Another jam-packed month with not very much painting time. I do feel like I’m setting up for a new body of work, so right now I am taking time to find inspiration and research.
This month I started a temporary job at York St John’s University as an Art and Design Technician. This has been very interesting and I’ve learned a lot from the students who I now realise are of a different generation to me. I’ve helped out in the print workshops and ceramics and found myself becoming interested in how these ways of working could influence or even find their way into my practice.
Bratislava 20 - 24 May
The highlight of the month was a birthday trip to Bratislava Slovakia. We arrived in Bratislava on Saturday afternoon to the most beautiful sunshine. My partner Ben chose this place for a birthday trip as there is art and a castle. This is very me. We walked so much, as one does on city breaks. Sunday we went to Bratislava Castle and the National Art Gallery which was mainly contemporary conceptual art.
I realised I must make my peace with conceptual art and enjoy it for what it is. There are elements that can inspire me such as ideas behind the work or the use of colour but I am an old-fashioned painter. so naturally my favourite gallery was The Nedbalka Gallery which has paintings from Slovakia dating from the 19th century to the present day. The current exhibition was the artist Lucia Dovičáková. I loved it so much that I bought the accompanying book. Her work tells the story of growing up. From being a young and confident woman, almost Disney like, in a piece called ‘Fairytales, 2006’ through to the harsh reality of being a mum in ‘Black Hole, 2021’. As I stood horrified at this piece two men beside me were laughing at what seemed like a comical composition. As a woman faced with this possibly being a reality in the future, I didn’t find anything funny about it. I found it moving, upsetting and I questioned whether I wanted this to be my future.
The castle has an incredible story of being renovated during the 1950's from what seemed to be a shell. It's an impressive Baroque, almost Disney style, that sits high over the river Danube which in itself is an impressive river stretching from Switzerland to Romania across Europe.
On Monday we took a train to Vienna as it was only an hour away it seemed rude not to go. The weather was hot but the galleries called us. We went to the Leopold Museum which houses some of the best works by artists like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. It was special to see Schiele’s work, I’ve been a fan for years but never actually seen his work in real life.
The main exhibition was that of Vienna 1900, a collection of work telling the story of Artists in Vienna at the turn of the last century. Hang on. That’s not right. I flick through the museum guidebook I bought. There are no women. Not one.
A quick Google of ‘women artists in Vienna 1900’ showed that, yes there were women working alongside their male counterparts. So, where were they in this show? In 2019 there was a show at the Belvedere entitled ‘City of Women. Female Artists in Vienna 1900–1938’ (1). But why can’t women sit alongside men in an exhibition called Vienna 1900? The other floors did include token women such as two works by Paula Modersohn-Becker. Maybe it’s because women feature heavily as a subject in the work that I forgot to question it at the time. But flicking through the guidebook I purchased there is not a single woman artist present.
“why can’t women sit alongside men in an exhibition called Vienna 1900?”
To find out more about women working alongside men in 1900’s Vienna I found these sources that are of interest:
BOOK - The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900, by Julie M. Johnson
A previous exhibition at Belvedere Gallery, Vienna
New work
In between jet setting and finding work (I am aware the two don’t go together) I have managed to find pockets of time to produce some new work.
Figure Hugging and Self Love was painted in March. In March I also started some works on the A1 paper which are still unfinished but will feature in a show at Angel on the Green in July, more on this to follow.
We finished the month with a trip to Hornsea in the sun and brought along some friends which was lovely.