Transcript resources
JAMES GLADWELL
-
A film about James Gladwell, an artist attending Barrington Farm in Walcott, near Norwich.
When I did the tree one, I knew what colours to use, and some of them I don’t. I just pick what colour, what I feel like, what would work with the picture. I do all cross work, and I don’t use a book. I do it out me head. A long time ago when I was seven, my nan taught me to do it that way. Most of it is all in a dream and I see it and I wake up and put it straight on paper. Sometimes I put it straight on the cloth, then I can sew into it.
So, I’ve known James for twenty years and his work has definitely developed. When I met him, he was very multi-disciplinary… he would work with ceramics, painting, drawing, printmaking, and textiles. And then I think sort of around 2010 he started… people were printing onto cloth and he just put the two and two together. Oh, you can print on the cloth and you can sew over the print on the cloth, and it was like wow, I think that’s your voice.
James is very inventive, he’s very resourceful, and he’s never stuck for ideas, and his patience, which I just wouldn’t have to do such meticulous work! I think I admire and respect that. In 2016 we submitted James to the Outside In and Craftspace ‘Radical Craft’ touring exhibition and he was selected. His piece ‘Foreign Birds’ went on tour to several different locations around the UK, and they had a judge that came and selected a work that they thought was the best, and it was James’ work. So, he won a solo show at Pallant House Gallery, which happened in 2018 called ‘The Dreams.’
James winning a solo show in a modern gallery in the UK was incredible really, for him and I think for lots of disabled artists to get that recognition. There are two farmhouses and a tree and with farm animals, and a lane with a tractor and trailer, and people working on the farm. That took us eight weeks. He’s got quite a lot of drive, it’s not random his work, he is very focused. And incredibly prolific and hardworking actually, as well. Before, he was doing a lot of artwork, he was involved in the building of almost everything you see around here. It is quite clearly important that such a rich vein of creative language has a supportive place. To nurture and cultivate in an environment like this, does have a very particular purpose, it is a particular resource that fits and matches the client group. But the important thing is that the artists are taken seriously. The work is taken seriously. It is stored seriously. It is archived seriously. It is spoken about seriously. And that is a fair reaction to a really incredible free artistic expression, which you will almost uniquely find in this sort of environment, where artists are just giving of themselves all the time without too much worry about how they are meant to fit in. They just simply are producing in a very open way. Things are so much different now compared to when we first started. When we first started in 1987, the reaction was, well what are you doing, why are you doing this? And now it is much more recognised that it is good and valuable and is sought after actually!
All my needlework is all different and never the same. I work with small and big… some of them are too big - I still do it! I am proud of all of them.
I would call it contemporary folk art in a way. I think he is telling us about his heritage and his interests, but also highlighting things that we perhaps take for granted like the grass or a little flower. For James, that’s what is important, and it is just lovely to remind you, kind of, how he sees it.
I sometimes will work till 1 o’clock in the morning, just so… when I start, I can’t stop. I know I’ve been told to slow down, I don’t! And if you slow down, you might make a ‘stake and that’s what I don’t want to do.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by James Gladwell. The title of the artwork is ‘Garden with Owls’. It was created in 2020 and it was made using embroidery on cotton calico. The dimensions of the artwork are 50cm in width by 83cm in height, which is roughly one and half feet wide by two and half feet in height. And James Gladwell works with Barrington Farm which is based on Norfolk. So, this large rectangle of calico cotton is adorned with a variety of characters, some animal, some human and some leaves dotted over the surface. These are depicted in a line drawing fashion, except not are drawn they are all embroidered and stitched into the surface of the cotton. So, there are four main characters running down the centre of the image, and then we have some other animals and leaves running down, flanking, either side of them. We have two owls, which repeat, one at the top and one at the bottom, and beneath the one at the top we have a human figure, and beneath that we have another animal figure. So, let’s start with the two owls. So, the one, it’s very central this owl and it is just a few centimetres from the top of this image, and it is embroidered using an orange thread for an outline and it has blue wings which are pointed up. So, the body of the owl is frontal to us, and these wings are pointing up on diagonals, pointed to the diagonal left and right corners of the image itself. It has two claws which are coming down, the one on the right-hand side is slightly larger than the one on the left, which are frontal to us as well as the rest of the body, and they are stitched in a sort of warm, intense red colour cotton. So, the body of the owl, we can see the white of the cotton calico through it, but it’s got kind of pattern embroidered over the surface, so the owl has two very dainty small ears on the top of its domed head, and it has two round sort of turquoise, no sort of soft pale blue eyes, which have a kind of light tan, fawny brown around them. It has a beak right in the middle of these, a beak pointing directly down, so an inverted triangle and then across the width of the owl’s body frontal to us, we have a series of almost like hill shaped lines, giving a sort of feeling of feathers or texture to the owl. And these are depicted in a variety of different colours, a sort of soft brown at the bottom and a candy floss pink above it, and a bright canary yellow above that, a deep intense cranberry red, a purple, a brown, a red and finishing with a cream on the top. And across the outstretched wings on the diagonal, the one on the right has a light blue stitching, the one on the left has a deeper intense blue stitching. We have colourful intense lines moving across those as well. To the right-hand side of this owl at the top, to the top right diagonal of the image we have a, it could be some type of bird, it could be a goose, it could be a seagull, it has a very long neck and is depicted in profile. It has a bright orange beak facing to the right of the picture plane and it has its tail towards the centre. It has two brown claws that it is standing on and so a lot of these images are depicted in a very effortless, have an effortless flowing quality to them. So, there’s just these lines and the lines sum up the shape of the animal and you can immediately kind of see what they are with a minimal amount of stitching. On the other side of the owl on the left-hand side in the diagonal top left-hand corner we have a other bird, and its body is facing towards the owl but its neck is turned to the left side of the picture plane. It is again in profile, so it mirrors the bird on the right hand side of the owl. And it again it could be a duck, a goose, a seagull. It is white in the middle, has a green outline and a bright orange beak. Just to the, the bird on the top left-hand side of the picture plane to the left of the owl, its claws are kind of diagonally pointing towards the centre of the image and just to the right of that we have a small, green leaf, which is almost like we are looking down on the leaf itself. And over on the right-hand side under the bird we have a larger leaf, again different coloured stitching lines. Beneath that we come into the centre of the image, we have a human figure. And the human figure appears to be female, a few flecks of hair coming off the top of the head. The face is looking directly out at us. We have a nose, blue eyes, smiling mouth, appears to be wearing the dress, and the arm on the right-hand side of the body as we are looking at it, is reaching up and pointing to the top right hand diagonal corner of the image. And as this arm is pointing up it zigs zags and moves about, has a series of curls in a sort of abstracted way, almost like a lightning bolt coming up to the top right-hand corner. Hanging off this arm is a baby, and the baby’s head is just placed on the top of the arm and the legs are dangling down and we have two sort of rounded stumps which are arms coming off. So, this baby is depicted in a pink thread. All of the lines of these characters are in different colours, so the woman’s dress has an orange piece of embroidery stitching on the right-hand side and light blue on the left. To the left of this image of this lady we have a, almost like a tree or something, just slightly taller than her, it is difficult to make out what it is, but it is very brightly coloured, and it is quite intriguing. At the bottom of it we have two very small squares which have a red cross on the top. This for me is the most intriguing part of the image as for me it is like, well what is going on here, it’s almost like she’s stepped out of a portal on the left and has this sort of lightning bolt arm pointing up to the sky. just horizontally across from that on the right-hand side under this large colourful leaf, there is a small bird with wonderful, almost sort of like a toucan but with a smaller beak, maybe like a parrot, or a parakeet or something like that. And it has a wonderful almost sort of like blue Mohican coming up over its head. Beneath that on the right-hand side we have a large leaf, again in these different colours and again it is flat to the picture plane, so it is like a perfect oval with a slightly sort of squashed bottom side of the leaf. And another smaller leaf next to it. And then we move into the centre and we have a sort of image, almost like a narwhal or a bird seen from above with rounded wings, it has a long, long beak. It could be a bird seen from above or a different mysterious creature, very minimal stitching on that one with two blue eyes. To the left of that we have another one of these frontal leaves and then we move down to that owl right in the centre at the bottom, a few centimetres up from the bottom of the image and its wings are pointing up on the diagonals. This one is sat on a branch with lots of shoots coming off of the branch. It has big lemon yellow eyes, zesty lemon eyes, and this multicolour stitching over the surface. Multi coloured hair coming off the top of the head and two rounded ears. It has this inverted triangle beak. Frontal owl looking right at us. On the right of that we have another stitched parakeet, and on the left perhaps another seagull but with a few red and yellow flecks of embroidery coming off the head. They are both, the birds flanking the owl at the bottom are both facing to the right of the picture plane. And just underneath the bird on the right-hand side the artist has signed a J and G on the artwork.
