Swimming through

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Swimming Through a Diamond

ARTSHED Glaisdale, 5th August to 2nd September 2023

Nick Kennedy in conversation with Chris Yetton, with contributions from Rachael Clewlow, Francesca Simon, Eric Butcher, Sarah Bray, James Hugonin and Andrew Bick.

Works by Bridget Riley. Francesca Simon, Rachael Clewlow, Trevor Sutton

Curated by Nick Kennedy

Nick Kennedy

Perhaps I could start by introducing the project. It began with a conversation with Francesca Simon. The suggestion had been made to Francesca that this particular Bridget Riley painting would be good to show here alongside Francesca’s own work, because of the connection of the triangular motif. So that was the starting point in conversation between the two of us, and I made a proposal for a show which evolved to include two other artists who broadly connected to similar themes in the work. But in particular, there was this use of a very simple reductive motif all the way through; initially it was a triangle. And from there, we expanded a little bit to include all the more sculptural forms of painting, which I think we'll come on to. But the title for the exhibition came from a Bridget Riley quote, and she did figure heavily in the thinking around the context for this show.

The opportunity that we had to show this painting in such an unusual, intimate setting was kind of irresistible, and obviously, there could have been many artists chosen to sit alongside this painting, but these ones were chosen because there were connections between them and with nature. I felt there was an interesting dialogue with the Riley work, a reference to the natural world and this reductive lens through which the viewer was experiencing something of that sensation of experiencing nature. I suppose we should start by asking Chris about your reflections on seeing the exhibition. What was your first response?

When I walked in, facing the Bridget Riley, I was stunned. It looks so terrific here, it's a stunning painting and hung here with some marvellous works that relate to it. It's great to concentrate on just one Bridget Riley. On the face of it, it's so simple. It's made up of triangles, black and white triangles and yet, the more time I spent with it the more complex it appeared, the more spatial it appeared. I liked your use of her memoir of growing up in Cornwall in which she includes memories of visual experiences, reflecting on how they've informed her work. And I remember she once said that what she most wanted to have achieved in her painting was the expression of joy. I think that is very accurate about her painting and about this one too. It could be such an austere painting being in black and white, but it is a very joyful painting, very lively.

The Riley quote that I chose which informed the title of the exhibition, Swimming Through a Diamond came from a piece of writing of hers in 1984, The Pleasures of Sight, and describes quite vividly a childhood memory. To me it is clear that in her painting she's attempted to connect back to some of those formative experiences. That was a thread throughout the exhibition which was important – that connection with experience in nature, and the way that is translated through painting, so that perhaps the experience of viewing the painting gives the viewer some sense of that joy that the artist had with their interaction with the world. So it was very much the idea of a form of reductive abstraction, geometric abstraction, which connected to experience and perception and the Riley painting does that beautifully. Maybe you would like to read a part of that quote?

I was very struck in relation to her painting and to the other paintings in the exhibition by this phrase in it – “the entire elusive, unstable, flickering complex”. I think it describes that painting and the exhibition in general. This sort of work is not an abstraction from nature. It's making work with pure shape, pure line, pure colour, pure tone. But then the final result, the visual thought in it, brings the experience or perception of the world back.

That's right. Something of the characteristics of the experience are present in the work. I think that's true of this painting, but they are abstracted from the original experience. And like you mentioned, the use of those pictorial tools of the line, or in this case the triangle and the grid, they are tools with which to play within the process of painting, but then they are also used to convey some of that experience of the world. In that piece she speaks about an experience of being in the water and of the changeable nature of light on the surface of the water, the colours that appeared and disappeared and the fleeting nature of it all. When you look at this painting it's kind of unstable. On one hand, it's a very simple structure, with this repeating, triangular motif, this isometric grid, alternating black and white equilateral triangles with quite a subtle intervention in some ways – on a number of those triangles there is one edge, which has been inflated or deflated. The effect this creates is a new rhythm within the painting that counters the grid. Although the painting appears to have a randomness to it, there are various rules. There are rules applied in the use of those modified triangles, so that for instance, along the rows of the painting, the modified triangles run convex right to left and then concave, left to right and they alternate like that all the way down the painting.

