critical context
anna barriball
I went to the lecture with Anna Barriball in October and really enjoyed both the sensibility of the work and her interpretation of the everyday. She focuses on the aesthetics of everyday objects and usually interior spaces using a variety of mediums including pencil, pastel, wax, photography, and film. Barriball transforms doors, windows, fireplaces, and memories from her past, into softly affecting images that contain moments in time and connect to themes of nostalgia and a reconfiguration of architectural space. For example, in Afterimage, below, Barriball has used pastel to create a subtle image of trees outside her childhood window, then layered it with waxed paper to create an almost photographic image which she refers to as ‘a sculptural object’.
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I particularly enjoy the subtle tones and atmospheres that are created in these works. I think they also make you reconsider and spend time with overlooked spaces – eg understairs cupboard. Her work feels in some ways like meditations on time that I find a connection to – seen in both the time taken to make these pencil rubbings/drawings and in the way her video work (eg ‘The sun (Rosa’s Room), 2024) connects directly to the past but also invites the viewer to reflect on their own images of childhood.
Themes of time, materiality, and connection to place in this work all resonate with me in relation to my own practice. There is something about the visual language of Barriball’s work which is something I would like to achieve. I feel a stillness and calmness from her pieces, but there is often an underlying strangeness or uncertainty which is very intriguing – for example in the way that the florescent orange colour emits from the back of the drawing in Understairs door. This is something that I will hold in mind as I continue my work.
references
Barriball A. Perspectives Talk, Lecture to MA Fine Art, 6 November 2024, Camberwell, UAL
Frith St Gallery, Anna Barriball, https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/15-anna-barriball/ (accessed 12 Jan 2025)
Afterimage, Anna Barriball, 2021
Pastel, wax, paper, graphite powder
Understairs door, Anna Barriball, 2015
Ink, paper, acrylic paint, acrylic spray paint on board
emma mcnally
I saw Emma McNally’s work ‘The Earth is knot flat’ at the Drawing Room both as a group visit from college and I went separately to the artist talk. McNally makes ‘multi-dimensional disruptive works’ that are ‘materially entwinned with the world’. She rejects individualisation and challenges us to develop our own ‘capacity for complexity’. Her large-scale drawing – sculpture – installation, dominates in a dimly lit room creating its own landscape that the viewer is invited to explore using a torch. McNally's drawings are torn, burnt, crumpled and piled up with other materials deeply around the gallery and up against walls, and combine with delicate wire sculptures and projected films of maybe-rocks. Unframed large-scale drawings contain marks that are both geometric and sensitive, mechanical and gently human to make a ‘non-hierarchical topography of systems’.
It is a very affecting installation, and I particularly liked the invitation to explore with a torch. This gives a collective participatory element to the experience and an encouragement to get close to the work, mirroring the close up of the rocks-film. I like the scale of the work reaching high into the corner, but this part also feels less connected to the rest of the installation. The film helps to animate the work and create the intended feeling of interconnectedness.
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The interconnectedness of the ecology of place that she creates (and her reference to climate breakdown) particularly interests me and something that might inform my future work. The interaction of materials she uses - film, paper, wire hangings and large-scale sculptural forms facilitate this. It was interesting to find this work involving crumpled paper when I had already begun to work on this myself, and seeing the installation helped to inform the scale of the crumple paper that I used as a backdrop to project my film in the December pop-up show.
references
McNally E. and Yusoff K. Rift Thinking, Emma McNally & Kathryn Yusoff in conversation, Drawing Room, London, 31 October 2024
McNally E. (2024) The Earth is Knot Flat (Installation), Drawing Room, London (viewed 13 December 2024).
Emma McNally, The Earth is Knot Flat (installation) Drawing Room, London, 2024
catrin webster
Webster is a painter who also works across the media of drawing, sound, installation and video. While she has an extensive wide-ranging practice it is her work in connecting to landscape and her interest in ‘perceived and embodied space’ that resonated with me. In her lecture she talked about moving through a landscape as being critical to her work - for example, painting and drawing on a 2000 mile cycle ride around Wales and converting a Transit van in a mobile home and studio and doing large scale paintings that are transported on the outside of the van. This latter project 'In transit: Landscape from a lay-by’ (2007) I found particularly relevant. In this work she referenced Wylie’s work on landscape and his ideas around ‘entwined materialities and sensibilities with which we act and sense’ (Wylie, 2005:245) that have influenced her practice. This resonated with my interest and research in embodied place as part of my own practice.
She talks about drawing as a way of thinking about space – thereby also containing references to time and perception. She also makes drawings from the moving image – see in the photo below of her drawing while sitting in her van watching a video, which allow her to 'deconstruct the image and consider what she is looking at’. These approaches to practice – Webster’s methods - are very relevant to me and I hope will help me to consider ways of working in the environment and collecting my own research.
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A final comment that she made in her talk was particularly helpful, that sometimes you must follow an interest in something even if you don’t know what it will go yet – for example, she did this in relation to her pansy drawings and photos. She later found a way to incorporate them in a work.
references
Elysium Gallery, Catrin Webster, https://www.elysiumgallery.com/catrin-webster/, (accessed 12 January 2025)
Webster C. Artist talk, Lecture to MA Fine Art, 4 December 2024, Camberwell, UAL
Wylie J 2005, A single day's walking: narrating self and landscape on the South West Coast Path, Transactions of the Institiute of British Geographers, Volume 30, Issue2, June 2005, Pages 234-247
Webster C. Still from artist talk, Lecture to MA Fine Art, 4 December 2024, Camberwell, UAL