Transcribed resources for the artist James Gladwell.
-
A film about Siddharth Gadiyar, an artist attending Project Art Works in Hastings.
Siddharth Gadiyar came to Project Art Works in 2018. So, it was a particularly difficult time for him and his mom as he had been excluded from school around that time. He was about 19 years old, and services were really struggling to find the right support for Sid. When he came into the first session, it was like it was his own studio… he just got to work straight away and produced what was about a 2 and a half by 2 and a half metre painting. I would say he paints and draws in multiple different ways. But some of the times he would come into the studio, and you’ve got a big blank piece of paper, and he will draw on it with pens to kind of map that out, and different things, and quite often there’s figurative things in there. And then there’s another layer of paint that goes over that. And the tape often is introduced to kind of map out the next stage of the painting, which often corresponds to the colours that he will use. So there will be a wide variety of coloured tape and he will consider the colour choice and then map that out and add the paint on top of that. It is amazing to watch him work. He kind of uses the whole studio space to take time and process and think about other next steps in the painting. So, that in itself is quite unusual in his life, he’s often having to move onto the next things. So, I think that’s where that process has given him real sort of tranquillity.
I think the circle is a really interesting motif in itself, like how it represents lots of things in the world, in terms of… the sun is there. And I guess we can only really guess why it is so important to Sid. Sid is primarily non-verbal, so he wouldn’t necessarily tell us. The fact that they have come quite intuitively from Sid, without the suggestion of a circle, I think they speak a lot about what’s meaningful to him.
The opportunity for the solo show for Siddharth came around actually quite early on in us getting to know Siddharth, as Phoenix approached us in late 2018. So we had only really been working with Sid for just under a year. And it was indeed a fantastic space to show that work, it was almost like a perfect fit for Siddharth’s work and the scale of it. Phoenix were amazing in adapting different ways of letting Sid be in the space. So there was an occasion they were able to close the gallery, and have a different entrance and exit for Sid to come into the space. And his family were there, and his sister, and just a small amount of people. And when he came into the space, slowly as he began to take in stock of what was in the exhibition, he went round and touched each of his paintings, and then smelt his hand… which is how he greets his mum and dad. He will touch their cheek and then smell them, so it was that revelation of this connection to his work, and what it meant to him, and how it was… I felt like part of his family. And he spent about an hour doing this in the gallery. Phoenix as well said it was one of their most well received shows for quite a long time. Their comments book was just full of people in awe of the work and how incredible it was.
Susmitha Gadiyar
Only after he came here we realised how creative he was and it was all just inside him. We didn’t realise until he came to Project Art Works. Being creative has helped calm Sid and it’s also been very therapeutic, in the sense that it meets his sensory needs. Because he always keeps feeling the paint, smelling it, and sometimes even licks it. I feel really happy and proud when I see Sid’s work being exhibited because it’s such a positive aspect of his otherwise very challenging life.
I think there is a misunderstanding within society, and probably quite generally the art world, of how work is made and understood. I think that if someone can’t articulate why they make work, or sort of the deep complexities behind their work, it can be disregarded. So in terms of kind of changing attitudes and curatorial attitudes, I think it’s about awareness and for people to kind of spend real time and understand studio practice. Understand that it is an art form, it’s not an activity, it’s actually someone’s passion, and it’s really important as a sort of language of understanding neurodiversity. I think that the art world and society could gain a lot of understanding around that, of having the time to process that – to be in studios with people to understand what it means. And then I think things could gradually change.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by Siddharth Gadiyar. It is ‘Untitled’ and was made in 2018 using acrylic on paper. The artwork is 226cm in width by 240cm in height which is approx. 8.5ft wide by 8ft in height. Siddharth works with Project Art Works in Hastings. This large-scale painting on paper is, at first glance to be an abstract image, but it has some little nods to figuration hidden within it which I will explain in a moment. So, its just off square, so it’s in the portrait format, but only just, only by about a foot. The actual internal image on this large sheet of paper is a kind of squared off circle. We have one giant motif that just runs a few centimetres from the top, the bottom, and the left and the right of the image. And that motif inside this slightly squared off circle is a scene of a series of quite cool, knocked back colours. Some of them are quite intense in their hue. So, we have some sort of geranium pinks but they’re quite cool pinks, they are not quite frontal, so they recede away from the eye. We have some soft, cool mauves, almost like the surface of a dusky plum in that colour palette and we have some deep tree green, like mossy deep green, verging towards an olive green. Lots of cool colours within the palette. The outside of this squared off circle is a brighter sky blue, like the colour of the sky on a nice summers day but it doesn’t have warmth, it still has a coolness to it. Around the edges of this squared off circle where the sky-blue colour runs, we also have a series of dots that are almost like someone has fired a gun filled with paint, like a paint gun, at the surface of the paper. There’s about six or seven of them running along the bottom of this blue passage of paint underneath this squared off circle with the big motif in the middle, and they range from a bright canary yellow, to a hot regal red, to a cool black, and a very pasty white. Above the image we have a few of these dotted around as well, and there’s a white paint splat that’s a few centimetres in width right at the top of the image and this paint then runs down, dribbles down, onto the central image itself. This squared off circle, this central image, starts with a billiard table green, a cool green colour around the rim, running all the way around and then it’s followed by a passage of white paint and then there’s bits where the green and the white meet and they blend together to create a lighter green. This has a line moving within it all the way around this squared off circle shape of black, and then within this black border as it were, that’s when we get the central image which is a series of brushstrokes, marks, squiggles, lines, planes of colour but they are all very cool in their nature. There’s almost like a cross formation which leads you, indicated by a few squiggly lines and the dripping white paint from the top, almost leads you directly into the centre of this image. In the centre is the first part where we start to question whether this is an abstract image or not. So, we have quite clearly, a round, sort of circular head with possibly some geranium pink hair, with flecks of white in it coming down the whole face. This whole circular head part is also this cool geranium pink in colour. Then we have almost what appears to be a hint of a blue shirt underneath it. So, almost a cartoonish figure, but the face is semi-abstracted, there’s no clear definition of eyes and mouth, it’s just a general shape. There’s something about it that just has a feel of a small cartoonish figure within the centre. There are other parts within this image which are also have nods to figuration. Diagonally to the top left behind this geranium cool coloured pink head we have an image of a tree, which is line drawn in black around it with paint really fluidly put on underneath it. To the left of that there appears to be something which looks like a cartoon blue bird. Diagonally to the top right of this figure, this image, we have parts which look like some moving vehicle, possibly an aeroplane but, again, drawn in a slightly stylised, cartoonish manner. The overall feeling of the artwork is, it has an incredible amount of energy, but these cool colours almost juxtapose or counteract that, so it’s a very vibrantly, intensely made piece of painting. The brushworks indicate that, but then there’s also this calm stillness within and we also get this sense of the inside and the outside of the image. The blue bit around the borders of this squared off circle appears to be the outside, and whatever is going on in this squared off squashed circle with these sort of cool muted colours, appears to be something that’s going on internally or inside. Very intriguing artwork.
