cavort' 2020

'Sluice' 2009

'Sominal' 2019

ARTISTS & DESIGNERS & PERFORMERS

Akram Khan

Berlinde de Bruyckere

Doris Salcedo

Eva Hesse

Helen Chadwick

Helmut Lang

Hermès

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown

Mona Hatoum

Robert Adam 

Thomas Chippendale

BOOKS

Annie Proulx 'Barkskins' 2016

Douglas Stuart 'Shuggie Bain' 2020

Khaled Hosseini 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' 2007

Margaret Atwood 'Dearly: Poems' 2020

Tim Winton 'The Shepherd’s Hut' 2018

GALLERIES & ART DESTINATIONS

Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire 

Grand Palais Éphémère 'Art Paris' 2021 contemporary art fair

Harewood House, Leeds

The Lowry, Manchester

SERIES

'It’s a Sin' written by Russel T Davies

MUSIC

Benjamin Britten 'Peter Grimes' 1945

Henry Purcell 'Hear my prayer, O Lord' 1682

Henry Purcell 'Lord, How Long Wilt Thou Be Angry'

Guest artist FIONA CURRAN 

joins me to chat about her work via Esther Kinsky's 2020 novel 'Grove : A Field Guide'. The story is directed by a narrator who takes a trip to a village on the outskirts of Rome which was supposed to be an adventure with her recently deceased partner. 

Fiona and I go on to discuss how the work of her current solo exhibition developed during lockdown and a nasty bout of covid, as well as an earlier, major outdoor installation. We expand on landscape as a character, contemporary poetry, a balance of bleak and beauty, loss of identity through grief, looking for solace in the landscape, loving everything Italian, beyond the optical, seduction of the screen, the colour blue, extreme fatigue, memory flooding into the present, sanitisation of nature, resurfacing, fragmentation, aimlessness, hovering, disorientation and losing a sense of self. 

(This episode is produced by Jillian Knipe with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

FIONA CURRAN 

fionacurran.co.uk

instagram fiona_curran

'Jump Cut, Still Life' solo exhibition at Broadway Gallery

'Your Sweetest Empire is to Please' outdoor installation at Gibson Estate

ARTISTS

Anna Maria Garthwaite

Anni Albers

Florence Peake

Fra Angelico

Gunta Stöltzl

Hannah Luxton

Hélio Oticica

Henri Matisse

Lindsay Seers

Lygia Clark

Lygia Pape

Mary Heilman

Raoul De Keyser

Sonia Delaunay

BOOKS

Anne Truitt 'Daybook : The Journal of an Artist' 1982

Esther Kinsky 'River' 2014

Jeremy Cooper 'Bolt from the Blue' 2021

Joanne Kyger 'The Japan and India Journals 1960-1964' 1981

Linda J Lear 'Rachel Carson : Witness for Nature' 1994

Rachel Carson 'Silent Spring' 1962

Rebecca Solnit 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost' 2005

GALLERIES

Bosse & Baum

Broadway Gallery, Letchworth

THEORISTS & BOTANY

Gibside Estate

Kew Gardens

Mary Eleanor Bows 1749-1800

Mary Wollstonecroft 1759-1797

Paul Virilio 1932-2018

FILM

Michelangelo Antonioni 'Red Desert' 1964 starring Monica Vitti

Pier Paolo Pasolini 'The Hawks and the Sparrows' 1966 'Notes Towards and African Orestes' 1970

Guest artist LINDSAY SEERS 

joins Elizabeth Fullerton to chat about her work via Russell Hoban's 1980 novel 'Riddley Walker'. A child of sorts in a futurist, post-nuclear explosion setting which harks back to the iron age, far from walking, the narrator Riddley is on the run. His patriarchal heritage has deemed him 'connexion man' and alongside his role of puppeteer, interpreter and propaganda pusher, Riddley begins to uncover the truth of past cleverness which is officially prohibited under religious conjecture. He throws himself to the dogs and together they journey through danger and forbidden knowledge in a story held together by a fragmented new language.

