Newsletter No 38 Winter 2011 collection of nearly 2000 artworks, creating From the Chair exhibitions of university and loaned art, managing the documentation for the seven museum collections and Christmas is nearly upon us again, despite the fact working with researchers. She has a University of that it seems like no time since our last, snow- Leicester MA in Museum Studies. postponed AGM. Thankfully the snow has yet to Prior to joining the University, Shona worked appear this year, so we’re keeping our fingers at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere and The crossed for this year’s AGM on 10 December, which Armitt, Ambleside, undertaking a wide variety of you should all have received details of already. We’re tasks, including installing art exhibitions and looking forward to a fascinating tour of the J D cataloguing prints and glass negatives. Fergusson exhibition (featured in the last issue of the Shona's strong interest in art history has newsletter) from curator Sarah Skinner. The day grown from working with art collections and before, we’re lucky enough to be one of the first studying artistic movements during her groups to get a guided tour of the re-opened Scottish undergraduate and postgraduate music degrees at National Portrait Gallery from director James Royal Holloway, University of London. She is Holloway, who tells us more about the re-vamp in particularly interested in early 20th century European this issue. If you are intending to come to either art and works by John Constable. Shona has written event but have not yet let us know, please do so as a thesis about perceived connections between the soon as possible. works of Erik Satie and Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism I’m pleased to report that we have another and Surrealism. She has also recently written an two new members of our committee, Sabine Wieber paper about the University of Aberdeen's art (University of Glasgow) and Shona Elliott (University collection, which will be published in the new SSAH of Aberdeen). We have more about Shona below and Journal. will be profiling Sabine next issue. Shona has kindly agreed to take over from me as editor of the newsletter, so if you have any material for inclusion SSAH Research Grants in our next issue, please contact her on [email protected] Don’t forget that the society offers research support Matthew Jarron grants from £50 to £300 to assist with research costs and travel expenses. Applicants must be working at a New Committee Member: Shona Elliott post-graduate level or above and should either be resident in Scotland or doing research that Shona has been working with the University of necessitates travel to Scotland. Please note that we Aberdeen's historic collections for the last five years have now introduced two application deadlines and she is currently Curator (Documentation and during the year on 30 November and 31 May. Next Fine Art) in the University Museums. Her primary issue we hope to bring you a report from our latest responsibilities are curating the University's recipient. 1 between two milestones inscribed with the famous SSAH Events words from Howards End , the novel by E M Forster (not the erudite BBC4 quiz show!). Quietly amusing, for sure, but the next work encountered, Stone Tour of Jupiter Artland, 11 August 2011 House, by Andy Goldsworthy, was for this viewer at Review by Ellen Graves least, the most impressive piece in the Artland. Here Goldsworthy had earth excavated to the underlying On Thursday 11 August 2011, a group of intrepid rock ledges and a house, made of locally quarried members of the SSAH braved heavy rain and floods stone and a slate roof, was built around this at Jupiter Artland. Though a very wet visit indeed – excavation. On entering the doorway, the viewer is especially for yours truly who had not worn footgear confronted, not with a space sequestered from the appropriate to the weather – nonetheless it was well outdoors, but a space which brings the hidden bones worth it! of the earth disconcertingly into view underfoot – no A long, beautiful walk up from the bus stop level flooring here, rather, risky clambering from at the foot of the drive, past various works of art boulder to boulder in semi-darkness. After this, which we visited later, got us to The Steadings where Laura Ford’s enigmatic Weeping Girls seems to we collected our maps and set out on the self-guided continue the mood of mystery – near-life-size tour, usually about an hour and a half, though I think weeping figures carved from waxes and cast in we took a bit longer because of the weather. bronze, some hidden behind trees and rocks, others First stop, Suck, by Anish Kapoor, followed ready to view. closely by Antony Gormley’s sculpture, Firmament . After another couple of typically