The Griffin Gallery
The Studio Building
21 Evesham Street
London W11 4AJ
+44 (0)20 8424 3239
www.griffingallery.co.uk
Sophia Starling
Daniel Sturgis
Aimilia Meletiou
Alison Jones
Valerie Jolly
Jane Eyton
Sam Walker
Cullinan Richards
Mikyung Son
David Burrows
Stephanie Conway
Simon Betts
Ch Ch Ch Changing
An exhibition exploring a contemporary use of pigment by Tutors and
Alumni from six London Art Colleges curated by Erika Winstone.
Twelve Artists
(in order of Alumni first and tutor second)
Sophia Starling and Daniel Sturgis
(Camberwell).
Private View
Wednesday 27th March 2013 , 6.30 – 8.30pm
Aimilia Meletiou and Alison Jones
(Goldsmiths).
Exhibition Dates
28th March – 3rd May 2013
Valerie Jolly and Jane Eyton
(Kensington & Chelsea).
Gallery Hours
Monday – Friday, 10am – 5pm or by appointment
Sam Walker and Cullinan Richards
(Kingston).
In addition the exhibition will be accompanied by two
seminars with exhibiting artists discussing the particular
nature of teaching and learning in fine art in London on;
Mikyung Son and David Burrows
(Slade).
Stephanie Conway and Simon Betts
(Wimbledon).
Cover image: Erika Winstone
SEMINAR Dates
25th April 2013, 6 - 7.30pm
1st May 2013, 6 - 7.30pm
There will also be a ColArt Chemists talk on pigments on;
....
Entrance is free but please phone or email to reserve a
place, as numbers are limited: Telephone: 020 8424 3239,
Email: info@griffingallery.co.uk
The Griffin Gallery
The Studio Building, 21 Evesham Street, London W11 4AJ
+44 (0)20 8424 3239
www.griffingallery.co.uk
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Ch Ch Ch Changing
FOREWORD
Becca Pelly-Fry
Director, Griffin Gallery
I am delighted to welcome Erika Winstone
back to the Griffin Gallery as curator of
Ch Ch Ch Changing. Following her first
curatorial project for the Gallery in 2012, we
invited her to create a show of current work
from Fine Art educational institutions.
Erika has responded to this with an
exhibition that takes us one step further,
exploring the symbiotic and influential
relationship between tutor and student.
Here at The Studio Building, our Studio
Programme aims to champion and support
the work of emerging artists. At the heart
of this programme is the Griffin Gallery,
a purpose-built contemporary art space
showing work by national and international
artists. Supported by Winsor & Newton,
Liquitex and Conté à Paris, the Studio
Programme also encompasses a series
of artist residencies in two fully equipped
studios (selected through the annual Griffin
Art Prize), as well as workshops, seminars
and lectures by artists and technical
experts. We aim to expand and develop
the Studio Programme over the coming
months and years, creating a destination
for dialogue and engagement with
contemporary art practice.
02 / 03
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Curator’s Foreword
Erika Winstone
Ch Ch Ch Changing is an exhibition inspired
by the song ‘Changes’ by David Bowie
(1971) and the book ‘Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes:
Artists talking about Teaching’ edited by
David Mollin and John Reardon (2009).
The question “is painting dead?” has been
asked for well over a century now; however,
many artists today are embracing paint as a
medium with vital potential to be
continuously rethought, rather than viewing
it in opposition to contemporary practice.
This exhibition presents work by twelve
contemporary artists who use pigment or
paint as both material and idea, in ways
encompassing sculpture, installation,
exhibition, performance, video and painting.
I am grateful for this second opportunity to
curate an exhibition for the Griffin Gallery.
‘Ch Ch Ch Changing’ follows on from
‘Surface’ in 2012, which featured tutors and
alumni of Kensington and Chelsea College.
These are part of an ongoing series of
exhibitions examining the creative potential
of relationships between artists, including
‘The Other Side’ (Crypt Gallery, 2009) and
‘Love Story’ (Danielle Arnaud Gallery,
2004).
04 / 05
For ‘Ch Ch Ch Changing’ I have selected six
pairs of artists, who recently worked
together in that unique relationship
between teacher (artist) and student
(emerging artist) on Fine Art courses at
Camberwell, Goldsmiths, Kensington and
Chelsea, Slade, Kingston, and Wimbledon.
‘Ch Ch Ch Changing’ is predicated on the
transformative experience of art education.
The quotes that follow are taken from the
twelve artists’ statements reflecting on
teaching and learning in Fine Art. Each were
written separately, but have been paired to
illuminate the reciprocal nature of learning
and the dynamic relationship between
teacher and student. As you will read in the
statements, one of the most highly valued
elements is learning how to think creatively.