And I think they induce a sense of movement in those rows of right to left, left to right and so on. There are so many movements going on in it and it rests, delicately poised, on the points of the black triangles at the bottom, the points of them. They are particular triangles, equilateral triangles, and they fit together in a different way than the other triangles in some of the other works here which are 45 degree triangles, half a square. There is a very interesting idea of equality in all these works, but an equality within a world that's constantly fluctuating and changing. They describe a world of fluctuation and change. And yet there are these extraordinary stable equilateral triangles, but then equilateral triangles fit together as hexagons. And the curves which initially I saw as serpentine curves going down the painting from top right to bottom left are made up of arcs of a circle, in fact the arcs of the circle that contains the hexagon. So then I start to see different larger shapes – a serpentine shape that forms a kind of volume within the painting, and other larger equilateral triangles and circles. You get so much out of these basic, pure shapes in this painting.

I felt there's a real kind of economy in the choices she's made. You know, it's always the way with Bridget's work, but this connects to an earlier work that she made in 1962, Tremor, which had the same recurring motif and structure, but relatively the unit was much smaller. So the triangles were smaller and there was a bigger field. And it was a more complex image, but in a way the proportions of this painting are perfect for viewing. It feels like it's set in proportion to the viewer, you know, bodily to the person standing in front of it, to the scale of the viewer. It was interesting to watch how people position themselves. So yesterday, during the opening, there was a moment where there was just me and one other person in here and I watched him kind of constantly moving around trying to position himself to find the right place to view it. I think that's part of what she's interested in.

You don't get anything extra by going up to it. In fact, you see small imperfections where things meet. It's slightly destructive of it. There is definitely a viewing distance for this work, unlike some of the other works, where you are rewarded by going up to them. If you go close to Trevor Sutton’s you start to see how one colour is streaked delicately across another, more than one colour comes through to you. Or you go up to Francesca Simon’s and you see how each of her triangles is almost like a little piece of a mosaic. Francesca has chosen to paint slightly around the edge of the paintings and this suggests that all of those pieces have a slight thickness; but you don't see that from a distance, you have to go up to the works. Close to you also see the variations in the linen, which makes a lovely spatial field. But with Riley’s Rustle, there is an optimal distance from which to see it. The difference between it and the 60s’ work is that the movement is more aggressive in the earlier work, partly to do with what you're saying about the difference in relationship between the size of the element and the whole size of the work. In this one it's quietened down and it allows you to contemplate both the movement and the stillness.

Yes, that's interesting. And I think also in her titling, and she tells us something about where to start with what to make of the painting. So I think that that work in the 60s I'm referring to is called Tremor and this work is called Rustle. To me ‘rustle’ is suggestive of a movement.

A quiet movement…

Yes, a quiet movement, a gentle movement, but also a human experience of the world. So that was one of the starting points for thinking about other work that would be interesting to show alongside it. And you point out that, particularly with Francesca's painting, there's more of an exploration of the edge of the painting. And what was interesting for me with Francesca's work, that idea of ‘painting objects’. That's how I read them as opposed to with the Riley, which I would describe as the classic painting image. There's a border there and the stuff that happens within the painting is framed by the canvas. I know it's signed on the edge, but really, it's to be seen as a flat image. And like you say you go close and you can sense the brushstroke work, but it doesn't seem to add so much to the image. It provokes you to move around it but you find that the right point to look at it and then you allow the painting to be active and for your eyes to kind of finish the painting or explore the painting in that way. Where I see some of the other works here, particularly with Trevor's, as quite sculptural. That was part of the thinking around the selection of work, for this space. You mentioned the qualities of this room, which, we should say, is a converted agricultural building, so it has various openings, apertures, windows, and doors. It has this large masonry wall and it's got kind of problems to solve when you hang an exhibition. So part of the decision-making for choosing other works was, in a visual sense, how it would sit in the room, and how to have the conversation in the works, visually, as objects. That was important for me. So with Trevor's paintings, there were a few that we could have chosen but I wanted this painting entitled Glaisdale. Trevor had a show here with Carol Robertson, which I think was the first exhibition here in 2020, and he spent time in the gallery, and that painting is a response to being in this gallery space.

Which is the lower one?

Glaisdale is the one at the bottom of the two. And then the other work is titled Walking. So, they were made as a pair around the same time but they weren't conceived as a diptych. I was quite pleased, through conversation with him, to discover that he was open to us playing around with how they might be presented. So in the room here we made the choice that they could be presented in this kind of diamond form. So the two isosceles triangles were presented one on top of the other one pointing up, one pointing down, and partly that was to do with the balance in the room. We're dealing with quite a large Bridget Riley painting and other much smaller works. So it gave some volume in the room and that was one reason for that choice.

He told me he was very pleased that you'd asked to borrow the paintings and played around with them in your studio, putting them in different orientations. He and I played around in his studio with two other works, exactly the same shape as these, and found if you hung them horizontally with the points outwards, you suddenly got a space which seemed to go off to infinity, horizontally – a very different experience. What else did you try in your studio?

