MIGRATION studioxyz

studioxyzFiona CassidyAnna GahlinLydia HalcrowLinda Khatir Dawn LippiattMike NewtonEmily West Michele Whiting

www.studioxyz.co.uk

MiGrAtioN

10 - 15 July 2012 MiGrAtioN

Migration is a show of paintings, sculpture and video work from studioxyz, a ‘virtual’ studio group bringing together eight artists from the South West.

The works respond to artefacts in the museum’s permanent collection, creating a dialogue between American history, the museum object and contemporary art.

Curation: Dawn Lippiatt

The American Museum in BritainClaverton ManorBath BA2 7BD

The inspiration for my work comes, not from an object in the collection, but from the entity that is the collection itself. Whilst touring the museum i became intrigued by how easy it was to become disorientated within the building and by the way that the room-sets fit into the existing internal spaces.

travelling between the displays the visitor moves through time and space until reaching the Greek revival room where imported rooms converge with Claverton Manor itself. Here only the furniture has travelled, the detailing of the walls and ceiling belong to the Manor.

The story of the four men who created the museum intrigued me, particularly that of Nick Bell-Knight, the craftsman who constructed the rooms. His memoirs recall stories of wooden boarding and other architectural artefacts arriving in bulk having been transported from all over North America. He used his extensive restoration skills to piece them back together and create accurate historical pictures. The areas that face the public now are perfect in

their presentation. on the reverse of these constructions however, timbers and plasterboard are exposed; they are finished just enough and no more.

Three hidden spaces were of particular fascination. The square walls of the Lee room nestle into a bay window and peeping through the door under the wooden stairs here reveals the scar left by a fireplace and bare bricks off-set by torn floral wallpaper. Ladders, coat hooks and cleaning rotas squeeze into an L-shaped gap behind the Furniture Craftsmen room-set. And the solid wooden door at the back of Conkeys tavern conceals primary coloured plastic mop buckets, shiny silver ducting and shelves full of polish and disinfectant.

i have opened cupboards and crept through doors to discover the intermediate spaces between the reconstructed American rooms and the walls of this classic English manor house.

Fiona CassidyOnly objects here, 2012selected drawings, plasterboard, oil pastel, graphite and charcoal

www.fionacassidy.com

Between New orleans Bedroom and Deming Parlour only objects here (bucket)

Squanto, a Pautuxet man, saved the lives of the British settlers by giving them corn kernels and showing them the Native planting method since the plants and seeds they had were inadequate in a different soil and climate.

i chose to represent the red, yellow and blue maize, making two near identical tritptychs to illustrate the concept of old World/New World – a means of reflecting back and forth. The duality also represents the man and woman sitting opposite each other with a basket of corn between them.

i paint, not literal colours, but memories of colours. The russian artist, Strzeminski, writing of his monochrome paintings: The artwork expresses nothing…..it is (exists) of itself. This is normally my starting point for my work – the quest for reduction to ‘no-thing’ – a nothingness. Simply colour. The interrelationship of seeing and feeling colour bypasses intellect, acting

on our memory to provoke a response beyond the reasoned and the rational. invoking something as important as the sustenance that was critical to the survival of the early immigrants from this country. The green edges (which could signify corn leaves) because: a) migration, of necessity, means crossing borders, and b) the addition of another colour prompts the viewer to regard the colours they are next to with a fresh eye. Does the green (which is the same green) look exactly the same next to red as it does to blue, or yellow?

i have been researching red, Yellow and Blue paintings for some years and this exhibition presented an opportunity to revisit what so many immigrant American painters since the 1920s have explored.

Anna GahlinBut for Squanto, 2012watercolour on paper

www.annagahlin.co.uk

Their Sitting at Meate by Theodore de BryProvided courtesy of the American Museum in Britain But for Squanto

A map can be used to make a walk. A map can be used to make a work of art. Maps have layers of information; they show history, geography, the naming of places. A map is an artis-tic and poetic combination of image and language.

richard Long

i’m interested in the paths we make when we navigate a place. How these paths interweave and intercept over time. The routes we take build up a complex pattern day after day while at the same time eroding and altering the ground that we walk on, the air that we pass through.

