Thoughts on artists collaborating following talk by Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs

Matthew and Emma gave a talk in Norwich to Paint Club East where they outlined their collaborative approach to working. Matthew is a well-known critic and painter, his partner Emma, is a ceramicist. The work they talked about was new work that was about to be exhibited at Vigo Gallery in London. What emerged during their talk was that they had developed a very process orientated approach to working which some artists in the audience found difficult to handle. Matthew revealed that he was, in relation to these works at least, little more than a technician or an automated drawing tool or paintbrush. Emma it appears decides what colours are used in what combination and the type of stroke or mark making that is needed.

Let me explain a bit more.   The paintings are large-scale canvases divided into many geometric diamond shapes that are then further divided into triangles. Each triangle is a different colour, and the colours are built up using many layers of colour glaze before a final combination of colours is arrived at. The paintings appear to be multi-layered, as if the geometric diamond shapes are obscuring some thing else be it a landscape or seascape of some sort, the colours vibrate off each other in a successful overall vision which does not allow for straight geometric reading of the Diamond grid.

Biggs & Collings

The pictures are not unlike Bridget Riley’s, although to my mind they work better than Riley’s.

Biggs and Collings’ exhibition in London opened a few days after the Paint Club East talk. I went to the Private view at Vigo.  The next day I went to see Bridget Riley paintings at Tate Britain to compare and contrast. I like the Bridget Reilly’s, but I prefer her collage mock ups to her finished paintings which I have previously seen at Kettles’ Yard in Cambridge.

 

Detail of Biggs and Collings’ work

I suppose the key issue for me with Biggs and Collings’ work is the one emerging around a collaborative practice. I found that their honesty in the way they talked about their collaborative work really refreshing. This was most evident when Matthew Collings talked about their sublimation of painterly or artistic ego. I found this both disturbing and intriguing and I would like to work collaboratively with more artists to explore its possibilities. It seems quite clear that there is enormous potential and I can’t fully know how I’d feel about it until I’ve done more. I have collaborated with the artist David Kefford at Aid and Abet on a tiny scale recently in Cambridge, or the limited outings I had whilst an undergraduate at NUA.

Bridget Riley

Review of Vermeer’s Women at The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge

This small exhibition is a victory of marketing over content. Yes it’s a lovely show and yes it has Vermeers in it. But there are only 4 of his pieces and the other 25 or so are by other Dutch contemporaries. There’s nothing wrong with that per say. It is a coherent and beautifully presented show. And the coup has to be the Lacemaker loan from the Louvre in Paris. The other 3 come from the UK including one from the Queen’s collection. 

 

The difficulty I had with the exhibition, and many in museum or formal gallery settings, is with the labelling and text. Too much of the label was given to a description of what you could see in the picture. I wanted to ask why am I being told this when I can see it. What would have been more interesting was more background or underpinning to why the subject matter or the compositional elements.

Yes there was some attempt to tell us why women were depicted in certain ways, especially on the need to remind women that their place was in the home and the virtues of that. But what wasn’t said was why in the later part of the 17^th century was it necessary for women to be reminded of their place. Was there some threat to men and women had to be put in their place? Had there been some upheaval and women needed to be coaxed back, like after the first and especially the second world wars? This wasn’t revealed sadly.

For me some of the more fascinating pieces were not the Vermeers but rather some of the other painters. Take Jacobus Vrel for example and his piece: woman at a window of c1650 – see below.

 

Whilst this representation is somewhat bleached out the use of light from outside the window is very interesting and made me think about my recent interest in the use of and direction of light on my own work. There is of course, something theatrical about the use and the way sets are lit.

Bridget Riley Exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

The Bridget Riley Exhibition was in many ways a better, more focused exhibition than the one at the National Gallery earlier this year. This are a number of reasons. Whereas, the NG one focused on large scale works, in some cases painted on the walls, this KY one provided better focus and with smaller scale works spanning a number of disciplines from paint to print.

Also, at KY, there seemed to be more space to consider the work – ironic really given that the exhibition gallery there is a fraction of the size given over at the NG to her show! The pieces were arranged thoughtfully and enabled the visitor to glimpse works from one space to another, also giving a sense of depth, and perspective which the NG one lacked – it was all there in your face.

What interested me was the titling of pieces. Some were just a list of the colours; two green and one blue for example others had a narrative title, like autumn. For me the simple colour titles where more revealing in a way than those with titles which encouraged me to try and decode the theme from within the abstract arrangements.

There was no doubting however, her extraordinary facility with colour and contrast, space and negative space. Looking at the bigger paintings especially for a period of time had the same effect of staring at a light bulb – a residual impression was burnt onto the retina and travelled with you as your gaze moved around the painting, adding new layers and new combinations of colour.

For me, the most revealing pieces where the two working mock-ups for larger scale pieces which showed something of her working methods and how she assembled the composition from cut out pieces of coloured card.