We tried a few configurations. Early on, I had in mind that that would be an interesting proportion for work or a pair of works in this room and that it would in some way deal with the large window on that wall.

Which is so difficult to deal with.

It was quite challenging, you know, it's one of the factors in thinking about the work so when selecting we made various digital drawings of the room that would allow us to test things. So that was an early idea, but I also tried them in an orientation with the two placed side by side, almost like peaks of the mountain.

Or pyramids.

Because there's this direct reference to nature with Trevor in his titling, to experiences of nature and a particular place, I wanted to make a distinct pairing and connect to this place, to Glaisdale.

You mentioned the object-like, and Trevor's paintings always have an object-like quality, which is very much to do with their depth. You’ve hung these, so the gap between them is the same as their depth, which reasserts that object-like quality. He also pointed out to me that as a student, he painted triangles and diamonds, so he was quite interested to see what you've done with them.

Perhaps we think along similar lines, but to me it was interesting with him and it's the same with Rachael's work – it was made in such a way that it could be hung in different configurations. With Rachael's Colour Register painting, it was originally made as a pair and it was shown with its counterpart in a vertical format, rotated 90 degrees. And there are other works which Rachael has made, which have been constructed in a way that they are objects to be almost played with, intentionally, so that there wasn't a deliberate top or bottom. And that was something that I wanted to play with here. There is an openness as to how it could be presented, how it would look in a space and how it could be presented alongside other objects. I wanted to explore that here.

It's interesting you talk about play because I had a strong feeling about it, as though each of these colours going across it were like strings of an instrument. I could run my fingers down and get a wonderful series of notes out of it. It doesn't have an obvious top or a bottom and right at the bottom there's the tiniest sliver of light blue. You have to really get up close to see that it is there.

With that work, some of the colours blend into each other, partly because the lines are narrow, they are one millimeter-wide lines. And from a certain distance, the bands appear slightly wider or narrower and it changes as you move around it.

Which gives a rhythm…

It gives you a rhythm and it gives a kind of a depth to it. So some of them start to appear almost like three-dimensional rods. So that there's a kind of space there that's being explored. I think a similar thing is happening with this idea of depth and compression in Francesca's painting. So Check 6 has this kind of column of falling light.

Like a shaft of light. I feel that strongly about Francesca's work: the unpainted linen itself has a very spatial feel to me. I read the yellow bars in Check A ii as light, it's like sunlight and the violet bars in Check 6, as like evening light. But all the work here has a grid in some form within it. You describe a 1mm horizontal grid in Rachael's Colour Register 7 and there's a horizontal grid in Trevor's work. Walking is divided into five equal sections, Glaisdale into six, but it’s not easy to see the equality, especially in the top section. I think in all these works there is this question of what you can know to be a fact by measurement, and what you see, which is different. There is a strong suggestion in these works that the world has underlying equalities which constantly transform. I was also so struck by how different equilateral triangles are from triangles of half a square, which are 45 degrees rather than 60 degrees. Having Francesca's work next to Bridget’s just made me feel how different are those two triangles; both have to do with equality but they are very different visual thoughts.

Yes, that was important while putting the show together, that on the face of it, the motif is similar. But there is a huge difference between the right-angled triangle that is deployed by Francesca and Rachael in the new small painting, Sky, Ground, Sky. The triangular motif is a departure point to explore what can be done with the geometry of the triangle.

Although Rachael also uses the equilateral in the smallest work in the room up above the door.

Yes she does, but the right-angled triangle reinforces the rectilinear grid, the vertical and horizontal, whereas in Rustle 2, Bridget's painting, there is a different kind of spatial thing happening. The diagonal is emphasised.

The diagonal grid in Rustle 2, from top left to bottom right is in unbroken straight lines. It's the top right to bottom left diagonals that have the circular arcs within them. These dynamically disrupt and loosen the static nature of the grid, while Francesca disrupts her diagonal grid by these bars which lift or depress the columns so that the grid dynamically jumps. The sense of movement, disruption and change is constructed differently.

Yes, it's quite lively in both of Francesca's paintings, but particularly looking at CHECK A ii, there is a rotational movement happening, almost like windmill motion.

Windmills within those larger squares.

At one point, I see squares, just ruptured by the bar elements, they sit just slightly out of sync with one another, and it emphasises that movement, and at one point you are drawn to look at the square, which is constructed by the eight triangles or half squares, and then you are drawn up a vertical, that kind of strong vertical where that rupture occurs. So there's interesting space and movement that happens in there.