We have a basic need to map the places that we inhabit, both to help us navigate but also to make the unfamiliar familiar, to own the un-knowable. The Museum has the most wonderful collection of maps, charting what we have found important to map over time and how we have done it. The ancient maps blur the line between ‘factual’ information and drawing, an object of art and beauty and a document to consult before and during a journey. Looking at them made me question who makes a map and what they decide to include and leave out and why. How they depict information – what keys, colours and scale do they use? its easy to make the assumption that modern maps are factual and objective, looking at these old maps is a healthy reminder that modern maps hold the agenda of the map maker

just as the old maps in the collection do. Boundaries may be disputed or omitted, roads included and foot paths and other modes of navigation not. All of the information reflects the maker of the map as much as it does our way of seeing the place we inhabit at that particular time.

i wanted to make my own map that reflected the subjectivity of map making and responded to a section in the collection that depicted the great migration – or ‘the trail’ of 1843. over one thousand pioneers left Missouri in the East on foot and in wagons to head west to Willamette Valley in search of a better life, more fertile land and later the promise of gold. one in ten died on the two thousand mile walk, and their journey changed the history and development of the United States.

Whole families died or were born as they walked the trail; whole lives for some were lived on foot, passing through. today migration across the US is daily and immediate, air routes criss-cross the states, passing through multiple time zones in a matter of hours, the promise of the destination no longer sustains weeks and months of travel, but can be repeated in a single day. i wonder how the two forms of navigation enable us to relate to our surroundings and know and understand a place. Sometimes the thing that happens is the journey itself and not the destination.

Lydia HalcrowJust passing through, 2012blackboard paint, ink, pencil, graphite, chalk on boards

www.lydiahalcrow.com

Cardinal Stefano Borgia - World Map (c. 1430), 1797Provided courtesy of the American Museum in Britain Just Passing Through, 2012

Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some resolution which it may never find.

robert Anderson, from the film, I Never Sang For my Father

of all the objects in the main collection, i found the depiction of a native American widow, the most alluring. The image provides a fascinating insight into the ritual of bereavement within Chippewa culture - for in her arms, the widow carries the mourning badge/bundle of her husband. According to custom, the body is mourned for several days before burial. The wife saves a lock of his hair, wraps it around a birch plank and this provides the nucleus of the bundle, which is then covered by his best clothes, most precious beadwork and leather. According to custom the corpse is openly mourned for 4 days. Before it is buried the wife saves a lock of his hair, and wraps it around a birch plank. This provides the nucleus of the bundle, which is then covered by his best clothes, most precious beadwork and leather.

I visited a lodge today, where I saw one of these badges. The size varies according to the quantity of clothing, which the widow may happen to have. It is expected of her to put up her best, and wear her worst. The “husband” I saw just now, was thirty inches high, and eighteen inches in circumference.

Sketches of a tour to the lakes: of the character and customs of the Chippeway indians, and of incidents connected with the treaty of Fond du Lac.

By Thomas L. McKenney 1827

The widow then carries the bundle home and “nurtures” it for a minimum of a year. it will never leave her side, she will sleep next to it and will even offer it scraps of food. The bundle will increase in size as she wraps anything precious that she makes or earns over the following year. Her role is to maintain a pristinely cared for badge of mourning, meanwhile the widow refrains from bathing and caring for her own appearance. Finally, at the end of her bereavement the widow takes the spirit bundle to the family of her dead husband where she may exchange the bundle for her freedom to marry again.

Themes surrounding memory are a common thread in my work. in the Western World the symbol for bereavement is black dress and a gravestone. We, unlike the Chippewa, struggle to address our needs of holding on and then letting go. The Past is a Foreign Body looks at the life of the individual, and how memories shape them. Each figure is a previous self, outgrown, shed but not discarded, for like a snake we abandon what doesn’t fit. We may mourn our younger previous selves, we may nurture them, hold on to them even, but inevitably still struggle to identify with them once discarded.