I suggest this especially equips us to rethink
and find new ways to contribute, work with
others and invent creative solutions when
society is in a state of flux and systems are
no longer working.
‘Ch Ch Ch Changing’ presents the work of
some of the many artists who are actively
engaged in this rich multi-layered legacy of
education, each distinctly still questioning,
inventing, collaborating and practicing in
London in 2013.
Artist’s quotes;
To be in dialogue with a student artist’s work is
enlightening - to be there when ideas are
forming, and to hope, indeed try to ensure, that
those ideas are robust enough for the world
beyond art school.
Studying for a degree in Painting did not
involve being taught how to paint, but rather
learning about ways of thinking when painting.
I was taught how to open my mind and learn
about Art inside & outside me. That maybe was
the hardest and the most challenging thing to
do.
Finding the question deep inside you that
keeps you awake at night, that worries you,
that won’t leave you alone, that comes back
again and again and visual curiosity, which I
understood for me was really feeling the
texture of the thing.
Interacting with students has enriched my life
and also encouraged me to be more ambitious
and thoughtful in my own sculpture practice.
As my first ever art tutor she opened my eyes
and made me discover contemporary
sculpture and its infinite possibilities. It was a
hell of a revelation!
I’m not sure art can be taught but I do believe the
idea that tutors can provide a process to cope
with the constant ‘problematic’ of personal work.
Teaching forms a central part of our practice,
both informing and questioning our work in
terms of the status and positioning of an art
object.
A theoretical framework acts as “a map, a rough
sketch for the work at hand”. This non-linear and
non-prescriptive approach to teaching and
learning allows for a discursive and reciprocal
exchange.
At its best, fine art teaching and the dialogues
between tutor and student are never “sludge.”
These discourses are, for both, “a window onto
something else”.
I believe the best way of learning is experience. I
have learned the most important essence, which I
couldn’t learn without this experience.
I know very little about many things but this is
not a bad thing. When teaching, I would hope
to be like Jacques Ranciere’s ignorant
schoolmaster who does not teach people what
he knows, guiding a student to a prescribed
end, but facilitates a process in which the
student learns something that neither teacher
or student knows.
I would like to take this opportunity to
thank the key individuals who helped this
exhibition happen; Jane Beeston for her
energy, diligence and vision, Rebecca Pelly
Fry gallery director, Ewa Karwowska gallery
administrator, technical assistance
Jane Eyton, Theresa Bottomley, Mark Dean ,
catalogue design by Northbound, last and
most importantly of course the artists.
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Sophia Starling
Through a process of re-stretching, re-making, revealing, off
setting, unveiling, and misplacing, I am exploring the extent
to which I can manipulate and push the formal boundaries of
painting. The surfaces of my paintings tend to become un-flat
and the stretched canvas becomes awkward. The canvases are
stretched around a series of circular supports, simultaneously
flat and three-dimensional, creating not only the structure of the
work but also the composition. Subsequently the form of each
one derives more from within the stretching process itself rather
than any means of predetermined image making.
Studying for a degree in Painting did not involve being taught
how to paint, but rather learning about ways of thinking when
painting.
Big Blue, 2011
Oil on canvas
300cm x 250cm x 18cm
06 / 07
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Daniel Sturgis
To be in dialogue with a student artist’s work is enlightening to be there when ideas are forming, and to hope, indeed try to
ensure, that those ideas are robust enough for the world beyond
art school.
No Longer Alone, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
92 x 173cm
08 / 09
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Aimilia Melitou
Winged Victory. Winged Whaat? (Just.Do.It.) is one of the
ancient mythical creatures I found starved and demented in
a corner of my mind, but it was unclear whether she was lost
somewhere in London. This sculptural installation is balancing
between tragicomedy, grotesque and irony. Nike is seen as
she exists stereotypically in our subconscious, the long gone
Goddess of Victory in a hostile Contemporary ‘Europe’ (ex-Lover
of Zeus), representing the mutated Neo Greek culture, invaded
by numerous wannabes and stricken by Dementia. Does she
know who she is anymore? And whether there is anything left of
her victories in a country that half of its people suffer from the
other half and a world propagandized against it? Questions and
feelings are translated upon her physicality and textures. Her
long-ago broken wings are now composed of real mouth casts,
open and wide. It is unclear whether they shout, whether they
are sexually/provocatively/vulgarly left open, or whether they are
lazily fallen open with all the saliva of their history evaporated.
What changed completely my perception of academic education
when I started my Fine Art studies in London was that I wasn’t
being taught how to do things technically and that in fact, no
one interfered within my practice of the medium. I was taught
how to open my mind and learn about Art inside & outside me.
That maybe was the hardest and the most challenging thing
to do. It was this guidance that broadened my horizon by light
years in comparison to how I was as an artist previously.