classicising Suck consists of a hole (about a foot across) with Hamilton Finlay works – Xth Muse and Temple of outcurving walls plated in cast iron, surrounded by a Apollo – came another very interesting installation by 17-foot-high iron cage. We agreed this was thought- Nathan Coley, In Memory . Here a simple unroofed provoking but mainly perhaps because of the poured concrete rectangular structure surrounds a interplay between the protective cage and the more tended graveyard with gravestones from all 3 of the organic-looking aperture within. monotheistic religions, plus others – but with all identifying names scratched out. We surmised these stones to be sequestered from uprooted graveyards, necessitating the removal of names, but for this viewer, such removal had disquieting resonances of anathematising, etc. Landscape with Gun and Tree is a light-hearted work by Cornelia Parker, supposedly inspired by Gainsborough’s famous landscape-portrait Mr and Mrs Andrews , where Mr Andrews carries a shotgun. In Parker’s work, the gun is nearly the size of the tree! The Gormley was altogether impressive. For those who have experienced his other works, this one is, unlike, say, the Angel of the North , airy and full of spaces. It is particularly suited to its location atop a small rise, so that it can be viewed with the sky through its interstices. It was inspired by an old star map and the steel balls and longer steel elements welded together actually form a crouching figure – but the overall effect is of an appropriate interface between viewer and surrounding sky, as its title implies. Only Connect is a typical Ian Hamilton Finley play on word, image and structure - a bridge We then retraced our steps through the ‘Victorian Path’, clambering over Charles Jencks’ 2 impressive Life Mounds , which are familiar territory talk with digital images of the artist’s paintings and to those who visit the SNGMA, past the amusing prints. The tour groups were then led around a Signpost to Jupiter by Peter Liversedge (‘Jupiter – 893 variety of rooms in the house; each displaying million to 964 million kilometres’ – continuing the artworks. The Trust aims to advance knowledge heavenly theme begun with Gormley’s work!) and about Barns-Graham’s works, and to this end, the Marc Quinn’s Love Bomb , a 12-metre-high example of walls show works by the artist from the 1940s photorrealism in the form of a monstrously onwards. A wide variety of styles and mediums are impressive painted orchid! shown, including collages created using hole punches, On the left was a charming final example of oil and acrylic works on board and canvas, gouache Finley Hamiltoniana, Beehives – just what is says on illustrations, prints and even a painting created from the tin, with the addition of course of inscriptions! acrylic and volcanic dust ( Lanzarote , 1992). In Meanwhile, other members of the group addition to viewing Barns-Graham’s works on the explored works below the Life Mounds. B y this time walls, SSAH members were shown an impressive rug your intrepid reviewer was feeling distinctly squelchy with the pattern of one of her artworks woven into about the ankles and our little subgroup was glad to it. This was painstakingly created by Dovecot repair to the café near the steadings, where lovely Studios in Edinburgh. teas are served from a magnificent retro silver Amongst the rooms in Balmungo House are caravan! a library filled with books owned by Wilhelmina There is a cumulative depth charge to this (including many rare exhibition catalogues) and also site whereby the whole is more than the sum of the accommodation and a studio space for artists-in- parts – impressive though many of the parts are. The residence. One of the aims of the Trust is to subtly recurring themes of the firmament on high, the support and inspire art and art history students and earth below, enclosure, space, human frailty, the residency scheme is one of the many ways that reinforce and expand the encounters with individual this aim is realised. SSAH tour members were works. All share a sensitive response to place and fortunate to meet Lorna McIntosh; the artist-in- location, giving an overall sense of inevitability. residence at that time. Her stay at the house was In Lorenzo di’Medici’s famous 15 th century part of the RSA’s programme of Residencies for sculpture garden in Florence, place was subordinate Scotland. Lorna’s art is in part inspired by geological to the statues unearthed from beneath the ground. land formations; an influence that was often seen in In this modern version of the sculpture garden, Barns-Graham’s work. The studio in which Lorna however, place – including the earth beneath and the was working is the original studio space used by sky above - and works are equally important, making Barns-Graham.