Transcribed resources for the artist Siddharth Gadiyar.
SIDDHARTH GADIYAR
THOMPSON HALL
-
A film about Thompson Hall, an artist working out of the ActionSpace studio in London.
There you go that’s the one. Right, the other colours I’ll use in a second. Ready? 3, 2, 1, go!
Shall I make it lighter purple, that’s a bit dark, oh hang on, that’s a bit dark, is there any white? Maybe a touch of white in there as that is a bit too dark.
Do you have an idea of the colour in your head that you want?
Yeah, I generally do as I’m quite good at picking out what colours work together, so it’s kind of, almost like a standard procedure that I have in my head. It’s like in my head I have a sort of colour chart, you know what I mean, where I think this colour will work, no that colour will work, you know. And I will work out which colours work together best... you know what I mean.
I’ll add a bit more white, yes!
I’ve been coming to ActionSpace for the best part of twenty-odd years now, and I what I like about it is to be able to express myself. It is for disabled artists, but it is more the disabled artists working in a studio setting more so than some day centre, where we get to develop our own practices, as artists.
I tend to work on the ideas at home and I bring them in and I look at them, and I discuss them with people and to see how I can translate that from a drawing to a painting.
I am hoping to do some of these scaled pieces on a canvas, that reflect the empire. So there’s things like where my grandad came from, which was Ghana, and how he moved here in the fifties and stuff. And how he met my nan. So this is sort of sacrifice and things that he gave up, when he was living there, and other things like the barriers he faced. And the emotional is like the upheaval he suffered, that he kept to himself for so many years. Some of this is like from memory or from my childhood that I remember of him growing up. Yes, these will probably be inspiration for the big ones and hopefully people can see that it is telling a story, a personal story, about me and about my family, in greater depth hopefully.
My themes are things that are political, which have been for a while. Some of it is sort of abstract, if not imaginative sometimes, yes, and they say that when you look at my work you kind of get taken in, drawn in by what’s in front of them. And it is me trying to express a bit of that emotion and passion that I feel at that time when I was working on it.
I have worked with Thompson now for the last 12 years, and I have seen his practice change quite a lot over those years. So when I first worked with Thompson he was very much a ‘patternist’, he was creating big pieces with patterns… he was going to the Victoria and Albert Museum and doing beautiful pastels of some of the sculptures that he was looking at. And he sort of worked through that and he was developing his colour and he was becoming much more of a colourist and it was really when he took on the ‘House’ exhibition that he really came into his own. He started developing his work more personally. He really started thinking about his compositions and the narrative of them. And I think from there, that then led him on to a path, and then we looked more at what he was trying to say in his work, and what messages he was trying to put across, and really what his work meant to him as well and what he wanted to say to his audience.
This is ‘Cocophany of Covid-19’. This is about when the outbreak happened. That sort of represents the lockdown – the house with the lock. And this like the mask wearing where we have had to wear masks in public places. It is a bit like being a journalist in a way, where you see a story on the news and it has got that big headline, and that’s the thing that attracts you to read that headline… that story. And that’s what I do with the titles – I come up with words like this to attract the eye to the actual thing… so that people can read what it is.
I suppose it is important to talk about these things within my work because I want people to make sense of it all. Because what is happening now in society is quite complicated for the average person to understand, so I am kind of like trying to break it down in stages, in bits, so it makes a lot of sense to people. Because all that information that we see every day can be too much to take in, so I am trying to make it easier, if not simpler for people to make sense of it.
I think curators are sometimes reluctant to show a wider scope of artwork, and I think they don’t know their audience. I think they need to start taking risks again, and I think it is about educating curators to show that actually people are looking for a diverse level of art and I think they are looking for other commentary. And I think there’s lots of voices.
I think the reason is that they don’t think it is work of the same standard or, because the artist hasn’t been to an art school and they are not good enough to be exhibited in their galleries, which I tend to find not very fair and I think it should be more about what the person can give the curator, more than what their background is… which I think is not really that relevant to the works.
I am sort of like very pleased with how far it has come [from] many years ago, it has been a very long journey. And occasionally you know, it has been full of tantrums along the way, and been a bit emotional at times, but it has been a journey in itself because it has sort of like helped me to grow as a person, and it is great to see how much my work has developed during that time. So yeah. I suppose there are a lot of things to be proud of there I suppose. Yeah.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by the artist Thompson Hall in 2019. Its title is ‘Living on a breadline’ and it was created using acrylic paint on canvas. It is 100cm wide by 70cm in height so it’s in the landscape format, so it is roughly 3 foot in width and 2 foot in its height. The first thing I notice about the artwork is that it has a series of rectangles getting smaller as we reach the centre of the image. There are 3 dominant rectangular shapes, each one getting smaller as we move in. The first rectangle appears in the form of a zesty acidic lemon-yellow background, and the paint is applied in a very flat manner so we cannot see any paint strokes, so it just appears to us as pure colour. The next rectangle has a hand painted, thick black outline around it and inside of this thick black outline, we have a very soft powdery blue colour in the background, and on top of this we have a series of very small rectangles forming sort of zig zag pattern, some of them pointing to the bottom left or the bottom right diagonal and some of them pointing the opposite way to the top left and the top right. And they give the appearance almost of domino toppling or falling over, so they give an unstable quality to the image. And they alternate between a very soft powdery purple, a ‘pastely’ toned back purple, to that zesty acidic lemon yellow in the background of that first rectangle. So, they sort of alternate. Then about sort of 10cm into the painting on both sides, we get this third internal rectangle that houses what I would describe as the action in the painting. Now this third internal rectangle which is about 10cm from the external edge of the painting, is painted in a different way to the first two layers – blues, greens, oranges, light blues, purples laid on top of each other in splodgy brush strokes. Sitting on top of this we have a series of square bubble-gum pink faces, and the faces are