Winged victory. Winged Whaat? (Just.Do.it.), 2012
Iron, resin, fiberglass, plaster, wood and car paint
10 / 11
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Alison Jones
The teaching advice that made most impact on me came from
two artists who I spoke to both only once. At the Slade Paula
Rego talked to me about finding the question deep inside you
that keeps you awake at night, that worries you, that won’t
leave you alone, that comes back again and again. For me that
was some messily entangled feeling about art, class, gender
and power. I felt this feeling sharply as a provincial teenager
gloating over my first Vogue and the exclusive worlds of fashion
and high culture. And although years in art school have given
me the intellectual tools of Marxism and Feminism to theorise
the fetishism of commodities (and art’s peculiar place therein)
and the commodification of sex, I am not over it, I’m still turning
over the same conflicted feelings. Michael Craig Martin who I
also spoke to only once talked about visual curiosity, which I
understood for me was really feeling the texture of the thing I
couldn’t get over - a velvet drape in smoothly sponged-on paint,
the glaze on a porcelain vase in a thin wash, the pattern of a
Versace cushion with sharp geometric brush marks, the precise
cut of a couture dress in a crisp black edge.
My paintings in Ch-ch-changes are from a series titled Art
House, from the interiors section of W magazine. Masterpieces
of Modernism; nudes by Picasso, De Kooning, Dubuffet, and
contemporary works by Barney, Newton and Ruff are considered
in their owner’s homes: art’s habitus of wealth luxury and
distinction.
Magnificent Nudes by Thomas Ruff grace the walls of
the hall and library (Louis chair), 2011
Watercolour on paper
12 / 13
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Valerie Jolly
I mostly work with tissue paper. I am fascinated how with humble
flat sheets of paper I can capture the shapes of everyday objects
or architectural features, from the minute to the monumental,
thus transforming them into something else. I am particularly
interested by the shift from 2D to 3D.
Lately I have been making more abstract work, experimenting
with thicker paper, which I cover with layers of resin.
In this piece specially created for the show, the paper becomes
an object in itself as the crumples produced accidently are
trapped in the resin, creating a random landscape. The blue
biro doodle that covers the surface enhances the sense of
randomness. Transformed by the resin, the blue pigment looks
like an exotic lacquer.
Before meeting Jane I thought that sculpture could only be a
piece of wood, plaster or marble, either carved or casted. As my
first ever art tutor she opened my eyes and made me discover
contemporary sculpture and its infinite possibilities. It was a hell
of a revelation!
Valerie Jolly lives and works in Brussels.
What Is The Pattern of Rises and Falls? (Landscape Paradigms), 2013
Paper, blue biro, resin
68 cm diameter
14 / 15
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Jane Eyton
“I always said to my Mother that I would never be a teacher!
Since both of my parents were teachers you can understand
the sentiment but I was young, naïve and did not realise how
rewarding teaching can be. Over the years I have been very lucky
to have met many wonderful students and to have seen real
progression in their creative practice.
Interacting with students has enriched my life and also
encouraged me to be more ambitious and thoughtful in my own
sculpture practice.
I like to work with scale, colour, environment and anticipated
movement and much of my work is based on natural forms in the
landscape.
“The summer of my toxic tears” is a piece based on my recent
experiences. A series of teardrop shapes constructed from tissue
paper and glue cascade from ceiling to floor creating colourful
droplets that animate moments of sorrow. As they strike the
gallery floor they flow and separate with flashes of saturated
colour to reflect the varied emotions that certain events can
trigger. The sculpture is placed in such a way that the viewer may
interact with the fragile forms that gently weave around them.”
The summer of my toxic tears, 2013
Tissue paper and PVA
Dimensions variable
16 / 17
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Sam Walker
‘Great paintings had simply become the tools of our narcissism.
Indeed, the legendary art dealer Duveen had already been in the
habit for some time of heavily varnishing his paintings, having
noticed that his clients enjoyed seeing their own image in the
works presented to them’
Darian Leader, Stealing The Mona Lisa
I’m not sure art can be taught but I do believe the idea that
tutors can provide a process to cope with the constant
‘problematic’ of personal work.
AP5, 2013
Mixed media on cotton
18 / 19
Ch Ch Ch Changing
CULLINAN RICHARDS
Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards
We have worked together since 1998, working primarily within
the area of painting, and paintings relationship to the structure
of the exhibition as well as painting as gesture. We are interested
in the use of the exhibition as material context within which
discreet objects are choreographed and re-arranged to give a
sense of instability or slippage of material and meaning.
We run the Fine Art taught MA and MFA programme at Kingston
University, and teaching forms a central part of our practice, both
informing and questioning our work in terms of the status and
positioning of an art object and the exhibition itself as material.
