Barbara Hepworth & Martin Boyce
Martin Boyce, Untitled, 2009 brass and perforated steel H: 72cm © the artist
Barbara Hepworth, Forms Ascending, 1957 oil on board 56.4 x 31.1cm © Bowness
Pier Arts Centre founder Margaret Gardiner (1904-2005) regarded Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) as one of her dearest and closest friends. Margaret was introduced to Barbara through zoologist Solly Zuckerman (1904-1993) who was a mutual friend, early in the year 1930. After an initial meeting over tea, Barbara invited Margaret to visit her in her Hampstead studio. Many more visits followed, and the friendship between the women blossomed through deep layers of conversation on subjects from food to fashion, art to politics. They were both ‘fiercely partisan’ and showed great awareness and feeling towards current social problems and anxieties surrounding such things as unemployment, the coming to power of Hitler and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
In this extract, Margaret describes the influence Barbara – and her modernist contemporaries – had on her and her understanding of the visual world.
‘I knew nothing at all about sculpture, and only very gradually began to look at Barbara’s work in her studio in the Bell in Hampstead. And almost began to take it all in through the back of my head; and began to see what she was at and like it. And I also began to see what she had to say about it, and have feeling of the great excitement of that particular group of artists to which she belonged; with a feeling that they were creating a new world – that they were doing something to change the world, and change the rottenness of society – a tremendous idealism and exultation.’
(Margaret Gardiner, as quoted, Time is a Country: The Memories and Friends of Margaret Gardiner, 1988 70 mins, colour, sound)
Martin Boyce (b. 1967) is a Glasgow-based artist who works across sculpture, installation and photography. Boyce is inspired by early 20th century modernism and design which he refers to in much of his work, but he also draws from everyday urban objects, such as fences, trash bins or telephone boxes. The legacy of objects is both interest and subject for Boyce, and creating work which plays with formal qualities and associations in order to question their role and meaning within contemporary society. There are often oppositions presented within the work, for example, the natural versus the constructed, and the old versus the new. In 2009, Boyce represented Scotland at the 53rd Biennale and in 2011 he was awarded the Turner Prize.
A sculpture by Martin Boyce next to a painting by Barbara Hepworth offers something unexpected yet inviting. Instantly, planes of energy in both works grab the eye’s attention and draw you in to look closer. Boyce’s mask-like sculpture offers notions of the human and the living, which come into conversation with the texture of man-made material and geometry of design. Forms Ascending, an expressive monochromatic Hepworth painting carries a vibration of form which underscores the interaction between sculpture and painting and the boundary placed between the two in traditional thinking. To see a painting beside a painted sculpture, makes the sculpture more painterly, and vice versa. Movement between the works, and within the works themselves, is generated – and even where there is stillness, there is a sense that something could, at any moment, take flight.
Italo Valenti & Callum Innes
Italo Valenti, Collage, 1962, paper on board 30 x 29cm © the artist's estate
Callum Innes, Exposed Painting, Deep Violet, Charcoal Black, 2004, oil on canvas 122.2 x 117.5cm © the artist
Italo Valenti (1912-1995) was an Italian painter and collagist. Born in Milan, Valenti grew up and later studied in the city, attending the Brera Academy from 1932-1937. After initially making very colourful works inspired by childhood fables and fairytale, Valenti started making abstract paper collages in 1959 which coincided with a move to Locarno in Switzerland – and friendships with artists Julius Bissier (1893-1965) and Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) who lived near-by. He found the technique of collage playful and amusing. Using squares and lozenges of paper and card to indicate observations of a contained space, or an inverted sky.
Callum Innes (b. 1962) studied at Gray’s School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art and is perhaps best known for his Exposed Painting series which, Deep Violet, Charcoal Black, is an example of. The artist creates these rich and luminous works through applying layers of pigment to the canvas and then removing the oil paint with washes of turpentine – a process of painting and unpainting. In his words, “When I paint I like dissolving two colours together and creating a new colour. It’s about tension and creating space and light. I like to be surprised.”
(As quoted, from an interview by Peter Hill, Callum Innes – I’ll Close My Eyes, Issue 59, Artist Profile)
Both Valenti and Innes have adopted a layering process, and there is evidence – traces – of what has been built-up, and what has been taken away. A sense of creation in process, highlighting areas of what ‘has been’. The artists have experimented with their materials and allowed their work surface to provide playful ground for discovering new marks, colours, forms, and nuances to their visual language. The hues of purple which exist in each work, in painted and collaged form, speak to each other – they are of the same, but different. Deep and bold, but also, soft and quiet. In Valenti’s collage, straight edges contrast with ragged edges – cut and torn by the artist’s hand. And in Innes’ painting, there is this great tension between the straight lines and where the pigment has been allowed to bleed and go beyond the measured boundary. Looking at this pairing, there is the opportunity to witness marks made through time – within and between the works – and find joy in the subtleties and similarities which have been laid bare through the artists’ individual exploration and desires to push the boundaries of their materials.