Down the centre of that painting, you've got these diamonds which are squares turned around at 45 degrees. Again, so different from what happens in Rustle 2, where the triangles fit together as hexagons. Such a different idea of pure shape, but nevertheless, both having this idea of equality in them. A fundamental kind of feeling, I think, which I see not just as a visual thing, but as a spiritual thing. I think the idea of equality in the world is an extremely important idea, and all these works seem to express that. A circle is the locus of a line that is an equal distance from a point. There is some fundamental expression of equality in the circle, as there is in these kinds of triangle. They have a strong metaphorical meaning for me about the world.

I kind of feel that about the use of the system or rules, which most of the artists in the exhibition have used in different ways. It connects to that idea of equality or almost objectivity and removing yourself, to some degree from the business of defining meaning. Certain objective things, for example, the system created with Bridget's work, that is a determining factor in what can be done, and then in some ways, the process of painting is in response to that or an exploration of that. There is a democratic, objective quality to this way of making work. With Rustle 2, there are some exceptions, but there seem to be rules, compositional rules there, but they are slightly broken. So they aren't hard and fast. They are almost like guidance through the process of making, through a system. So on the structure of those modified triangles and the way that they work within it, we've mentioned the left to right movement. The variation, row to row of the convex/ concave, but also there are three lines of the grid. There's the horizontal, and the two diagonals, that are most obvious. It's the way that equilateral triangles tessellate, which generates that, but there's only one edge of the triangles, which is modified. So it's always the right-hand edge of the triangles and what that gives you is this curvilinear line that runs along the right-to-left diagonal. The others are all straight lines, so there's this tension between the curved element in one direction and the authority of the grid in the others. And also, within that choice, the curved elements occur on almost every other right-to-left diagonal. So it's not every line, there is one exception, I think, so there is this distinct rhythm throughout and it forms circular shapes within it.

And volumes, where you have pairs of them. I see the curves also making triangles, different kinds of triangles that have two straight edges and one convex or concave edge, triangles that are in a different kind of space. And then one sees the true equilateral triangle, and then how they're changed.

I think the idea of stability interrupted is important here, but also occurs in the other paintings. So perhaps we can turn to Rachael's new small painting, Sky, Ground, Sky. One thing to say that marks out Rachel's work is different from the other artists in the show is that there's this direct collection of information from the world. So although the other works tangentially connect to nature and ideas of experience, Rachel's actually out, collecting stuff in the world. So with both of these paintings, there is a kind of performative walk that happens. And it's about an engagement with the world and finding a place within it. She may correct me on this, but that's my reading of it. There's a process in the studio of responding to that and responding to the collected data. So the colour choices come from collected colour or light. So photographs will be taken while out walking and those photographs then inform decisions in the studio. There's a particular system within that painting, which charts a journey. It's a specific relationship with an actual kind of performative act of walking in nature. So they do relate directly to experience.

But the way they do this is hidden from us. There's a code, or rules, that translate that experience into the making of a painting, but we can't translate it back. That's so lively, that little painting, isn't it, so deliciously lively, achieved with the vibration of the colours and tones. You get that sparkle of light that Bridget Riley describes.

Eric Butcher

Can I just ask, what determines the nature of that walk?

Rachael Clewlow

I've been interested for a while in a tunnel that runs practically from our house in Newcastle underground to the river and it was used to carry coal in the 19th century. I've wanted to explore it for a while and I've been carrying out research on it and I've been able to walk halfway through the tunnel underground. I then made a walk overground, tracing its path as closely as possible, recording information along the route. In reality it can be absolutely anything that determines the walks and the investigation to start with, but then it becomes more about the work and the journey, and my experience of it, and the gathering of information.

Eric Butcher

Is that a sort of ritualistic thing? With that repeated action?

Rachael Clewlow

Yeah, I do repeat walks and journeys and make notes each time, but these new paintings come from one specific walk. I had chosen a bright sunny day and they kind of reflect the light on that day, the colours relate to that, but are chosen and mixed intuitively in the studio.

Eric Butcher

So it's almost a suspended moment in time.

Rachael Clewlow

Yes, so I think the walk was only about half an hour in duration, and I had 90 images from the walk and that determined the number of triangles. There is a strong system at work that I am led by, both on the walk and in repeating the journey in the studio to make it. The painting is a record of all that.

Sarah Bray

Did you say it was the sky and the land, those are the colours?