Dawn LippiattThe Past is a Foreign Body, 2012old clothes, PVA, resin

www.dawnlippiatt.co.uk

A Chippeway [Chippewa] widowi. t. Bowen’s Lithographic Establishment -- Artist The Past is A Foreign Body (detail)

The Conestoga wagon was used extensively during the late 18th century and the 19th century in the United States. it was named after the “Conestoga river” in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and thought to have been introduced by Mennonite German settlers. in colonial times the Conestoga wagon was popular for migration southward through the Great Appalachian Valley along the Great Wagon road. Although the wagons used in the westward expansion of the United States were, for the most part, ordinary farm wagons fitted with canvas covers. it is the image of the Conestoga with its boat shaped bed and sloping sides, its cover overhanging front and rear, swaying along that symbolises and brings to mind the winning of the West.

This spirit of exploration has continued albeit for recreational purposes. Although the automobile has replaced the pair of oxen or team of horses, today’s ‘covered wagon’, the Airstream trailer is very much an icon as was the Conestoga wagon. Wally Byam, airstream’s founder, was practically born a traveller who as a teenager worked as a shepherd, living in a two-wheeled donkey cart outfitted with a kerosene cook stove, food and water, a sleeping bag and wash pail. He started designing and building trailers early in the 20thC and in 1934, he introduced the name ‘airstream’, and an American legend was born. With its monocoque, riveted aluminium body, the Airstream had more in common with the aircraft of its day than with its predecessors and like all good designs has withstood the test of time and is still in production today.

My work explores various aspects of melancholia using traditional methods of oil paint on primed canvas. over the last 4 years i have been exploring this theme through a series of paintings of caravans. Although i have been using the motif as a metaphor for my personal sense of loss, it allows the spectator to register their feelings and provide their own interpretation. The caravan transforms a region of wilderness into landscape, whether it is urban or pastoral. it provides a mark of civilisation and passes a comment on our relationship with the environment; it may also represent nostalgia for holidays or weekends away from the urban environment or evidence of people living on the margins of society.

Because of the personal nature of my work i have previously used uniquely UK Caravan designs that relate to my own childhood and have particular associations for me. For this exhibition i have experimented with compositions based on the Airstream situated in the American landscape. A number of preliminary sketches and small paintings on wooden panels led to a larger work on canvas. Although the support takes over four weeks to prepare, the painting is typically completed in one session by using a variety of methods to add and partially remove thin oil glazes. This high risk strategy of working directly onto the support allows for the incorporation of the ‘happy accident’ and ensures the paintings maintain a freshness of execution.

Mike NewtonGolden Slumbers, 2012oil on Canvas 100 x150 cm

www.mwnewton.com

Conestoga wagon (in the grounds) Golden Slumbers

in the autumn of 2011 artists Linda Khatir and Michele Whiting (AKA collaborative duo Quilos and the Windmill) were selected as joint artists in residence at oxbow, Michigan. Prior to our departure, we visited The American Museum in Britain and identified several objects of interest from the museum collection: a folk art quilt, wooden chairs, and small objects such as corn dollies and glass witches balls. our trip took us first to the city of Chicago, then Grand rapids, and on to Saugatuck, finally arriving beside the oxbow lake on a bright Sunday morning, and this is where our joint intellectual journey through ‘real and imagined space began.

The oxbow campus is made up of 150 acres of forest, lagoon, sand dunes and old wood cabins, and childlike activities (including stealing and make believe) became our creative strategies, giving us the opportunity to engage in an in-disciplined art practice. While foraging for playthings we sneaked into wood cabins, moved things around, took photographs and stole objects including ornate table lamps and rickety chairs.

These became the focus for a number of artworks. For one of these, Musical Chairs - performance party, we invited others to join us in our game, and as the music played, chairs were taken away one by one, the laughter and tension building as the spaces between the chairs grew. We

recorded the game using two video cameras, and the resulting split-screen moving image is an audio/visual realisation of our artistic collaboration.

For 11x11 Counterpaine we borrowed brown paper, sticky tape and paint. taking into the account the sewing practices of the original quilt makers, we drew the simple things encountered each day: a lunchtime bagel, a decorated chair, a small black squirrel, a fire pit at night. our approach to making was unsophisticated and temporary - monoprints on brown paper that showed 121 things that we had seen these images becoming the squares for our own ‘quilt’. once made, we took Counterpaine out into the environment that had prompted its making and photographed it 121 times.