Margaret Mellis & Brandon Logan
Margaret Mellis, Dead Anemones, 1957, oil on board 46 x 30.8cm © estate of the artist
Brandon Logan, Kiss 11, 2023, 19 x 13.5cm, Kiss 14, 2023, 19 x 14cm, Kiss 12, 2023, 19 x 13.5cm
acrylic and string © the artist. All works are courtesy of the Artist and Ingleby, Edinburgh
Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) was one of the earliest members of the St. Ives group, which included artists such as Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) and Naum Gabo (1890-1977), who all settled in the Cornish town during the war years. Mellis trained at Edinburgh College of Art (1930-34) under the Scottish Colourist Samuel Peploe (1871-1935) and the landscape painter William Gillies (1898-1973); her contemporaries included the Scottish artists William Gear (1915-1997) and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004). Mellis’ use of colour was deeply personal, poetic, and musical – indeed, she experienced music as colour – which gives her work a great sense of freedom and vitality. Throughout her career, Mellis dedicated great energy to explorations of collage, painting, and sculpture, and demonstrated a dynamic and rigorous approach to her materials and subject matter. To look at a Mellis painting, such as Dead Anemones, we are reminded that her work can capture the essence of life and go beyond the surface of things - offering a space to discover and reflect on both the artist’s and our own personal experiences.
Brandon Logan (b. 1996) studied at Edinburgh College of Art, and lives and works in Stromness, Orkney. Logan is constantly inspired by the joy of colour and the possibility of paint; this passion and dedication to his materials has allowed him to develop a process which involves the flooding and sealing of warps of string with layers of paint – the string support allowing colour to be suspended within it. The paintings are both liquid and linear, and vary in pattern, texture, scale, colour palette and intensity. Water – and the idea of movement between states – is also a conscious stream of thought. Thinking about the connectedness of paint in relation to the string structure, he sees his paintings as if they float like islands.
Looking at this painting Dead Anemones, by Mellis, next to 3 paintings – Kiss 11, 14 and 12 - by Logan, we can see how both artists have handled colour in intensity and in thickness with bold consideration, which gives the feeling that the painting – in the moment of happening - is being ‘held’ just in the right place. Mellis always talked of her works as if they were emerging – each stage of the process, a decision, a brushstroke, an act of becoming. She preferred to think of her work in terms of texture, and how many layers of paint were enough to make the right density of colour. Similarly, there is a sense of time and growth within Brandon’s paintings and his unique process. The string support the artist creates allows him to suspend colour within it. In Logan’s own words, ‘I am obsessed with the simple transformation of fluid, liquid colour, to solid, that can take place in my hands. It is like magic every time.’ (Brandon Logan, Dog Rose, Ingleby Gallery, 2024)
Alfred Wallis & Alexandra Kadzevich
Alfred Wallis, St Ives harbour: White sailing ship (verso) c.1934-8 pencil and oil on card, 32 x 46.5cm
Alexandra Kadzevich, Mysterious Pier, 2019 acrylic and collage on wood, 13.2 x 9.3 x 1.9cm © the artist
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) only gave painting his full attention at the age of 67, and it very quickly became an obsession. He would often work on spare cartons, advertisement cards and packets given to him by the local grocer and would often leave the colour of the packet as the background, stating, ‘I do not put Collers what do not Belong’ (Foreword by Alan Bowness, Alfred Wallis, Arts Council Exhibition, 1968) . Marine paint was his medium of choice as it came readily to hand, which may well have influenced his limited colour palette.
Wallis is represented in collections of modern painting throughout the world. The Pier Arts Centre’s collection holds 6 works, 3 of which are recto, verso and feature paintings on both sides, as in this example. Wallis’ paintings and drawings speak of the sea and of a time gone by, but they can also be very much telling of the here and now. As we look at these works today, their intimacy can capture the viewer and provide a porthole to our own experiences – past, present, or indeed future.
In 2019 The Pier Arts Centre hosted Ukrainian artist Alexandra Kadzevich (b. 1992) as part of the UK/SWAP residency programme developed by the British Council. Kadzevich created a compelling body of work during her time in Stromness, integrating the language of painting, drawing and installation, using various materials. The artist finds inspiration in her surrounding landscape, constantly seeking details of the everyday, collecting fragments of form and colour from ordinary objects – always looking for details which usually escape the eye. The boundaries which exist between realms, and between painting and sculpture, intrigue Kadzevich and she plays with tensions between things to create a rich dialogue in her work.
In this pairing, Wallis and Kadzevich have worked with a combination of oil and acrylic paint, with coloured pencil and collage, on found card and wood respectively. Both artists have chosen a cool, silvery grey to provide a rich and brooding backdrop for the areas we register to be sea and sky. A forest green line waves heavily through the top of the Wallis painting, and softly through the bottom of Kadzevich’ s, suggestive of landmass, before and beyond the sea. Both paintings, although created decades apart, draw together similar elements and show how artworks created at different times can share and instil harmony. There is a shared intimacy of time and place, and both artists have expressed their experiences through their materials to create works which have layers of meaning, evoking traces of both the familiar and the mysterious.