Rachael Clewlow

Yes, Sarah. They are alternate lines, horizontally. The top line is the sky and the next line is a colour taken from the ground, and so on. Each one's derived from a colour swatch, created from the photographs.

That vertical organisation does connect to Trevor's, because the very vertical nature of the isosceles triangle, he said, relates to the vertical nature of the landscape here. The particular shape of these very sharply pointed triangles is connected to the way you are climbing or descending when you go for a walk at Glaisdale. The lovely way that the underlying colour comes through the top colour in each band also has to do with the light that he experienced here.

Rachael Clewlow

I was heavily influenced by Trevor's work because it was hanging in the studio next to me while making the new work!

We should say that with you, Rachael, there is a practice of collecting that is a long-term thing, isn't it? For 15 years or so, which is quite ritualistic, and difficult to explain to some people when you are spotted with your notebook!

Rachael Clewlow

I started collecting data in around 2003. And I was recording my journeys everywhere I went and then making work from that information, but over the years it's become more of an abstract practice, and I've focused more on the language of the paintings. I've probably been influenced by many people, including James here!

Sarah Bray

And your diaries, you are always writing, car journeys as well. I couldn't believe it. You must have incredibly good eyesight.

James Hugonin

Yes, tiny writing!

The other thing to say, is that more recently, walks have become constructed with the idea of a painting in mind. So there is this interaction between the length of the walk and what you record, the number of points, what you're looking for, with a view to making a painting. So that's why I think of it as a performative element of your practice. You are out there to collect things for a painting.

Eric Butcher

So instead of the painting being an outcome of the walk, the walk is in itself driven by the painting?

Rachael Clewlow

They kind of feed into each other. I've tried to rationalise it in my own head, and I'm still not sure which one comes first. I was reading a text by Bridget Riley recently, which resonated. She was describing how it feeds into her practice and actually quite often it's more like that, I'm trying to capture nature, and capture those moments. But yeah, I don't know which one comes first.

Eric Butcher

Just on the subject of Rachael's work. Can I just ask about the kind of curatorial logic of including a circular work? Because everything else in the room is either a triangle, or it has a sort of surface structure made up of triangles, and that seems to be the one exception.

That's a good observation, because that was in my thoughts, but also in my thoughts was that the artists like to choose rules, and then in some ways break them. Maybe that's my reference to that and that the rule is that we have a show of triangles with one circle in it. But yeah, there was certainly a kind of link from Bridget to Rachael. Out of the triangular motif and the way that those modified triangles activate the surface, circles are created. So I wanted to have something in the space which responded to that visually.

Francesca Simon

Also, when we started, you were looking at my work, Pushkarni Preview, which used the equilateral triangle, but also had circles in the layers behind it. You decided to leave out that painting because it didn't work here.

Would you say that your work relates to your experience, visually, around here?

Francesca Simon

Yes, I think it is intuitive rather than prescribed. Yeah, I've definitely changed, painting in colour since coming to live here more permanently. Up until then, I’d been thinking of myself as someone with a more Northern European sensibility, you know, monochrome, a little bit of colour. But suddenly, being surrounded by colour that changes the whole time, by season, by daylight, by time.

It was important with everyone here that although the basic building blocks of the work are very simple geometric forms like the triangle, the line, the circle, they are always used towards the ends of something more complex, like experience of the world. Those things were pointers to experience and tools to describe that experience or suggest it in some way. With Trevor's work, hanging it in the orientation that we have, they are a little like the points of a compass, and perhaps they suggested a direction. And that it was about artists orientating themselves within the world through their work. That was one of the thoughts that I had around how it fitted together.

And there is a strong feeling, even if you see them individually, of a verticality and also a horizontality in the way the brushstrokes go against the vertical nature of that particular kind of isosceles triangle. There's a very strong feeling of that, and of light coming through.

It's a very kind of subtle sense of light. I was with him yesterday discussing it and it's a shame he can't be here to join us, but he looked out of the window at one point and said “that's the view!” I looked out and thought – I don't see it at all! It's entirely subjective. But yes, the way that painting is constructed, it has a very painterly surface. And there's a distinction to be made with the Riley painting, which has a much flatter surface. There's a use of materials and painterly quality to the other works, which stands out, and it's most apparent in Trevor's work, because of the sculptural form, which contrasts with the way the paint is applied.

And it's a new way of applying paint that he's done in the last year or so. And I commented to him that Delacroix streaked one colour across another colour, using a rather hard bristly brush. I think he got that idea from watercolour. He'd been taught to make watercolours by an English watercolorist and Trevor had done the same thing; he tried the technique in watercolour, which made him think of doing it in acrylic.