reminiscent of emojis or those very early computer emoticons. So just have a couple of two slants, two diagonal slants for their eyes and their alternate with having a triangle mouth with the bottom removed, so like an inverted v, and a series of triangles moving up and down on the second pink square for their mouths. So, both of these images, the ones with the diagonals zig zag mouth and the ones with the two diagonals pointing up mouth, both of them look like quite grumpy, unhappy, very stylised faces. Quite sort of cartoon like, but they almost reference the computers and the online as well. Saying that, there’s ana element that they look like computer keys on a keyboard, so there is that element to them as well – like a face that has been made out of symbols, like those early emoticons that later became emojis for mobile phones and communication. So, these soft pink angry faces are sitting on top of this very busy, multi coloured background and they spread all the way around the rectangle, framing the central element of the piece which is pretty much bang on in the centre of all the rectangles. And the central motif is a square which has almost been turned on its side, so we have one of the corners pointing up and one pointing down, so it is almost in a square shape. This is painted inside this squared shape, this diamond positioned square shape, it’s a very erm, sort of slightly warm, soft blue okay, almost like the sea on a particular warm day in somewhere like the Caribbean. And on top of this we have a further rectangle, which I didn’t even realise it was a rectangle at the beginning when I was describing, which has some writing on the top. There is a thick green band across the top of this rectangle with the words food bank’ written on top of it. We then have some more of these multi coloured splodges of paint which are kind of positioned so they are moving like diagonals to the top left corner of the painting. And this is then all outlined in bold black paint with a very simple door drawn on the centre of the foodbank. Beneath this blue square positioned as a diamond with this green headed food bank in the centre of this painting we have another section of text that runs like a ‘v’ shape moving, framing the bottom of this blue square that is positioned in a diamond motif. So, it runs just from the halfway up the painting to sort of three quarters of the way down, so it is sitting in this rectangle with the pink angry faces and the multi coloured background. So, it runs all the way down to the bottom of the painting and then moves up to the right-hand side on a diagonal. And the words follow a shape of these lines, sitting within this kind of ‘v’ shape. The background is painted a sort of pastel purple colour. A lot of the colours used in this painting are quite pleasing to the eye and not too, sort of aggressive as it were. But this is complimented or contrasted by these many coloured splodges behind these pink faces and the many coloured splodges behind the writing in the centre. And the writing that reads, on this turquoise ‘v’ shape underneath the foodbank motif set in this square diamond shape, it says in thick black writing, all capitals, as it says food bank, it says ‘living on a breadline’. The words ‘living on’ are on the left-hand side of the ‘v’ and the ‘a’ word is right in the middle and the ‘breadline’ is on the right-hand side of the ‘v’ so it moves up and follows round at an angle. The style of the painting is quite playful but then there is a sort of mischievous, darker undertone to it. So, there is a sense of humour in it but then a very serious point is being made. And this part of a body of work that Thompson has created focuses on social and political issues, exploring the themes of inequality and marginalisation. But I think particularly during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Thompson has been working with the organisation ActionSpace for many years and creates a variety of work, he is a very prolific artist, a huge variety of work in very contrasting styles and this piece for me is reminiscent of a map but also a flag, as everything is very pushed up against the front of the picture plane, so there is no kind of realistic perspective within the artwork. So, it is a very colourful bold playful yet very serious statement.
Transcribed resources for the artist Thompson Hall.
RICHARD HUNT
-
A film about Richard Hunt, an artist working out of Shadowlight Artists in Oxford.
I like different details in my new art now. I like all different sort of sceneries of different things. It just comes to me in my mind. It just goes with a click sometimes and I thought – oh I know what I got to do. I thought green for the background sort of colour, and then bright colours as well I made with my Sharpies, colours, all sorts really. I think it’s almost there, it’s going to take a bit of time though. It makes me so happy in myself.
Richard and I have really developed our collaboration since 2015, and Richard is very generous in the way that he collaborates… and offers a lot of space to me in his work, which I sometimes feel I need to brave and jump in [laughs] and sort of take on a lot of learning from him, because he is very naturally talented and skilled in some areas that I struggle. And one example would be Richard’s ability with line and pattern making, which is so natural, and beautiful, and confident, and seems to flow.
I am wondering if we need some stronger lines around these parts.
The top bits yeah. I know that there’s the tail bit but maybe darker colours inside that one, I’m thinking. Do you think it would help to have an outline that is a more powerful, stronger colour? Definitely. I am thinking.
And then in terms of understanding scale and spatial awareness within a bigger composition. So when Richard has to pull out and work to scale, then I can come in and support with just plotting and making sure that his vision is exactly how he wants it. And he will quite often say, ‘go on surprise me’ or ‘go for it’ in a work, so he’s really encouraging and generous in that way. It’s been actually quite a deep collaboration, which I have always valued, but that kind of surprised me and was really interesting.
I’ll tell you about my ‘batman totem pole’. Sonia helped me a lot more with that one. We worked on it together. I’ll do some outlines first, and then after that me and Sonia, we sort of fill it in a bit more together. That’s what I like about it, teamwork. It made me so proud of it now, and I am still quite proud of it still. I think it’s really a bit more experience working with Sonia and she told me quite a lot about my pictures, and she loves my new ideas, and she’s the one that helped with that picture and makes me feel a bit more confident in myself to do it.
I think one of the key reasons why disabled artists like Richard are not platformed in mainstream arts is prejudice and stereotyping, and I think some people would be surprised if you talked about a disabled artists’ practice as professional. And I think that’s one of the key problems. He is so wholly intuitive, and naturally talented and may not be able to always express in words, what he is doing, why he is doing it, but if you spend time with him and see him at work, you understand that he is very, very gifted, and that he is actually carrying a really rich, and well-developed iconography that he is drawing upon for his practice. So it is this idea that an artist, who might not be able to articulate or write about their practice, is actually working at quite a sophisticated level.