Layering ideas and various time zones, Lindsay Seers and Elizabeth Fullerton explore imposter syndrome, hunger for power, problems with articulation, excess of language, confusion, the puppet who overwhelms the puppetmaster, the search for new forms of artwork, becoming a camera, character instability, non normative brains, compassion, discomfort, connections, coincidences, blips, misunderstandings, signs, traces, unknown causes, unknown effects, mass hallucination, states of becoming, constant evolution, multitude of narratives, grand historical narratives, personal history, quantum theory, quantum biology, metaphysics, unified consciousness, the impossibility of identifying origin, and eye gouging.

(This episode is co-produced by Jillian Knipe and Elizabeth Fullerton with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

LINDSAY SEERS

lindsayseers.info

instagram lindsayseers1

'Entangled'

'Every Thought There Ever Was'

'Nowhere Less Now' 

The following references are mentioned on Podcast Episode 22 or suggested by guest artist Lindsay Seers : 

AUTHORS & BOOKS 

Anthony Burgess 'A Clockwork Orange' 1962

Arto Paasilinna

Brian Massumi 'What Animals Teach Us About Politics' 2017

EE Cummings

Frances Yates

Gerard Manley Hopkins

James Joyce

Jim Al-KKhalili & Johnjoe McFadden 'Life on the Edge : The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology' 2014

Jeremy Cooper 'Bolt From the Blue' 2021

Kevin Breathnach 'Tunnel Vision' 2019

Lindsay Seers 'Human Camera' 2007

T S Eliot

Virginia Woolf

THEORISTS

Benjamin Libet - Libet's Clock

Carl Jung, psychiatrist

Giles Deuleuze

Henri Bergson

Jacques Lacan, psychoanalyst

John Dee

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Samuel Barclay Beckett, novelist and playwright

ARTISTS & GALLERIES & ART ORGS

Artangel

Derek Jarman 'Jubilee' 1978

Ewerk, Berlin

Fabrica Gallery, Brighton UK

Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea UK

Hospitalfield Gallery, Arbroath, Scotland UK

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham UK

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton UK

MONA (Tasmania), Australia

Nine Elms site, Matt's Gallery, London UK

Robin Klassnik, Matt's Gallery, London UK

Sharha Art Foundation, UAE

Sursock Museum, Lebanon

Tate, London UK

TELEVISION & FILM

Everything by Adam Curtis (English documentary filmaker)

'The Bridge' series 2011

'The Fly' film series

'The Quartermass Experiment' series 1953

'Twin Peaks' series 1990

'Twin Peaks : The Return' series 2020

Guest artist LIZ ELTON

joins me to chat about her work via Max Porter's 2019 novel 'Lanny'. The story revolves around a young boy named Lanny and his disappearance in the setting of an English village bordered by a forest. Little lad Lanny is as captivating as his author's ability to envelope us deep within the seams of the village's social and ecological networks, where Dead Papa Toothwort oversees all, over all time. 

Bouncing off nature and infinite ephemerality, Liz and I go on to discuss her work selected for the John Moores Painting Prize as well as her upcoming residency with the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust. We talk of the constant state of becoming, nourishment, self care, delicate touch, bruising, translucency, landscape, lightness, mortality, composting, ritual, recycling, equality, silk thread, internal shadows, wastage, potential, breakdown, food labour and that fragile layer of soil on which all life depends connecting with our own skin.

(This episode is co-produced by Jillian Knipe and Elizabeth Fullerton with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

LIZ ELTON 

lizelton.com

instagram liz_elton

'John Moores Painting Prize' exhibition at Walker Art Gallery

'Flowers of Romance' group exhibition at White Conduit Projects

ARTISTS

Alice McCabe

Allyson Keehan, curator

Angela de la Cruz

Dillwyn Smith

Din Q Lê 'The Colony' 2016

Eliza Bennett

Elizabeth Murton

Eric Ravilious

Francisco Goya

Jem Finer 'Longplayer' at Trinity Buoy Wharf, longplayer.org

Johannes Vermeer 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' 1665

Julie F Hill

Katharina Grosse

Mark Rothko

Michael Landy 'Breakdown' 2001

Michelangelo 'Pieta' ('The Pity') 1498-1499

Paul Bramley, curator

Sam Gilliam

Sarah Pager

William Dyce 'Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858' 1858

Yves Klein

AUTHORS & BOOKS

Anna Souter 'Vegetate Project'