Francesca Simon

Do you think there's something about Bridget's work, that a not-too-painterly finish suits her because she works with assistants? Because you can tell people what to do, clearly, without asking them to add their own flourishes.

We'd absolutely have to ask Bridget that question. I would imagine that after many years of working with assistants, she's quite specific around what she wants. Generally with her work, the application of the paint is very controlled. Here, from a distance you don't see any brushwork, but up close, you begin to see the workings of the brush. I don't think there's any masking tape used here, so there's a lot of rigour and work required to achieve that very graphic, hard-edged finish. But up close you do sense the time and the labour of someone working on that. I was delighted to find a small moment where there was a little bit of white, just overlapping the black, and my reading of that was that it must be deliberate. That she'd made the decision that she was happy with that. So I didn't really read it as an error, I saw it as an indicator of allowing the human-ness, a little bit of humanity to come into it.

But she's also made some very large-scale interventions in space, wall drawings. I remember seeing a work of hers at the National Gallery, and it was being made in the space and there were about seven or eight assistants working on it. I think that there's a kind of intimate quality with the other works. It's partly to do with scale, but it's partly to do with the way the paintings have been made. There's a real touch, the presence of the artist’s hand in the work up close.

I think all these works have a clear plan, the artist had a clear plan of what the work is to be, and how to make it and then it's made. And that allows the possibility of assistants doing part of the work.

There are rules there which can be followed by anyone, I suppose. Francesca, I wonder whether you could say something about that, because you title the work Check, which I understand is a reference to chess, could you talk about that?

Francesca Simon

Well, I was planning moves as I went along. I know that sounds ridiculously simple. I found that I was making shapes, paper shapes, and moving them around, rather like a game.

I think there are two basic forms of grid generally in the world. One is to put information out, in a table for example, to spatialise information so that it's clear and readable. And the other is in games, like chess, where the grid is the arena in which the game is played. And I think both those things, both those meanings of grids relate to the grids in these works.

So when you make these paintings, you mentioned paper cut-outs, do you have a kind of system for composing before you apply the paint?

Francesca Simon

I'm not terribly organised, I like messing around with the shapes and being surprised by what happens.

But do you mess around while a painting is underway? I've always assumed that the whole thing is conceived before you start.

Francesca Simon

It depends if the format is familiar or not, there are different geometric combinations. Check 6 was the first painting I made in that format and scale. But CHECK A ii followed the lines of another painting in terms of the alignment of the triangles. The colours relate to things that I see outside but take on a different tone or hue in terms of time of day actually.

It has always struck me that the colours you use are almost like the same colour, seen in dark or in light, in shadow or in light.

That was my reading of Check A ii, Chris you mentioned yesterday that you felt the warm yellow bars were like sunlight. To me it's like a repeated image of the same view.

And I see Check 6, with the violet bars as an evening painting. It's not exactly that I see the sunlight in Check A ii. It's like an emblem of sunlight, like a thought of sunlight. And then it moves the grid up and down in this really delightful way.

James Hugonin

I just wanted to ask a question about not so much hanging height, but the relationship to the floor with the hang. Because I think it's really interesting. I suddenly imagined Trevor's painting working, where there wasn't that relation of the floor, hung within a vast space, almost. I know you have talked about the idea of developing this into a much larger museum show in the future. I keep feeling that work could be released into a huge space and then it could become a totally different painting. Just as that small work of Rachael's hovers above the door here.

I agree it could hold its own at the top of a wall, because it's got this strong sculptural quality to it and as an object it doesn't necessarily need to be seen at a conventional hanging height. I’m not sure Trevor would be too happy to see it hung way up high!

James Hugonin

It's so lovely to see painting presented that way, as we've become so accustomed to seeing things hung at 150cm centre and I just felt those two works really sort of blew that apart.

I suppose that was a playful decision to just upset the standard hanging height a little.

Sarah Bray

But a lot of it has been to do with breaking rules, this show hasn't it? You wanted to test that.

