Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
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Pauline Burbidge, ‘Aberdeen study III’, (detail), 80x80 inches, 2000.
Photo: Keith Tidball.
Shire Pottery Gallery and Studios, Alnwick
8 April – 13 May
Reviewed by: Stephen Palmer
As someone who gets a bit out of sorts if there is not a stretch of tarmac nearby, I admire artists who live and find creative sustenance in rural areas. 'Matterart' focused on two artists who do just that. Pauline Burbidge and Charles Poulsen live and work in the border region between England and Scotland. At first sight you might think that any commonality about their respective projects ends there. Burbidge makes large-scale quilted textile wall hangings: the ones shown here evoke the reflective quality of water by using swatches of fabric and neatly embroidered stitches to form appropriations of rippling surfaces viewed under stormy skies. Dividing each work into a grid of multiple scenes – with each scene more abstract than the next – creates a filmic tension, an effect enhanced by the pixel-like use of colour. Poulsen works in lead, wrapping found objects with the sheet material, filling others with molten lead and sometimes manipulating and folding one or more embossed sheet to form loosely geometric shapes. Several of the sculptures had been formed around shovels, the type more suited to mining than to gardening. The folding of these shroud-like objects has the effect of displaying both the positive and negative imprint of the tools.
Linking the works shown in 'Matterart' is the notion of softening and silencing. Burbidge's quilted technique suggests waters natural ability to absorb sound; lead too is a very effective sound absorber. Poulsen seems to be making reference to this in several works that include the word 'hush' (to hush is also a technique used to uncover veins of lead-ore in open cast mining). Hush, embossed onto the surface of a lead-wrapped stone (the first object you come across on entering the gallery) could also be a command to the viewer – quiet contemplation is what's needed here.
By exhibiting together, Burbidge and Poulsen highlight a sort of alchemical transformation apparent in their practices, both in terms of choice of materials and by conceptual implication. Both clearly enjoy the transformative qualities of the materials that they employ.
Writer detail:
STEPHEN PALMER
is an artist.
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