Larger scale, that’s what I want to do next – fantastic sort of things. I’d like to be a famous artist. I want to show the whole world this time, that’s what I am definitely thinking, the whole world. I want everyone to see it.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by the artist Thompson Hall in 2019. Its title is ‘Living on a breadline’ and it was created using acrylic paint on canvas. It is 100cm wide by 70cm in height so it’s in the landscape format, so it is roughly 3 foot in width and 2 foot in its height. The first thing I notice about the artwork is that it has a series of rectangles getting smaller as we reach the centre of the image. There are 3 dominant rectangular shapes, each one getting smaller as we move in. The first rectangle appears in the form of a zesty acidic lemon-yellow background, and the paint is applied in a very flat manner so we cannot see any paint strokes, so it just appears to us as pure colour. The next rectangle has a hand painted, thick black outline around it and inside of this thick black outline, we have a very soft powdery blue colour in the background, and on top of this we have a series of very small rectangles forming sort of zig zag pattern, some of them pointing to the bottom left or the bottom right diagonal and some of them pointing the opposite way to the top left and the top right. And they give the appearance almost of domino toppling or falling over, so they give an unstable quality to the image. And they alternate between a very soft powdery purple, a ‘pastely’ toned back purple, to that zesty acidic lemon yellow in the background of that first rectangle. So, they sort of alternate. Then about sort of 10cm into the painting on both sides, we get this third internal rectangle that houses what I would describe as the action in the painting. Now this third internal rectangle which is about 10cm from the external edge of the painting, is painted in a different way to the first two layers – blues, greens, oranges, light blues, purples laid on top of each other in splodgy brush strokes. Sitting on top of this we have a series of square bubble-gum pink faces, and the faces are reminiscent of emojis or those very early computer emoticons. So just have a couple of two slants, two diagonal slants for their eyes and their alternate with having a triangle mouth with the bottom removed, so like an inverted v, and a series of triangles moving up and down on the second pink square for their mouths. So, both of these images, the ones with the diagonals zig zag mouth and the ones with the two diagonals pointing up mouth, both of them look like quite grumpy, unhappy, very stylised faces. Quite sort of cartoon like, but they almost reference the computers and the online as well. Saying that, there’s ana element that they look like computer keys on a keyboard, so there is that element to them as well – like a face that has been made out of symbols, like those early emoticons that later became emojis for mobile phones and communication. So, these soft pink angry faces are sitting on top of this very busy, multi coloured background and they spread all the way around the rectangle, framing the central element of the piece which is pretty much bang on in the centre of all the rectangles. And the central motif is a square which has almost been turned on its side, so we have one of the corners pointing up and one pointing down, so it is almost in a square shape. This is painted inside this squared shape, this diamond positioned square shape, it’s a very erm, sort of slightly warm, soft blue okay, almost like the sea on a particular warm day in somewhere like the Caribbean. And on top of this we have a further rectangle, which I didn’t even realise it was a rectangle at the beginning when I was describing, which has some writing on the top. There is a thick green band across the top of this rectangle with the words food bank’ written on top of it. We then have some more of these multi coloured splodges of paint which are kind of positioned so they are moving like diagonals to the top left corner of the painting. And this is then all outlined in bold black paint with a very simple door drawn on the centre of the foodbank. Beneath this blue square positioned as a diamond with this green headed food bank in the centre of this painting we have another section of text that runs like a ‘v’ shape moving, framing the bottom of this blue square that is positioned in a diamond motif. So, it runs just from the halfway up the painting to sort of three quarters of the way down, so it is sitting in this rectangle with the pink angry faces and the multi coloured background. So, it runs all the way down to the bottom of the painting and then moves up to the right-hand side on a diagonal. And the words follow a shape of these lines, sitting within this kind of ‘v’ shape. The background is painted a sort of pastel purple colour. A lot of the colours used in this painting are quite pleasing to the eye and not too, sort of aggressive as it were. But this is complimented or contrasted by these many coloured splodges behind these pink faces and the many coloured splodges behind the writing in the centre. And the writing that reads, on this turquoise ‘v’ shape underneath the foodbank motif set in this square diamond shape, it says in thick black writing, all capitals, as it says food bank, it says ‘living on a breadline’. The words ‘living on’ are on the left-hand side of the ‘v’ and the ‘a’ word is right in the middle and the ‘breadline’ is on the right-hand side of the ‘v’ so it moves up and follows round at an angle. The style of the painting is quite playful but then there is a sort of mischievous, darker undertone to it. So, there is a sense of humour in it but then a very serious point is being made. And this part of a body of work that Thompson has created focuses on social and political issues, exploring the themes of inequality and marginalisation. But I think particularly during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Thompson has been working with the organisation ActionSpace for many years and creates a variety of work, he is a very prolific artist, a huge variety of work in very contrasting styles and this piece for me is reminiscent of a map but also a flag, as everything is very pushed up against the front of the picture plane, so there is no kind of realistic perspective within the artwork. So, it is a very colourful bold playful yet very serious statement.
Transcribed resources for the artist Richard Hunt.
NNENA KALU
-
A film about Nnena Kalu, an artist working out of the ActionSpace studio in London.
Charlotte Hollinshead, ActionSpace Facilitator: So, Nnena’s work is all about the process. It’s instinctive, it’s all about those inner rhythms, and bringing it out in all different forms – both 2D and 3D.
So, I’ve known Nnena since 1996. She first joined an ActionSpace project, that was a short-term project. And then in 1999, she joined our studio programme and I started working with her then. I’ve noticed massive changes in Nnena’s practice over the years. She started out doing artworks socially, it was part of her weekly routine that she would come and make a bit of art with ActionSpace, but as both ActionSpace has developed with its professionalism, Nnena has equally come with us on that journey. So, Nnena has come from being someone who liked to make a bit of artwork, to a professional artist over 22 years.
So, she has a studio practice, and now when Nnena exhibits, she develops these live installations. So, what that means is that Nnena can connect with people and communicate with people, without having to verbalise, which puts a lot of pressure on her. It means she can exhibit on her terms, that she can exhibit in a way that is relevant to her, but she can share and communicate what she does without having to verbalise it. I mean people like to come and ask me questions, and I can speak to a point on Nnena’s behalf, but we don’t give Nnena’s work a narrative because Nnena can’t. Nnena goes about making her sculptures through a long process of wrapping and binding. When Nnena first started to work with us in 1999 on the studio programme, she actually just predominantly worked with 2D painting, drawing, collage. It wasn’t around until 2010 that she began to sculpt. Nnena loves a long line and she likes things that have got a length to it but a certain texture, so that she can build layers and lines in a 3D way when it comes to her sculptural work. So, my job is to go out and find materials that satisfy her need to build those lines – video tape, wool, now paper and now fabric - she is working with in long strips. Nnena will make it very clear if she doesn’t like something, she will reject it wholeheartedly. But as we have got better at supporting her, less and less of that happens. So, Nnena’s solo commission for Studio Voltaire in 2020, it was an incredible experience and it really took Nnena onto the next level up. It was Nnena’s first solo show in London. It really felt like a massive moment for mass equality for Nnena as an artist. Nnena has been side-lined often, as ActionSpace is an organisation, as either community arts, or disability arts or outsider art. So for Nnena to be put within Studio Voltaire’s programme, which was their off-site programme ‘Elsewhere’, alongside artists Phyllida Barlow and Dawn Mellor and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, it just meant that Nnena was just being treated equally as another artist. We created some really interesting base structures for her to work from, and she just absolutely thrived. Everyone seemed to get it. It was like the penny dropped and everyone just seemed to get and understand why this work was really important, why it was really vital it is seen – it was amazing.
Nnena’s artwork is important for Nnena because her need to mark make, to bring things together, the idea that you want to shape the world and share it, is momentus and it is hard to keep up with her actually. It would be easy to say a kind of cheesy sort of, Nnena is using it as a communication tool, she partly is maybe, but I think she’s also, like any artist, she’s just got a need to make and just get it out there.