Well, there are a lot of conventional elements to the way it's been hung, but yes, part of it was about playing with the notion that when artists work systematically, there are always rules, and at some point it becomes very dull just to stick to the rules. I'm interested in the points where they find fissures and moments where they can break the rules. That's where the more interesting things start to happen. It's the tension created when a bit of subjective, intuitive decision-making meets the objectivity of democracy of a set of rules, which is interesting. James, you mentioned the prospect of us developing a broader exhibition, which is something Chris and I have discussed. I think we've been very fortunate to have the loan of a Bridget Riley painting, and in some ways it's hard to relate to Bridget as an artist because she exists in a certain space, which is almost beyond most contemporary practitioners. But I was interested in finding ways of contemporary practice connecting to this bigger context, the tradition of reductive painting in the UK and Bridget is a key part of that history. So there's some thought that we may use this as a starting point for a future, larger project. Here we are limited by space to four artists but there are a lot of other artists working today who would enable us to extend the dialogue further.

On that point that you make about Bridget's position in relation to other British artists – clearly, Francesca, Rachael and Trevor all admire Bridget and I think that's true about quite a few artists who work in this way, with a clear plan, using certain basic shapes. I think they all seem to me to have great admiration for Bridget, she stands as a kind of touchstone of supreme quality. And it made me wonder and I'm still very tentative about this, if they can be described as working in a British form of Concrete art. Because working with a clear plan, with pure shapes, pure colour, pure line – these are the principles of van Doesburg’s Concrete Art. Except that in the European tradition of Concrete art, the work doesn't relate to nature in any way, it's very specific that it shouldn't relate to the perceptual world. If it's interpreted at all, it's socially, in terms of the ideal society or something. Whereas it strikes me that many British artists who work like this relate in some way to the perceptual world. They're not abstracting from it, but they take one back to it. And I was wondering if this is the difference between these British artists and the European tradition. I tentatively put that forward, but you were very interested in developing a big exhibition!

I think as an artist, because I'm a practitioner, as well, there's this constant tension of wanting to be alone in your work, to be distinctive in what you do, but also wanting to find context for what you do. So there is a long tradition of British abstraction, which I feel that the artists here are a part of, and in some ways I am as well. Perhaps Andrew would have quite a lot to say about this, I know you've written quite extensively on constructivism. It seems to me that this is a contentious area as to how we define abstract abstraction in this country and the way that artists working with reductive means have been viewed in this country. I understand that a lot of artists have departed from the country because they felt more at home in Europe. So I'm wondering now if a further exploration of a specifically British tradition of reductive painting is worthwhile.

Andrew Bick

I think it is a really interesting question. I think the one thing we can talk about with a degree of confidence is a lack of nurture within the culture of the UK for work that is non-representational. Just to flip the conversation back round to this space, there is an unavoidable aspect of this gallery, which is that the relationship between inside and outside is constantly reinforced. I'm sitting here looking at Rachael's circular painting and I'm seeing the data almost reiterating what the changing cloudscape is doing. The first thing I noticed this morning, and it's impossible to photograph because the eyes flip between different exposures in a way that cameras can't. Recently, with a research student, I was re-reading the Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and in a way this idea of inside and outside is so inherent to the sensibility of this exhibition, it's almost easier to use that as an analogy for talking about space, within and without forms of non-representational painting, than it is to talk about the landscape. Going back to the British Constructivists, the first thing Lawrence Alloway did when he wrote about them was to sort of stab the St Ives artists in the eyes, by saying they could have been quite good if they hadn't insisted on dealing with the landscape in their work. But he had a point, because there's a sense of giving audiences, who are not comfortable with really paying attention to things, a kind of comforting notion of the landscape. I'm also old enough and grumpy enough to have taught Francesca on her MA and one of the first things I remember is having a go at her for repeating the structures of the fields in the Yorkshire dales as a literal thing and actually saying “no, there are other ways to think about this”. I was talking to an artist last night who said “I can't engage with this work because there is not enough life in it”. If you think right back to the birth of Constructivism, to the idea of people like Popova, of a painterly architectonics, it’s about proposing space and our relationship to space. The kind of kinetic aspect of the Bridget Riley painting forces you to move around it, to try and find a good angle. Your own body is implicated, and that is going on in so much of this work.

I'm looking forward to reading your recent book, Rhythm and Geometry – I know that you've been considering these questions for some time.

Andrew Bick

But also there was another parallel that we discussed, with Cairn gallery. As a space that used to be in Gloucestershire and is now in Fife, where notions of poetry, walking and landscape are key. The thing that emerged from Coracle press of ‘the unpainted landscape’ was a way of reasserting an idea I know Trevor would subscribe to, and I'm fascinated to hear about your experience with these paintings, in those terms, that the environment, the outside, can be experienced spatially, in ways that don't sentimentalise what the landscape is, it's about a form of, kind of, haptic understanding. The other interesting Cairn connection which links a lot of people is the extraordinary artist Roger Ackling, who was very much part of the world of Long and Fulton and he did something with it, which was, I think, directly parallel to the constructivist, measured, materially syntactic approach to art making, which of course, you see here very precisely in Rachael’s work where you have these striations in the clouds moving above it. It's lightened space in a very simple sense.