Anna Tsing 'The Mushroom at the end of the World' 2015

Charlotte Higgins on Michael Landy, 'The Guardian' 27 Jan 2021

Clive King 'Stig of the Dump' 1963

Donna Haraway

Frances Hodgson Burnett 'The Secret Garden' 1911

Jane Bennett 'Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things' 2009

Merlin Sheldrake 'Entangled Life : How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures' 2020 

Norman Bryson 'Looking at the Overlooked' 1990

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Steven Connor 'The Book of Skin' 2004

Sue Stuart-Smith 'The Well Gardened Mind' 2020

T S Eliot 'Burnt Norton' 1935

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Piketty 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' 2013

Tim Dee 'Landfill' 2018

Timothy Morton 'Being Ecological' 2018

Tracy Chevalier 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' 1999

GALLERIES

163 Gallery, London, juliebentley.co.uk

South London Gallery

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

White Conduit Projects, London

FILM & TELEVISION & RADIO

'Girl with a Pearl Earring' 2003, director Peter Webber

'Princess Mononoke' 2001, director Hayao Miyazaki

'The Archers' 1950-ongoing BBC Radio 4

PLACES

Belarus

Chew Valley Lake, Somerset UK

Harris, Outer Hebrides Scotland UK

Latvia

Lithuania

Maeshowe, Orkney Scotland UK

Pegwell Bay, UK

Ring of Brodgar, Orkney Scotland UK

St Kilda, archipelago off Scotland UK

OTHER

A P Fitzpatrick Fine Art Materials

Artangel 

Mark Rothko Memorial Fund

Maye E Bruce, inventor of 'Quick Return' compost system 1935

Slade School of Fine Art

Wimbledon School of Art

Guest artist MILLY PECK

joins me to chat about her work via Alan Ayckbourn's play 'Taking Steps - A Farce'. Published in 1981 by Haydonning Ltd and first performed at Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1979, the story revolves around a Victorian manor house in faltering disrepair. While the characters upstairs and downstairs their way around three storeys, the play is actually performed on only one floor so that various scenes interact simultaneously. It's then a cacophony of mishaps, misunderstandings and misdirections. Elizabeth wants to leave Roland. Roland wants to buy this tremendous house from Leslie for Elizabeth. Mark wants to marry Kitty. Kitty wants to leave Mark. Tristram, the junior solicitor, is just utterly confused about what's happening and where and by whom, and if all those strange noises are thanks to a resident ghost. 

Milly and I go on to discuss her solo exhibitions, most recently at Vitrine Gallery in Basel, her upcoming residency at British School at Rome and all the work inbetween. Mentions go to foley sound production, the physicality of the stage, playing with dimensions, scale, collage, flattening, inflating, puppeteers, backstage antics, confusing performance with reality, implicating the audience, dark elements shrouded in comedy, hands in gloves, hand in black and hands holding celery. 

(This episode is co-produced by Jillian Knipe and Elizabeth Fullerton with music by Griffin Knipe and image by Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions)

MILLY PECK

millypeck.com

instagram millypeck

'A Matter of Routine' Vitrine Gallery Basel solo exhibition 

'Loud Knock' Matts Gallery solo exhibition

'Pressure Head' Assembly Point solo exhibition

Works mentioned: 'Alight', 'Moquette', 'The Unforgiving Hour', 'Straphangers'

ARTISTS

Amelia Barrett (performer at Milly's solo exhibition at Assembly Point)

Andrea Montagne

Art Green

Edward Hopper

Emma Cousin ('Chats in Lockdown' podcast host)

Jordan Baseman (Royal College tutor and Art Fictions Episode 10)

Konrad Klapheck

Nick Mauss

Steve McQueen ('Deadpan' 1997)

William Hogarth ('A Rake's Progress' 1732-1734)

ACTORS & DIRECTORS

Bong Joon-ho (South Korean director, screenwriter, producer)

Buster Keaton (silent movies)

Charlie Kaufman (American screenwriter, producer, director, novelist)

David Thewlis

Imelda Staunton 

Mark Ruffalo

Robin Herford (British Theatre Director)

Sir Matthew Bourne OBE (choreographer)