-
The artwork I’m going to describe for you now was created by Nnena Kalu. Its title is ‘Drawing 72’. It was created using mixed media on paper. The artwork consists of three images on three separate sheets of paper displayed as one artwork. Each one of these sheets is ninety centimetres wide, and one hundred and seventy centimetres in height, which is roughly five and half feet long, by three feet in height. Nnena works with ActionSpace which is a visual arts organisation based in London that supports learning disabled artists. The image itself comprises of three sheets of Colman’s yellow mustard paper. Essentially, this is a tryptic image. On these warm yellow sheets of paper, we have a series of circles and spirals moving across the surface. The largest part of the motif starts about 50% up the picture plane, and is an elegantly depicted series of circles made up by many, many curves. These curves, these lines, form one whole circle with a small taper in, curving into the middle. Beneath these three circular forms on this Colman’s mustard yellow paper, each of these circles almost has a tail or it reminds me slightly of a lasso whip, moving down to the bottom diagonal righthand corner of the piece of paper. Now, the way they sort of undulate, and flip is slightly different on each of the images, but the overall form is almost identical. Behind these circles with this lasso tail-like whip drawing down from underneath them, we have an incredible fluid series of marks which looks like they’ve been made with some type of ink. Some of them are very fine, like a hair’s width in diameter, and some of them are thicker and they have a kind of rhythm as they spiral and move around this yellow background. This circle with this lasso-like tail whip moving down across the image is, when you look closer, is made up of, hundreds of lines essentially, and the circle itself has a real – this kind of curving circle which is almost like a curving capital ‘G’ in its shape with this little tail flicking back into the centre of the circle, and it almost appears like textured, like hair, with these black marks underneath. And on the surface, the marks are lighter in tone and they are almost a sort of plum, kind of violet, a warm soft purple. In the central image on these curving, flowing lines, building up this circle with this flowing tail moving towards the diagonal bottom right, you have a lot more black in the bottom end, the bottom of the circle itself which takes up the proportion of the top half of the image. And so, it is almost like this circle is, the bottom of the circle is tilting out towards the viewer and the top is moving away from us. So, these images almost have like a tornado or vortex like quality to them. It’s almost like we are staring down into, almost leaning over a cyclone or a whirlpool, looking down sometimes, the way it’s, slightly disorientating. Within this, the more you look at the image, you start to notice these lines ‘ellipsing’ and moving round, that they are all sorts of different colours. At first it appears that the under drawing, that there’s a kind of very fluid black ink lines, but I’m now noticing kind of very fine red lines, particularly in the central image, and, almost like greys moving. And almost blues within the lines of the circle. So, what at first glance looks like an image which is black and sort of ultramarine violet, that colour that is between a very warm, hot blue and a purple, you’re getting all of these other reds within it and greys and even whites as I’m looking closer now and some of these, like I said, are like hairs, a human hair in thickness, very, very fine indeed. As we move this sort of tornado cyclone of the image gets down towards the bottom of the picture plane, these very fine hairs width lines, these black and almost grey some of them, lines, almost bunch up and spiral. They have a kind of incredible weight to them. The image on the left-hand side of the three images has a lot blacker towards the bottom and underneath the actual top circle part, so the diagonal right-hand bottom corner of this circle, about half way up the picture plane on this third image on the left-hand side of the three images the lines have eclipsed each other so much that they’ve become almost solidly black almost like a fine silk going over itself again and again and again, and blocking out the light. I think for me, one of the things that’s really intriguing about these images is it’s obviously a flat image, but it’s making me think about depth and perspective and my sort of sense that is shifting the longer I look at it. They’re incredibly delicate, and rhythmic, and refined and they’re very intriguing and almost hypnotic to look at.
Transcribed resources for the artist Nnena Kalu.
CAMERON MORGAN
Transcribed resources for the artist Cameron Morgan.
-
A film about Cameron Morgan, an artist attending Project Ability in Glasgow.
I like working big. I like working huge. I like using charcoal, watercolours, ink and a bit of oil paint ... messy, takes you longer to clean and all that sort of thing. Acrylic I’ll use, I use a mixture.
It just depends on what the subject is. I’ll get an image and try to go for the composition.
So, Cameron documents everything with his cameras and uses those photographs as his source material. So, he uses that, and he has three main subjects, which is a lot of portraiture, a lot of nature and lots of nostalgia as well. And he does all sorts of artwork from photography, to ceramics, to painting, to drawings and ink drawings – very varied but very bold, very colourful and fun.
Ooh, I’ve done quite a few things. I’ve done the dancing one, and oh what else, oh that’s what it was… TV Classics. I did all the TV themes. I did ones from the movies like Tarzan from the 30s and 40s and Zorro, and I did one on the A Team, the Incredible Hulk. Ooh what else have I done… I did some ceramics. I did one with food one year… a fried egg and sausages and a frying pan. If it works, it works! if it doesn’t, it doesn’t! I don’t fuss over it. Once it’s done, it is done and that is it.
The production has increased and he’s working more and faster now than ever, and in more mediums, and lots of his work, although he won’t say this, comes across as being really quite abstract. He thinks it is all literal and exactly how it is, but many people wouldn’t see that, and they would see it as complete abstraction.
Some things I really like about Cameron’s practice, especially in his paintings is his colour choice. For instance, he has a legacy of doing outlines around everything, and those colour combinations can really stand out and enhance the work. ‘The Ballerina’ over here for instance, the Cyrene blue with the pink and the red, I mean it just kind of makes the painting pop out quite a lot.
One of Cameron’s achievements over the years has been awarded the Lifetime Fellowship at the RSA – maybe one of the only learning disabled artists that has been awarded that and we are really very proud that he got that.
I wasn’t expecting to get that at all. I didn’t expect to get a Fellowship thing whatsoever – I was just more interested in doing the arts… because when I do the arts I like to concentrate and get things done and that… so I am fairly pleased. I cannot grumble… fairly pleased at that like.
If it wasn’t for Project Ability, I would probably be watching the gogglebox and watching a lot of DVDs, so it gave me something to do it did.
I’m going to put some fixative on that and just a signature over here.
I don’t think too far ahead. I just take one step at a time and continue doing what I am doing, and just focus on the artwork and that sort of thing yes. If people like it and it makes them smile, then that is good yes.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by Cameron Morgan, and the title is ‘Happy Go Lucky’. It is created using glazed ceramics, and the scale of this sculpture is 14cm in depth, 18cm in width and 12cm in its height. Cameron works with Project Ability which is based in Glasgow. So, this rather intriguing small sculpture, at first glance it is quite clear that it is a camera, and it is also quite clear that it is a polaroid camera. But it has lots of different qualities about it that are bringing a lot of joy and happiness to me. I was just having a… it brings a smile to your face instantly as it is such a wonderful image. So, the actual shape of this picture is like, reminiscent of an upright piano, so it has a wider base and then a slightly narrower top. And as I’m looking at a sort of three-quarter view onto this sculpture, the top section just above where the keys would be on a piano, has three elements. One in the centre, which is a round bright warm canary yellow tube, which appear to me quite obviously to be the lens of the camera. And just to the left of that, the top left diagonal corner of this façade of this upright shape camera, is a small red, a warm hot red dot, which appears to be the button you would click to get this polaroid into action and over on the other side of this bright canary yellow tube, which is the lens of the polaroid camera, we have a small square, which is kind of a soft, washed out dark black in its colour. And inside that we have a small rectangle, which is again a warm red colour. The rest of the body of the camera based in this sort of upright piano type shape, is a very soft powder blue, like the type of blue you get on a sort of perfect summer’s day in the sky. Very soft and light and airy, but you have this lovely thing where some of this blue, this effect is transparent, and you can see through this soft summer’s blue into this, this kind of warm very pale terracotta shining though. So, it has a sort of two-tone effect on the surface of the camera. On the body of this main frame of the camera, some of the blue is more opaque and some is more transparent, so it has a wonderful variety to the glaze that has been painted over the clay after it has been fired, and then fired again. At the bottom section which would be just above where the pedals would be on a piano, the camera, we have a little mouthpiece, an oblong mouthpiece, and out of this there is a photograph, a polaroid photograph is emerging, and it is three-quarters of the way through so it’s coming out at the stage when you would just sort of pull the polaroid out. So, if this was a real camera you would just have to pull that out to see the actual photograph. And this is also made out of clay. So, it is a rectangle of clay emerging. And the reason I call it like a mouth, is that is one of the wonderful playful elements of this piece and it is obviously a polaroid camera, but it is also reminiscent of a face to me. So, the red button in the top left hand quarter is one of the eyes, and the black rectangle on the top right of the sculpture with the red in the middle is also like another eye. And the lens, that bright canary yellow lens in the centre is like a nose, and then the polaroid coming out of this rectangular slot at the bottom of this is almost like a mouth and the polaroid is almost like a tongue sticking out. So, it has a kind of double interpretation for me when I look at it. And on the surface polaroid, this ceramic polaroid coming out of the mouth of the camera, we have an image, a flat image, engraved into the surface and the image appears to be of a cat, a black and white cat, which has a face which is frontally looking out from the photograph, with 2 pale blue dots for eyes, some red, some warm red, inside its pointed triangular ears, a dark black nose, whiskers, black whiskers coming off the side of its face and a teeny little red circle for its mouth. Its body is in an oval shape, almost like an egg shape, and we have two black patches on the rest of its white body. We have two feet sticking out from underneath which have also flecks of black of them and also on the right-hand side of the body we have a black tail coming out towards the right-hand side of this ceramic polaroid emerging from the camera. It is an incredible image, and it brings some pure joy into my life just from looking at it. Absolutely fantastic.
