Alice Kettle: Garden of England, The Queen's House, Greenwich

I first discovered the beautiful work of Alice Kettle in 1997, in an exhibition organised by Art Angels in the Neo-Natal department at King's College Hospital, Camberwell. At the time I had never seen anybody use fibre/textiles based crafts to create a body of work with fine art sensibilities like this before. She uses the humble sewing machine to actually paint and draw pictures of the human body. She was originally a fine art painter who then made the successful transition to thread and fibre art. Though small in size, the pieces displayed at King's really made an impact on me, and I never forgot them. Over the years I saw several larger pieces displayed at the Whitworth Art Gallery, on visits to Manchester, such as the Caryatids, which are a part of the Whitworth's permanent collection, and a beautiful Angel that she had created for a private collector, as well as other pieces on display at the CAA gallery in London. 

Alice is one of the foremost textile artists in this country and has an exhibition- Alice Kettle:The Garden of England,  currently running at the Queen's House, (next to the Royal Maritime Museum Greenwich),which is comprised of three new textile works. 

Above is Alice's portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, based on existing paintings in the Queen's House collection. I really like the raised textures of the various embroidered stitches and fabrics collaged together in this portrait. It's also interesting how she has brought the thread out of the portrait and used it to wrap the the frame and run across the portrait to give it more depth. Below are textile flowers installed in the fireplace below the portrait.

The only thing that marred the viewing experience is the lighting levels which are really low to preserve the other artworks on show. This and the dark colours in the other galleries make it harder for the viewer to fully appreciate the subtleties of much of the stitch-work.

The two pictures above are of Flowerbed, a textile garden installation on the floor meant to evoke the Stuart and Tudor gardens which were a part of the grounds of the Queen's House and were also inspired by the embroidery of the period dress from the portraits of the monarchy on display in the Queen's House. It was made in collaboration with a series of makers and students.

The photos above are of Flower Helix, an installation in the stunning wrought-iron Tulip staircase of the Queen's House, which also reflect the lace dress of the courtiers and the flowers and plants found in the gardens of the Queen's house of the period. More of Alice's work can be found at her website here.

Alice Kettle: The Garden of England, continues at the Queen's House gallery, Greenwich until 18th August.

On Trend: Dragonfly Couture

It's Men's Fashion Week, and I seem to be bang on trend with one designer at least. Having earlier posted pictures of one of my new dragonfly pieces last month, I recently saw a picture of comic Graham Norton wearing a really nice black jacket embroidered with gold dragonflies. I did some detective work and managed to track it down. I found out that it is one of several pieces from Alexander McQueen's 2013 Spring/Summer collection also based on the lovely dragonfly.
I think Alexander McQueen was a fashion visionary, and I love what the McQueen team continue to produce, (see my previous post entitled Butterfly Couture here). This new collection is no exception, I really like their new dragonfly prints on bomber jackets, as well as the dragonfly embroideries on both the men's and women's formal wear. Glad to be on the same wavelength as this esteemed label albeit in a different medium.

I covet the embroidered jacket above, but at just under £5000,it is sadly way out of my league, as far as price is concerned. These prints below though, are equally gorgeous!

Nice attention to detail in the above print, and the cut of the jacket is sharp.

Glad to see rapper Meek Mill down with the dragonfly trend in another, brighter, colour variation of the more casual bomber jacket. I really like the way the designers have made something that could have been construed as essentially a feminine motif into an equally masculine print. Mind you there's also something for the ladies too in this blouse.

Embroidery detail is amazing as is the dress print detail below.

Want a pair of these men's loafers to go with the jacket!

As I said in an earlier post, dragonflies are my new obsession and I have been busy cutting and arranging more dragonflies also, to create a new piece entitled "Whisper", a snippet of which is seen below. It is an all-white piece that relies on light to cast shadows to highlight the dragonfly silhouettes. I am really pleased with how it turned out, as it was an experimental piece that I recently decided to frame. It will be flying out ready to make its gallery debut soon.  

Karl Blossfeldt

Also on show at the Whitechapel were the amazing photographic plant studies of Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932). I have used his images before as references and inspiration for the plants in my linocutprints, but it was good to see the original photographic prints in the gallery upstairs. They really complement the work of Uwe and Gert Tobias.

The magnification and detail captured in Blossfeldts' images had not been seen before, and one can see how they have inspired creatives and botanists since the time when they were first published, which I believe was 1928.

It interesting to see the structure and patterns in nature in such detail, and I believe Blossfeldt's images were a definate influence on Robert Mapplethorpes' photographic studies of plants and flowers.

Some of the plants such as those above, look like architectural structures, others look like African Masks or carvings, and yet others look like the sculptural fashion designs of Issey Miyake and Balenciaga. 

Looking at the detail you realise that nobody does design like Nature. These really are some of the most beautiful photographs ever taken.  

Gert + Uwe Tobias

Just returned from a really inspiring visit to the Whitechapel Gallery. I wasn't familiar with the work of these twin brothers before, but absolutely love their out-sized woodcut prints and collages which mix hybrids of human/animal/plant and ceramic/furniture forms. Love the textures of the print, and the bright colours on dark backgrounds. Their collages are really interesting also, a mixture of abstract, textured backgrounds with Victorian ephemera collaged on top. Reminiscent of the work of both Peter Blake and Sara Fanelli. 