Toby Jones 

GALLERIES & THEATRES

Assembly Point, London 

Goldsmiths CCA, London ('Solos' 2020, 'How! Chicago Imagists' 2019)

Kunsthalle, Basel Switzerland

Little Angel Theatre, Islington London

Matt's Gallery, London

National Theatre Archives

Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford UK

Sir John Soane's Museum, London

Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, Scarborough UK

Vitrine Gallery, London and Basel Switzerland

PLAYS

'A Chorus of Disapproval'

'Fantastic Mr Fox'

'House and Garden' (Alan Ayckbourn dyptich)

'Mr What Not' (Alan Ayckbourn, where the central character does not speak and, otherwise, there is speech and sound)

'Noises Off'

'Relatively Speaking' (Alan Ayckbourn)

'The Red Shoes'

BOOKS & MAGAZINES

'American Zoo: A Sociological Safari' 2015 David Grazien

'Frieze' magazine (review by Kito Nedo 2 Dec 2020)

'Feel Free' 2018 Zadie Smith

FILMS

'Anomalisa' 2015

'Berbarian Sound Studio' 2012 (also performed at Donmar Warehouse)

'Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance' 2014 

'Dark Waters' 2019

'Snowpiercer' 2013 (based on French graphic novel 'Le Transperceneige' by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette)

'Steamboat Bill Junior' 1928

Join this year's guest host Elizabeth Fullerton and myself as we map out what's happening with Art Fictions this year, including Culture Exchange, Elizabeth's book on the YBAs, 24 Hour Hitchcock, psychiatric illness, fragmented compositions, personal and environmental narratives, sexuality, gender, race, queer, cis, boobs and cupcakes ! 

instagram artfictions2020 and jillianknipe2020

website jillianknipe.co.uk

instagram elizabethfullerton

website elizabethfullerton.co.uk

ARTISTS, BOOKS, GALLERIES

'ArtRage : The Story of the Brit Art Revolution' 2016 hardback with paperback due out Autumn 2021

Christina Quarles

Douglas Gordon

Jane Wilson

Laura Owens

Louise Wilson

Pilar Corrias

'Studio International' magazine

Thames & Hudson

American artist Cecilia Charlton selects two short stories by Italo Calvino: 'A Sign in Space' and 'The Origin of the Birds'. Both stories focus on the very inception of what comes into being and what we now take for granted - signs/signals/artworks as well as birds/the other/evolutionary rejects. All the while, 'A Sign in Space' draws extraordinary parallels with an art practice. From the anxieties of creating something new to the egotistic punchiness of asserting authenticity, we join Qfwfa who journeys throughout space and time, pontificating on what it is to create and leave a mark in the world of one's existence. Likewise, 'The Origin of the Birds' focuses on the start of beginnings. In this story, Qfwfa narrates his (his?) adventures into the void to discover and embrace the evolutionary rejects as part of his ancestry and presence, particularly their leader Queen Or with whom he is besotted. 

'A Sign in Space' appeared in 'Cosmicomics' in 1965 while 'The Origin of the Birds' was first published in ‘t zero’ 1967. Both stories feature in ‘The Complete Cosmicomics’ comprising 'Cosmicomics' and 't zero' plus other stories published 2009. 

CECILIA CHARLTON

ceciliacharlton.com

instagram ceciliacharlton

BOOKS IDEAS WRITERS 

'A Room of One's Own' 1929, Virginia Woolf

'Against Interpretation' 1966, Susan Sontag

'Agnes Martin' 2015, Tate 

'Brave New World' 1932, Aldous Huxley

Jane Austen

'No One Belongs Here More Than You' 2007 Miranda July 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez 'Eyes of a Blue Dog' 1947, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' 1967, 'The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World' 1968 co-author Hernan Diaz

'The World of Ornament' 2006, Auguste Racinet and M Dupont-Auberville

The concept of multiple discovery

'The Sixteen Trees of the Somme' 2014 Lars Mytting

Three Fates from Greek mythology

William Beebe, American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author

William Weaver, Italo Calvino's translator

'Women's Work: A Personal Reckoning with Labour, Motherhood and Privilege' 2019, Megan K Stack

ARTISTS CURATORS GALLERIES

Alison Jacques Gallery London, 'The Gees Bend Quiltmakers' in partnership with the Souls Grow Deep Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the contributions of African American artists from the Southern states, 20 Dec 2020 - 6 Feb 2021