MICHELLE ROBERTS
Transcribed resources for the artist Michelle Roberts.
-
A film about Michelle Roberts, an artist attending Project Art Works in Hastings.
Sometimes you come in with a little idea don’t you. You’ve got a picture of something you’d like to do. Yes Yes. Like the air plane. Like the air show yes. So, you’d bring in a picture of something. Yes ,and look. Yes we have a look on the computer don’t we. Yes. At all different images and we print them out. Yes and look at doing. Then we will set up your canvas. Yes. And you place all the pictures around the canvas don’t you. Yes. Like a reference. And my art. And you start with your pens. Yes. Red, blue, yellow.
What sort of pictures are you attracted to? What sort of images do you like to cut out?
I like to look… people and … It’s lots of different things isn’t it, quite often people, and like you were saying films and music. Yes. And sometimes events. Events. And places that you’ve been to. Yes. And characters. Yes. And funny. Things that are funny? Yes. [Laughter]
I’ve worked with Michelle for about ten years and throughout that time she’s gradually evolved a body of images, paintings, which are about the things that interest her in her life. What I would call lived experience, which also involves the films that she has seen, the things that interest her, and so on. Much of what Michelle does is what I would call contextually based. She likes the context of the studio and being among a group of like-minded individuals, and working in the studio she has generally and naturally gravitated to working on a large scale, and by large, I mean 6x4 foot paintings.
This is ‘Day Trip to Chichester’, which was a piece of work which she made especially for your Pallant House exhibition. Mmmm. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it? A lot of people… I drew. Are these all the people in the Gallery? Yes… and the house. And is there some of the artwork in the Gallery. Yes… all those. It’s from quite a long time ago. Mmmm.
She’s also worked on concertina books, folding books. The imagery of those books is mainly pattern based, and her ability to create patterns is extraordinary.
There’s lots of little different things, like all your work, that you can see in the drawing. Yes there is. What does it make you think of? Like smaller people and more cars on there. Cars on the road. The road.
My father was an artist. A watercolour artist. And he used to go to the local beauty spots with her when she was six or seven. He taught her about colours, and she was taking it all on board obviously, because it used to come out in different things. She must have been in her late 20s, maybe 30, and she was lucky enough to come here. The difference in Michelle has been, I can’t really explain it. She’s confident, she talks about her paintings to people. Without it Michelle would regress into herself. When I see Michelle’s work being exhibited anywhere and people showing interest in it, my heart is bursting, it really is. Her own style has developed tremendously, and she is bubbling with ideas. She surprises you in each one that she does… totally comes from her own mind. She hasn’t copied anybody else [laughter].
The mainstream artworld in some quarters, is gradually recognising the intrinsic worth and interest that artists with complex needs may produce. Those Galleries that have already started to embrace this, I think realise that it pays off. That there is great interest in it, and that there’s no reason why artists of this nature shouldn’t sit alongside artists in the mainstream world.
What would you like to happen in the future with your artwork? What do you think Michelle? We spoke about exhibitions. Yes yes. You really like people seeing your work, don’t you? Yes… and people talking and look. And people talking about your work. So would you like more people to see your work? Yes, more. So, more people.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by Michelle Roberts and the title of it is January 2022. It was created by brush pen on paper. The artwork consists of 32 individual A5 sheets, arranged in a concertina fashion. Each A5 sheet measures 21cm in height by 14cm in width, and this artwork has been displayed on a plinth. At first glance, these concertinaed sheets of paper spread out across the plinth together, have an incredible, vibrant, punchy warmth. The colours are very high key - we’ve got lots of intense, warm fuchsia pinks, bright, radiant harmonious sunny yellows. We’ve got lots of oblongs and squares of multicolours, and circles all peppering the surfaces of these sheets. As I lean in closer for more examination, the overall quality of these images, which are abstract in their nature, a series of very vibrant, bright, colourful, warm, radiant shapes displayed on these individual pieces of A5 paper concertinaed together. They are reminiscent of stained-glass windows on a sunny day in a church when the sun is shining through and you get this wonderful, almost backlit feel to them. Some of the colours are so, sort of, fluorescent and intense, it’s almost like they are being displayed with a light coming from behind them, like a stained-glass window or something on a lightbox. So, very, very intense indeed. There is definitely a pattern or rhythm working through each individual image and that is the majority of them have a series of horizontal and vertical lines around the edge, almost making a border or a frame. These can be in different colours. So, we have this very warm, summery fuchsia pink in some of them, in others we have a pale, a sort of washed out, lime green. In others we have a deep turquoise. But the colour: even though the colour’s a real mixture of different types of hue, there is a real balance within the colour palette, so all of the colours are pretty vibrant and the arrangement of these patterns and shapes. We’ve got some half-moon curls, and inside of those we have a series of circles almost like eyes in some places, looking out at us. But the balance between each colour next to the next block of colour is very harmonious, but they are all very upbeat and tropical in their intensity. We have little sections of rectangles in the corners of some of the images that are more of, a sort of cool purple, plum colour and we have vibrant, hot, punchy reds running through. As I said, these images are all abstract in nature. Some of them are sort of like an exploded multicoloured piano key set, so lots of these, the overall shape within a lot of the images, is kind of rectangle framed in different colours. You have a red outline with a sort of pale pistachio green inside. And then these little circles, three circles one within the other circle. This motif appears very frequently, and it sort of punctuates the surface and the way that these abstract shapes are organised on the picture plane, is that none of this has been done with a ruler. It’s not geometrically precise, they have a kind of wonky, fluid feel to them. So that it’s a kind of playful nature to this geometric abstraction. They are also reminiscent of a quilt, the sort of handmade quilt, but all, of the lines are slightly kind of askew, and it has a kind of quirky intensity to a lot of the images. Some have an overall colour scheme of this intense fuchsia and Caribbean sea turquoise about them, and others have a more pale, washed-out lime green, soft Naples yellow colour field to them. But all of them have this border with the bottom section of each rectangle, we have vertical lines, and on the sides of each image we have horizontal lines, and there is a kind of random distance between each. These lines kind of intersect into the image. So, they all have this kind of frame around them. And they have, almost like, a kind of, almost like a sort of puzzle, or going on a journey entering into this multicoloured, tropical, intense world. When you step back and look at the whole concertina from a distance, you can really notice the different colour shifts. We’ve got some that are more, sort of intense banana yellow in their colour scheme, but the overall colour scheme has a lot of the images is a series of fuchsia pinks, soft salmon pinks, warm, hot, regal reds and almost, these sort of majestic purples, coupled with these softer plum, purply colours. There’s a real colour balance and harmony running through them and some of them are actually reminiscent of the work of the artist Paul Klee. There’s a nice playful journey happening with the viewer interacting, taking you through this wonderful riot of the artist’s imagination. The kind of feeling I get from them, from looking at them, is very upbeat, lively, and I’m full of awe just looking at these pieces. Absolutely fantastic.