I also love their typewriter drawings, which is an idea I've seen used by other artists such as Carl Andre, Apollinaire and concrete poetry artists of the 1960s.

Not so successful in my opinion are their attempts at sculpture which are also on display, but nevertheless this was a really inspiring show. So glad I managed to catch it before it closes this week.

Gert + Uwe Tobias, Whitechapel Gallery, London E1

Dragonflies

Dragonflies are my new current obsession. This was inspired by looking at Art Nouveau jewellery at both the V&A Museum, and also the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, both of which house stunning collections of jewellery in specially designed galleries. The main inspiration however, was the stunning brooch above, created by Rene Lalique. It is called "Dragonfly Woman Corsage" (1897-1898) and is in the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It captures perfectly the mythology of the dragonfly as well as the fragility, and beautiful irridescent colouring of these wonderful insects. It also embodies themes characteristic of the Art Nouveau movement such as Nature, eroticism and metamorphosis as well as the use of opulent materials.

Dragonflies have a bad reputation in mythology and they are called the "Devil's Darners" as well as "Water Witches" (Lalique may well have had the latter term in mind when designing the femme fatale/dragonfly hybrid in the above brooch). They were said to sew shut the eyes and ears of children who misbehave, pick out human eyes, and weigh the souls of those whose heads they flew around and then bring injury to them.

It's not all bad news for the poor dragonfly however, as they are revered in China and Japan as holy insects and they also symbolise victory in battle. 

Depictions of dragonflies in the arts and crafts of the Art Nouveau movement perfectly show off the variety of colours in dragonflies and their irridescent glow. Compare the bejewelled versions above to the natural versions below.

My new series began with "Sonar" (below) in which I'm trying to emulate the jewel-like colours of the dragonfly bodies. "Echo" is a meditative all-white piece where the dragonflies are laid out in a similar pattern to "Sonar". More pictures of other designs to come soon.

Crucifix

Just before Easter (quite appropriately), I was commissioned to create this Crucifix from white paper butterflies for a client's daughter who is soon to recieve her first Holy Communion. I really enjoyed this commission, not least because it brought back memories of when I also recieved my first Holy Communion as a child. 

The other reason I enjoyed creating this piece is because the client understood something of butterfly mythology and their Christian symbolism. The butterfly has long been a symbol of the Christian story of the resurrection, and a parallel of Jesus' life. The butterfly starts out living an earthly life as a caterpillar before disappearing into a cocoon and appears dead, (Jesus entombed), but emerges later, transfomed, (Jesus resurrected), far more beautiful and powerful than before.  

The Grosvenor School at Bonhams

Last week at Bonhams auction house, Old Bond Street, London, there was a major sale of linocut prints from the 1920's and 30's of the Grosvenor School and work from other avant-garde printmakers from the same period. I first discovered these amazing prints at the Redfern Gallery on Cork street some years ago when I first moved to London, and loved the power of their graphic imagery instantly.
  

 
The Grosvenor School of Modern Art was established in 1925 at 33 Warwick Square in London. The aim of the school was for students to explore contemporary themes and work in new or progressive media. The term Grosvenor School is used nowadays to denote the group of artists and printmakers associated with the school who helped establish the colour linocut in Britain. The course tutor (1926-1933) was Claude Flight who was aware of the major art movements in Paris and advocated the use of the colour linocut as a progressive form of image making in Britain. The modernist subject matter of Grosvenor school prints was fairly notorious in the 1930's as they  were so different in look and feel to the more traditional etchings of the time.

The main influence on the group was the work of the Italian Futurist movement. The Italian Futurist movement developed in 1909. They focused on the dynamic, energetic violence of modern city life. Their aim in particular was to emphasise the power, force and motion of machinery combined with the contemporary fascination for speed whilst denouncing the 'static' art of the past. The driving force behind the movement was the poet FT Marinetti.
I absolutely love the process of linocutting, being a linocutter, and collector of linocuts, in a modest way, myself. The prints of the Grosvenor School are dynamic, beautiful and of their time, though sadly, now out of their original remit, of being affordable to the average person. 
Linocutting is a printmaking  process that is gradually coming back into fashion through the work of artists such as, Edward Bawden, (and his son Richard), Gary Hume and Angie Lewin. There are other contemporary linocutters who are using the work of the Grosvenor School printmakers as a more obvious inspiration for their work, such as Gail Brodholt, and Paul Cleden. The recent sale at Bonhams, saw sales of Grosvenor School linoprints reach eye watering prices as demonstrated below. The main artists of the Grosvenor School were:-

Claude Flight:

Street Singers print sold for £79,250

  Cyril Power:

Whence and Whither print sold for £97,250

Tube Station, sold for £61,250

Speed Trial, (which the seller bought for £20 originally), sold for £73, 250


Sybil Andrews:

Speedway, sold for £79, 250

The Winch, sold for £22,500

Sledgehammer, sold for £27, 500

Racing, sold for £46, 850

Other artists considered minor in the Grosvenor School canon (Ethel Spowers, Leonard Beaumont, Ursula Fooks), still achieved respectable prices at the sale also. A further selection of these wonderful, dynamic prints can also be seen at:- Osbourne Samuel Gallery, 23a Bruton St. W1J 6QG, in a show entitled: The Cutting Edge of Modernity: Grosvenor School Linocuts, April 11th - May 11th.