Past Exhibitions - June 05
Double Vision | Barbara Robertson
Double Vision
4th - 30th June 2005
What really counts in friendship is reliability: being there when it matters. Mostly, we would not be looking to our friends to bring us fame and fortune, or even say, the creation of wonderful collaborative works of art. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for that caper. There’s work, feeding the family, doing the shopping, taking the cat to the vet. It’s doing well to leave a hello-how-are-you message on the answering machine. That is how it is. Usually. But there are unusual friendships that grow over a long period of time and do actually result in collaborations and yes, wonderful works of art, despite domestic demands. This is the case with Ian Westacott and Raymond Arnold.
Both native Australians, they met nearly 30 years ago at the Melbourne School of Art and went on to become successful international artists with a long list of important residencies, commissions and exhibitions between them. Their collaboration phase which has been consistent but by necessity intermittent, has so far lasted for eight years. Westacott lives in Dornoch where he runs an open-access etching studio for artists with his partner Sue Jane Taylor. They have two sons and are “busy all the time”. Arnold shuttles between Tasmania, Paris and Dornoch. He says he loves the stimulation of change and living in different places but seems also to need the familiarity of home. This could equally be in Tasmania which he loves, or in Dornoch with Westacott and family with whom he has a close bond.
DOUBLE VISION is a very good name for the new Timespan exhibition which opened on Saturday and will run until June 30. The work is conceptually, literally and emotionally the combined creation of Westacott and Arnold, who are extremely talented printmakers. They share a passion for etching. Separately, their work and styles are quite different but together it becomes powerfully attuned, and leaves traditional notions of etchings behind.
This is how it works – or anyway, how it worked on one occasion. The two of them took a drive around Dornoch with the intention of spending the day working together. At the time, Westacott’s partner was pregnant with their first child and so when he saw a beautiful Victorian fountain complete with cherub, the image captured his hopes and imagination. He and Arnold selected a position. Sitting side by side they each took a metal plate ground with wax and, with an etching needle drew an image of the cherub into the wax. Meanwhile, they talked about the weather, the impending birth and what this all means for the universe at large. “We never talk about football” says Arnold.
They returned home, had tea then submerged the etched plates in a series of acid baths (this bites into the exposed metal surface), and forced ink into the engraved depressions. The unetched surfaces were wiped and an impression was made of Arnold’s print. While the ink was still wet, Westacott’s print was over layered onto the first. The result is a double image of Boy, Water Fountain, Dornoch. A back view of a little cherub draped with dark rich tones in a translucent weave, shimmering with energy and confidence. It is number 20 in Timespan’s catalogue. It is immaculate.
In total there are 28 collaborative works. Although they were all created either in Highlands (mostly Dornoch) or in Paris, the exhibition somehow catapults one to historically and geographically more distant places than that.
The Vaucanson Loom at the Arts et Metier Museum in Paris is a wonderful invention . The machine had been commissioned in the eighteenth century with a view to making weaving less labour intensive: it is based on digital marks on a piece of paper and could well have been a blueprint for the first computer. The twice over image probably exaggerates the complexity of the machine but this generates a sense of frenetic activity - without taking away from its logic and clean lines and efficiency. Rather like a computer, in fact.
There are two images of the Soldier Memorial in Dornoch. One almost full scale– but sideways (No. 14) , the other showing the baggage of war by closing in on the military kit (No 9). They are quite different images but in both, the body shape of the soldier is outlined within the uniform revealing a real person, his force and his vulnerability. Very moving.
Ardross Estate Guardians (No. 17) is a cleverly structured scenario in which two of one dog, each facing different directions transform the notion of protection into a voracious devourer of everything it encounters. The dogs are each holding a poppy pod representing the opium which originally provided the vast wealth for the estate. Golden tones overlap the black which could suggest the dark forces over mammon. Either way, it’s very effective.
Another conceptual charmer is the Picasso Sculpture at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (13). “Cheeky” says Westacott and it is rather. But exciting and tumultuous. Picasso would have approved.
There are six examples each of the individual work of the two artists in the exhibition. Although they could not be more different, it is also clear from studying them that the same separate styles are also present in the collaborations but in a much more restrained way.
Raymond Arnold has etched texturally the very boldest of images on a vast pallet in the Bayeux Soldat series and Henry IV series (Nos 29-34). The temptation to touch them is overwhelming - it is scarcely believable that they are printed on paper, not fabric – or for that matter that they are etchings rather than paintings.
Ian Westacott’s great opus, modestly called Royal Burgh – Dornoch (No 22) is actually a smaller version of a bigger work. It has an urgency of touch that seems modern and medieval at the same time. It is an image that will always tell a different story, every time it is looked at.
This is a unique and very important exhibition. It has so much to say, not just in the images themselves but about the technique of etching. This collection will be remembered for a very long time in Sutherland and also in Melbourne where the exhibition opens in July at The Australian Galleries and Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut in Paris in October. .
Barbara Robertson
Timespan's Artist of the Month - June
THE YEAR OF THE CHICKEN
Before settling down to enjoy Barbara Robertson’s Timespan exhibition, it is important to remember that you not only have permission to laugh, but are encouraged by the artist to do so. While it’s not difficult to see the humour, which is everywhere in her wonderful prints, it is not necessarily the first thing that strikes you about her work. It is so cleverly done, that the initial reaction is to wonder how on earth she is able to produce such finely detailed images. Print making can be made simple – for simple pictures. But Barbara Robertson creates layers of colour and precision that would be difficult to achieve with a pen and brush, let alone a knife and a piece of linoneum. She takes all this “technical stuff” for granted however. It is, she says “what I do and what I enjoy”.
Barbara Robertson was born in Broughty Ferry. She studied printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee although would have preferred to have gone to University to read English and History. “It’s words that I love most – the silliness and seriousness of words – and it’s still stories that inspire my work.” And there would appear always to be some kind of narration – invariably quirky and funny – running through all her pictures. Sometimes she’ll explain them, but her preference is to let people make up their own tales and have their own private laugh.
Every morning, where she lives in Forfar, Barbara Robertson works. She prints while listening to Radio 4 and has her best results with Jenni Murray’s Woman’s Hour. In the afternoon it’s grocery shopping, feeding her 4 cats and 12 bantams and gardening, probably humming all the while. First off, she loves animals – wild, farmed and domesticated. In Robertson’s world, all animals have characters and personalities but not in a demeaning or cartoonish way. The cat in LEAVES, is simply going for a walk on the coast on Christmas day, with the sort of serenity that only a cat could have (on Christmas day). You’d want to be that cat. BEFORE THE DREAM gives dignity to a shorn Jacob sheep and WINTER FEED makes all sheep loveable. Not easy. The chicken prints of the exhibition’s title, with fat bellies, skinny legs and expensive shoes are hilarious and there ought really, be more of them. They are modelled affectionately on a stream of aunties who brought Robertson up after her mother died when she was just ten years old.
Plants are everywhere: huge flowers, stunning bursts of colour with lots of contrasts so you go mad trying to work out how she managed to create these effects with a simple lino cut.
Greek Mythology is another favourite, over which she has lightly placed the dilemma of disgruntled, abandoned women. Understandable in the days when sea journeys routinely took the men away for 20 years or more. She did these prints because “everyone seems to ignore the women from ancient Greece – they had a dreadful time.” So she has tried to cheer them up a bit by enfolding them in deep, bright colours so they almost look like ancient Egyptians. Non of the white sterility of the Parthenanon today.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable exhibition and for those wanting the daily tonic of enjoying Barbara Robertson’s talented touch, the price for the prints is surprisingly low.