The titles of the works in the exhibition are:
Giorgio Morandi Table 2013
Paint pots and household paint, found newspaper, plastic, metal
table, plywood
Giorgio Morandi’s drawings and watercolors often approach
abstraction in their economy of means. He explained: “What
interests me most is expressing what’s in nature, in the visible
world, that is”; he also said, “Nothing is more abstract than
reality”. [1] Morandi was perceived as one of the few Italian
artists of his generation to have escaped the taint of Fascism,
and to have evolved a style of pure pictorial values congenial
to modernist abstraction. Through his simple and repetitive
motifs and economical use of color, value and surface, Morandi
became a prescient and important forerunner of Minimalism.
Federico Fellini paid tribute to him in his film La Dolce Vita, which
featured Morandi’s paintings, as does La notte by Michelangelo
Antonioni. Don DeLillo’s 9/11 novel “Falling Man” (2007) includes
two Morandi still-life paintings on the wall of Nina’s New York
apartment.
Source: Wikipedia
Giorgio Morandi Painting 2013
Acrylic medium, pigment, mirrored plastic, canvas, silver tape
View of ‘Collapse Version V’, 2010
Dispari&Dispari Projects, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Photographed by Dario Lasagni
20 / 21
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Mikyung Son
I focus on making the invisible visible by representing ordinary
objects and rituals, generally overlooked in our daily life, with a
different point of view or time scale.
For this work, nothing was fabricated. It was a natural happening
of the seven hour process during the separation of gold grain
from the formula in the ink well. The movement of the grain
reminded me of the process of life. This phenomenon, which
involved coincidence and chance, actually revealed how I treated
the ink well previously. It was the opposite flow of the previous
action. I reversed the video as an exploration of the cycle with
fastening, rescaling and repeating the process by following my
own perspective from the micro to the macro scale. The sound
came from sinusoidal signals, which we rarely hear since it is
so simple to miss. I made them audible by putting two or more
different frequency sounds together, their combination created
mysterious rhythms. Being in the environment with two different
touches of listening and seeing, the video and sound, to give new
experience.
I believe the best way of learning is experience. I have learned
this while studying at the Slade school of fine art. I had to find
what I wanted and how to proceed to reach a resolution. I have
learned this most important essence which I couldn’t have
learned without this experience.
Gold, 2012
Video still
22 / 23
Ch Ch Ch Changing
David Burrows
Artworks
There are many ‘poor images’ circulating in the world, produced
by a variety of processes including cut and paste, altering
size, resolution, compression or format, cropping and copying,
corruption and pirating of data. I am interested in both the use
and production of poor images, which circulate as a kind of
global collective index of desires, fears and fantasies concerning
death, capital, politics, sex, magic, exchange, knowledge and
violence.
Plastique Fantastique, the collaborative work I make with Simon
O’Sullivan and others, is a performance fiction that presents and
celebrates many poor images as sacred, political and aesthetic
works.
Teaching
I know very little about many things but this is not a bad thing.
When teaching, I would hope to be like Jacques Ranciere’s
ignorant schoolmaster who does not teach people what he
knows, guiding a student to a prescribed end, but facilitates
a process in which the student learns something that neither
teacher or student knows.
Freedom through repetition, 2012
Hand-made cut-out, watercolour on paper
90 x 90 cm
24 / 25
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Stephanie Conway
It was Schleiermacher who said that pedagogy is art “in action”,
where a theoretical framework acts as “a map, a rough sketch for
the work at hand”. This non-linear and non-prescriptive approach
to teaching and learning allows for a discursive and reciprocal
exchange.
It could be that I am an ultimate consumer of the city - a modern
day flâneur, meandering through the city’s labyrinthine spaces,
contemplating those elusive moments of unfamiliarity. Within
the acts of looking and seeing my perception of the familiar is
altered.
My paintings reflect upon the shifting architectural typography
of the city and on the continual processes of re‐structuring,
re‐mapping and the condensing of space and place. A sense
of the transitional has been a central influence upon my work,
manifested through various materials and exploratory processes.
The stuff of painting is equally important, as is a playfulness in
my approach to making.
Working predominantly in two and three dimensions opens up a
set of propositions within the work. My process of working from
part-observation and part-memory allows a slippage to occur,
opening up a space for a re‐presentation of visual information
together with an interrogation of the nature of painting.
Painting with six verticals, 2013
Wood and paint
26 / 27
Ch Ch Ch Changing
Simon Betts
“Ordinarily paint is a window onto something else, a transparent
thing that shimmers in our awareness as we look ‘through’ it to
see what the painter has depicted: but it is also a sludge, a hard
scab clinging to the canvas.” (James Elkins. What Painting is.)
At its best, fine art teaching and the dialogues between tutor and
student are never “sludge.” These discourses are, for both, “a
window onto something else”.
Two halves are better than one,
Oil and polyurethane on MDF
12ins x 12ins
28 / 29