Anni Albers

Agnes Martin 'Words' 1961

Dolly Parton

Hannah Brown 'Art Fictions' Episode 17, 9 Dec 2020

Helen Frankenthaler

Hilma Af Klimt

Lee Krasner

London Art Fair, 'Platform' focus on folk art londonartfair.co.uk/fair-programme/platform, 20-31 Jan 2021

Nicolaus Schafhausen, 'Der Speigel' 2013, resigned as Director of Kunsthalle Wein 2019

Robert Rauschenberg 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' 1963

Sheila Hicks

Turner Contemporary Margate, 'We Will Walk: Art and Resistance in the American South' curated by Hannah Collins and Paul Goodwin, 7 Feb - 6 Sep 2020 

Willem de Kooning

Hannah Brown selects the small but beautiful poem by WH Auden ‘As I Walked Out One Evening'. Written in 1937, it is preoccupied with questions of the eternal, focussing on love versus time. It travels through younger days and the excitement of new loves to a more settled life, when kisses are replaced by health, when the focus of wondering is on how things may have been different and culminates in one’s final moments.

HANNAH BROWN

hannahbrown.co.uk

Hannah Brown, confirmed British landscape painter, introduces us to her love of fiction, reading excerpts from her selected poem. In our discussion she relays the importance of fiction, giving up television, sudden changes brought about by lockdown, connections between a time of world wars and the global pandemic, the range of experiences for those of us untouched by illness, missing friends, the blow up of Black Lives Matter and the sense of powerlessness when it comes to the changes needed for the wellbeing of our planet. She describes her art practice, detailing the witnessing of changes in the landscape from the west country to East London, what makes a site compelling for a landscape painter, how the presence of human life is portrayed without figures, the sublime tinged with fear, staying true to one’s own temperament and passion, being genuine and authentic, attempts to domesticate nature and how she cried when Victoria Park was closed to the public.

Together we wonder is love eternal or only time? Is it sudden endings which punctuate time, leading to its reassertion as a pivotal marker in our lives? Can we rely on nature itself to continue or is this also a thing of the past? When we look about, how much do we really see that is present and how much is imposed from our childhood past? Is the end of young love depressing or is it a relief to grow up and worry about a pension? Will worry take over our conscious life as it slips away? Is having less time a better condition for decisiveness? For taking risks in the studio? Is seeing less exhibitions better for looking more thoroughly?  

FEMALE BRITISH WRITERS around the time of THE AUDEN GROUP and The Great War!

Alice Meynell 1847-1922

Cicily Isabel Fairfield 1892-1983

Jessie Pope 1868-1941

Millicent Garrett Fawcett 1847-1929

Margaret Sackville 1881-1963

Margaret Postaget Cole 1893-1980

May Wedderburn Cannan 1893-1973

Rose MaCaulay 1881-1958

Vera Brittain 1893-1970

BOOKS

‘A God in Ruins’ 2015 by Kate Atkinson

‘After the End’ 2019 by Clare MacIntosh

‘Girl, Woman, Other’ 2019 by Bernardine Evaristo

‘My Dark Vanessa’ by Kate Elizabeth Russell 2020

‘Nobody Told Me: poetry and Parenthood’ 2016 by Hollie McNish

 ‘Patrick Melrose’ 2016 by Edward St Aubyn

‘Take Nothing with You’ 2018 and ‘Notes From an Exhibition’ 2007 by Patrick Gale

‘Queenie’ 2019 by Candice Carty-Williams

Robert Goddard

ARTISTS & GALLERIES & DESIGNERS

‘Ambit’ magazine

Ansel Adams

Ellen Altfest

‘Forest, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes from the Lunde Collection’, 2011, The National Gallery

George Shaw

Graeme Sutherland

Guy Oliver

Jerwood FVU Awards

John Constable

John Everett Millais, Ophelia’ 1852

John William Waterhouse, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ 1888

Liberty

Paul Nash

Reman Sadani, ‘Walkout 1’ 2020

Samuel Palmer

The John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, 12 Feb – 27 June 2021

Union Gallery

White Cube, ‘In the Studio’

William Morris