Quilos and the Windmill’s third work is a museum within a museum - a small archive of pseudo artefacts. inspired by the American Museum collection, we collectd ordinary and discarded objects from the thrift stores around the small town of Saugatuck. on the eve of our departure we were presented with a boxed jigsaw set made from a map of the United States. This gift now forms part of our museum collection wherein each object (no matter how ordinary) has special meaning, and as such is a commemoration of our stay at oxbow.

Quilos and the WindmillMusical Chairs-Performance Party, 11 by 11 Counterpaine & Micro-Museum, all 2012video / brown paper, masking tape and paint / installation

www.person.com

Naive cotton quilt in the folk art section 11 by 11 Counterpaine

A great grandmother of ohio described her feelings about a cover she had made for her family: “it took me more than twenty years, nearly twenty-five, i reckon, in the evenings after supper when the children were all put to bed. My whole life is in that quilt. it scares me sometimes when i look at it. All my joys and all my sorrows are stitched into those little pieces. When i was proud of the boys and when i was downright provoked and angry with them. When the girls annoyed me or when they gave me a warm feeling around my heart. And John too. He was stitched into that quilt and all the thirty years we were married. Sometimes i loved him and sometimes i sat there hating him as i pieced the patches together. So they are all in that quilt, my hopes and fears, my joys and sorrows, my loves and hates. i tremble sometimes when i remember what that quilt knows about me.” Discovering Patchwork - rosamond richardson and Erica Griffiths.

As an enthusiastic craftswoman, i found the patchwork room at the American Museum inspirational. it holds a history of emotional and physical journeys, estranged and close friendships, political and religious beliefs and a connection between women of different generations and families.

The patchworks on display are aesthetic and tactile and full of sculptural potential. As well as their physical appearance i am intrigued by the ritualistic and almost meditative process used to make them, whether the making is done in private or as a group. However, whilst researching quilt patterns and history it was the use of paper patterns that really sparked my imagination.

At several points in history patchwork makers have found paper expensive or difficult to source. During such times they have resourcefully saved newspapers, letters and catalogues to use as patterns. The paper was often left inside the patchwork as insulation. These patchworks therefore hold a history of these women’s lives, from insignificant news stories or lists to parts of personal letters. i love the idea of the inside of the quilt hiding secrets or clues to the life of the maker who would often remain anonymous outside the family. For this exhibition i have constructed my own paper quilt out of pattern paper printed with parts of letters, newspaper, and lists. The piece tells parts of my story from 1990-2012.

Emily WestAll my joys and all my sorrows, 1990-2012pattern paper and cotton

www.emilyrwest.com

Mosaic Diamonds Quilt (detail) Anne Eliza Urquhart (nee Blunt)Provided courtesy of the American Museum in Britain All my joys and all my sorrows (detail)

Group Biography

in the spring of 2010 two artist friends held a long conversation on a sunny pavement in a backstreet behind Corsham Court. They had been fired up by the Provenance conference and were determined not to lose the creative stimulus of the university environment. Having graduated from Bath School of Art and Design (BSAD) the previous year they missed the journey of discovery, the stimulus of group crits and the chance conversations over coffee in the canteen. They were determined to find a way to support their practices by regularly meeting with like minded artists and they knew others who felt the same way. Studioxyz formed with ten members, all graduates and post-graduates of BSAD, and began meeting monthly to share ideas and discuss ways of working together. Since the beginning, all artists in Studioxyz have contributed a regular monthly subscription to fund the collective’s projects.

to date the group has created three exhibitions, learning and adapting the collaborative process on the way. Each exhibition has seen different members take on curation and practical roles which has helped to identify particular strengths (and weaknesses!).

installation Photographs

First published in December 2013Copyright: studioxyz and individual Authors except where stated.

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studioxyzFiona CassidyAnna Gahlin

Lydia HalcrowLinda Khatir

Dawn LippiattMike Newton

Emily West Michele Whiting

www.studioxyz.co.uk