And of course, Roger made his work outside; it was essential to the making. It was made outside with the sunlight and then of course, one always saw it inside. That inside-outside feeling was very prominent.

Andrew Bick

In relation to these ideas of chance that have come up with Bridget's work, and with your work, Rachael, Roger had a keen sense of mischief. Chance and mischief are related, and they bring a sort of levity to things where you're no longer seeing the landscape as a sort of reverential thing that is kind of threaded together with Elgar's Enigma Variations or something like that. Not that that's not a great piece of music, but you know, there are other disruptive ways.

I remember Roger describing to me that as a student, with, I think, Hamish Fulton, they got an old car and suspended a pencil from the bottom of it, so it just touched the road and they drove it to Cornwall. And then they replaced the pencil with a rubber and they drove back!

James Hugonin

I think it is important to say that also with Fulton, Long, Roger Ackling, there was a huge reaction to sculpture on plinths. Often, a lot of these movements are running counter to other things.

Also to the rather strict Anthony Caro sculpture School.

Sarah Bray

They are reactions to things that have gone before.

That is an important point. Whenever one reads something like van Doesburg's manifesto of Concrete Art, it is important to consider why it is being written then and what it is a reaction to.

Andrew Bick

Van Doesburg was also the supreme mischief maker. So he was, at the same time, creating his Dadaist persona.

How many different personas did he create, six or seven?

James Hugonin

But also there wasn't just one mischief maker – John Cage permeates the 60s. In all of that, you could say mischief making, but you could also say, actually quite profound thinking. So this ambivalence between mischief and profundity is quite interesting.

That's an interesting point, just go back to what you said, Andrew, about play and mischief being at the heart of a lot of the work and the various approaches. The work takes itself seriously, but it doesn't mean to be so serious that we have to sit and consider the sublime.

Andrew Bick

There isn't any sort of false piety in it – a sort of mystification to make it seem more interesting. There is a kind of matter-of-factness, so it is both serious and playful.

There is an honesty there.

I remember a good demonstration of that by Cage, when he gave a talk to a huge audience at the time his ur-operas were all performed, one after the other. He came in, sat down and started reading a newspaper; eventually somebody asked him a question and he answered it and then went back to the newspaper and then another question came, which he answered and then back to the paper and it went on like that! It was a great talk, but the way it was done was so mischievous and inconsequential in a way and yet it enabled him to say all sorts of things.

James Hugonin

It was out of those things called Lecture On Something, Lecture On Nothing, and various other writings at the time, but it did question how we converse with each other in a very simple way, which did have also quite profound effects.

Andrew Bick

Perhaps another interesting idea in this exhibition is the idea of a conversation with the world outside where the work itself is distinguishing itself from the world, by not trying to mimic it, but by presenting itself in this kind of conversational relationship. Just because of where I happen to be sitting in this room, I can see all the fields through the windows and watch the bunny rabbits hop across the field. Is this painting called Rustle?

Rustle yes, so they're rustling around!

Andrew Bick

So you have the wind through the trees and the movement of that, and a relationship is formed, just by us being in here, with that out there, and with this in here.

James Hugonin

And the fact that these paintings have been made in different places, some in London, some in Newcastle and some here, they each bring another aspect of place or landscape.

Andrew Bick

In a way, that notion of landscape is everything – urban landscape, rural landscape, and in the sense with the kind of long dialogue Francesca and I have had, I see her paintings as completely about the landscape. But it's not this sort of prescribed notion of what a landscape should be.

I think that is a good place to stop as we have just passed the hour mark. Thank you to you all for coming and for your contributions today, it has been a really great, lively discussion.

All photography by Colin Davison.

Swimming Through a Diamond: Installation

Left: Bridget Riley Rustle 2, 2015. Right: Francesca Simon Check 6, 2021

Swimming Through a Diamond: installation

Francesca Simon Check 6, 2021

Rachael Clewlow Sky, Ground, Sky, 2023

Left: Rachael Clewlow Colour Register #7, 2022. Right: Francesca Simon CHECK A ii, 2023

Trevor Sutton Walking, 2022, detail

Swimming Through a Diamond: installation

Left: Trevor Sutton Glaisdale and Walking, 2022. Centre: Rachael Clewlow Colour Register #7, 2022. Right: Francesca Simon CHECK A ii, 2023