LESLIE THOMPSON
Transcribed resources for the artist Leslie Thompson.
-
A film about Leslie Thompson, an artist attending Venture Arts in Manchester.
I’ve been coming to Venture Arts since the 90s yeah. I draw landscapes and buildings, animals and people yeah. Sometimes I use coloured pencils and felt tip pencils, and different pencils and that, yeah.
Amanda Sutton, Director, Venture Arts: If you go into Leslie’s house, there are pictures everywhere. Art isn’t only important for Leslie, it is fundamental. He just draws, he always draws. I think he always has done, and it is just an innate thing that he has to do. And that’s why I think he is such a wonderful artist, and why he kind of… you could never replicate anything that Leslie draws. I’d say Leslie’s art is generally joyful, highly detailed. I think it’s got a bit of humour in it as well, as I like the way he writes about his drawings, within his drawings, and very often they can be perceptions of people. And the more you look at what he is drawing, the more it draws you in.
The picture of the ‘A Team’ is before me, with the Statue of Liberty in New York. He is a man of a few words, but I know that inside he’s really confident and he is really sure of himself as an artist. And I think that probably when I first started working with him, he wouldn’t have identified as an artist, and now he’s the ‘artist superstar drawer’, so that’s something I have really noticed. But also, in his style, I think working with us, he has been able to use different materials. He has been able to experiment in sort of fine line, for example.
‘Animals from Memory’, which I’m very proud to say has been acquired by the Government Art Collection, is a stunning piece of work. Its detail is unbelievable. You’ve got, probably I would say, over 100 animals on one A1 piece of paper. And they are all actually completely from memory, and they are all actually from one or maybe two visits to Chester Zoo maybe 30 years ago. So that has stayed with him.
I choose pencils for drawing the nature and all the animals there.
Why should a learning disabled artist be any different from any other artist? But there are barriers... there are evident barriers. There are barriers in terms of access for learning disabled people into galleries in the first place, but also there’s a barrier of perception, I think. So, perhaps an artist, like Leslie, isn’t able to kind of talk about their work intellectually, then maybe they are going to be sort of cut off from being included in galleries. But their work is amazing, their work is incredible, it should be included. And I suppose I see that our role is to try and change perceptions and break down some of those barriers.
-
The artwork I am going to describe to you now was created by Leslie Thompson. The title of the artwork is ‘The A Team’ and it is part of the ‘Many TV screens everywhere series’ and was created in 2023. The work was made using pen, ink and pencil crayon on paper and it is in the landscape format, so 42cm in width and 30cm in height. And this artwork was commissioned by the Government Art Collection. And Leslie works with the Venture Arts organisation based in Manchester. The image is a vibrant riotous scene set inside a very colourful café. We have four characters sitting down at tables with a television screen right in the centre of the image. If you grew up in the 1980s, as I did, you will immediately recognise these four characters as the four members of the A Team. B.A Baracus on the right-hand side, howling mad Murdoch on the left, the chief in command Hannibal just behind him and at the very top of the image we have the man known as the face. This television screen which takes up quite a large proportion of the image, has another image internally on the screen that they are all glancing at. And the image is of the Royal Coronation and you have an image of King Charles and Queen Camilla waving out of the TV screen. They are dressed in regal red robes, ermine lined collars and they both have the ceremonial golden crowns on top of their heads. Camilla’s mouth is open as if she is smiling and she is waving with her arm which is on our right, and king Charles is waving with his arm which is on our left as we look at him. They appear to be on a multi coloured balcony looking out of the window of the palace. The TV has a green frame around it which is followed by a black frame around that, and then we have the grey facing of the tele and a series of multi coloured knobs on the right-hand side of the television set. The four different characters of the A Team are very clearly depicted, but the closest to us is B.A Baracus on the right-hand side of the picture plane and howling mad Murdoch on the left-hand side of the picture plane. And Murdoch’s brown leather jacket just goes off the left-hand side of the picture plane and B.A Baracus muscly arms move just off on the right-hand side of the picture plane. Hannibal, the commander of the A Team, sits diagonally just above Murdoch behind the TV and Face is the furthest sway from us in the centre but right at the top of the picture plane. The top of his head touches the top of the piece of paper, the image itself, right to the edge. There are bits of purple and deep sort of warm fuchsia plum colours round the characters and you don’t notice it at first, but when you notice it, you notice it everywhere, but there are bits of text around, just hidden around the centre, in little sort of boxes and sections, and this whole image has bits of text just peppered in. For example, Murdoch is sitting on this left-hand side kind of in profile and he is wearing a blue baseball cap, and on the peak of the cap, on the underside, sort of peer closely and you will see it actually says howling mad Murdoch on his cap. He is smoking a big brown cigar, which is stuck to his lips and his lips are poured smoking it, and so is Hannibal directly behind him. Hannibal is in a white jacket with a blue shirt, and he has bright blue eyes. Murdoch has brown eyes and brown hair and a brown leather jacket and there appears to be a walkie talkie attached to Howling Mad Murdoch’s waist. He has mustard, pale mustard-coloured trousers and a pair of black and white trainers. And just in front of Howling Mad Murdoch is a yellow table and on this table is a white plate with a chicken drumstick and a purple cup of tea which is steaming. Hannibal also has a cup of tea in a blue teacup and Face right at the back has a piece of chicken on a plate and a warm olive-green teacup. Face is wearing a leather jacket and his hand is raised up towards his face like he is gesturing or in a motion. And Hannibal smoking that cigar looks over towards him. Murdoch, Hannibal and Face all have a pinky Caucasian skin colour and then we move round to B.A Baracus who has an afro Caribbean brownish skin colour, and he has a very, he is the most identifiable of all the four characters as he has a black Mohican shaven into. He has a jet-black beard and quite a stern serious look on his face and is looking directly across the table at Murdoch and he has big gold chains around his neck. He is wearing green camouflage trousers and he has some bird feathers attached to his shoes and around the back of his trousers. He has a white and black zebra pattern vest on and his arm, he is in profile looking at Murdoch, his arm has a tattoo on it ‘Mr T’ in black letters. He has chunky gold bangles on his wrist and large gold sovereign rings on both of his hands. His hands are reaching down to a warm tangerine coloured table with white fixings. He has a white plate in front of him again with a chicken drumstick, a golden chicken drumstick just resting and one of his hands is reaching towards this plate. He has a cup of tea with the words ‘tea’ written on it in purple letters and this tea is starting too, well it has some whisps of steam above it. Just to the left of BA’s face which is completely in profile, almost a doorway in the background with the sun shining, but it is hard to work out the perspective in it, because we have this really intriguing purple tiled floor sort of zig zagging from the bottom diagonal left-hand corner of the picture plane towards the top right. And we get this really interesting Van Gogh-esque perspective where the floor is lifting up slightly and we have these sort of bright purples on the ground and the whole thing has a warm vibrancy and intensity of colour about it. Right in the bottom left-hand section of the picture plane we kind of have a green, almost green dollar bill coloured green section with text inside it, a box with text inside it and we I pear close I can make out words like ‘they are looking at magazines long gone, the A Team in USA Hollywood’ and there is an American flag in the bottom of that box as well. This is an amazingly detailed piece of work and it is an incredibly thrilling image to look at.