thought space – South Block, June 2022

by

Louise Ritchie   Celia Garcia   Lorna Mitchell

Exhibition Text

thought space offers an attention to the dialogue and interactions between artists, materials and spaces: spaces that exist in both the physical and thoughtful realm.

Spaces for making, conversation, and reflection.

Occupying their own space from wall to floor to ceiling within South Block, these works present an exchange of ideas through sculpture, print, painting and installation as vehicles for creative discourse. Each piece is connected through making over time and through experimentation that expresses the individual focus of each artist. These range from incorporating objects with printmaking, to suspended rhythmic sequences, and from paint saturated sculptural forms to embedded pattern.

Louise Ritchie

Formation: blue   – acrylic, watercolour, pigment & starch on canvas 2022

Saucer: yellow      – sublimation print on Perspex 2022

Deep cobalt, Prussian and ultramarine hues underscore the blue-black layers of Payne’s grey on, within and below the surface of the saturated raw canvas of Formation: blue. Thin skins of phthalo merge with cyan and cerulean, bleeding through both sides to merge indeterminately with the under-layers and as they dry, cast the material into folded corners and unexpected angles.

From the top, the paint has been methodically poured and encouraged gently down the surface layer by layer, some coming to a silent halt along the way and some pooling at the bottom, but together they map every action and accidental change of direction. Arrows point to curious intersections and topographical features as the threads and weave interfere with the paint’s journey, pushing, pulling, accelerating, and halting its fluidity at every stage.  

The subject of Formation: blue is the development of the piece itself. The durational engagement that happens through painting and the physicality of the transaction between the agency of artist and material, action, and time.

As a material counterpoint, in Saucer: yellow, the ink pattern is a recurring motif and through sublimation, is printed not on, but into the surface of the transparent acrylic sheet, held there, x-ray like, in a suspended state. Encased in the transparency of the acrylic shell, it echoes obliquely, the paint saturated marks of Formation: blue that cling to the thin canvas on, within and below the surface.

@louiseritchiegram

Celia Garcia

Rhythm #2, Rhythm #3, Rhythm #4 – Watercolour on paper – 2019-2022

Duration – Stitched plastic textile 2022

Everyday remnants are something I revisit frequently, I enjoy the duality in the relationship between the mundane and the profound.

For Rhythm #2, #3, #4, my lecturing timetable was the initial remnant, a piece of administration which on the surface appears utilitarian, strict and ordered. Yet when viewed over a period of 10 years, a rhythm emerges. Agnes Heller discussed how in the routine and habitual nature of everyday life, a ‘cognitive’ or ‘cultural surplus’ can be generated with utopian potential. With an attention to activity, space, speed and stillness, we can hear colour and find contentment in the rhythm.

Duration is produced from remnants of used single-use raincoats. The past experience of the materials, the pulls, marks and holes are kept, embracing the imperfections of an embodied reality. Bergson’s theory of duration (La Durée) addresses how we as beings experience time and existence, it therefore contains both multiplicity and unity. Using shapes found in furniture packaging, the material is layered, joined and colour mixed with intuition; an intuition of duration.

Together, the works investigate time, colour and luminosity.

Celia Garcia-Bio

Celia Garcia is an artist based in Glasgow exploring the everyday as an embodied reality with philosophical implications. Working across various mediums including photography, drawing and 3D, aesthetically her work often engages repetition, seriality and the multiple. A Master of Research in Creative Practices from GSA, Celia lectures in Contemporary Art Practice at City of Glasgow College/UWS.

@celiagarciaartist

Lorna Mitchell

Objects of Attention  

Wood, screenprint, perspex, paper, photograph and found objects 2022

An exploration of printmaking, assemblage, drawing and sculpture is evident throughout my practice, with print as the constant creative element that informs and drives the process.  Recent work has explored ways in which print, and object combine through various and sometimes tenuous iterations.   

These objects combine print with constructed wooden structures and found objects which are amended, adapted and manipulated as required. The re-shaped and re-purposed elements are then faithfully brought together in precarious cooperation. 

Everyday interactions and ideas of community, in particular creative communities, have become central to this work.  How do we build creative communities and why are they important?  We may be drawn to them through education, clubs, societies, workshops.  A sharing of knowledge, skills and experience.  A common ground.  They provide space where creative communities are established, nurtured and accessible.     

There is acknowledgement too of a certain common nostalgia, of memory, relating to the histories of these creative spaces and their relationship to everyday life, both publicly and privately.  Through her ‘memory work’, Annette Kuhn equips us with ways to examine these collective and personal histories by the active practice of remembering.  This practice of ‘active remembering’ is central to the process of gathering and making the work for Objects of Attention and assembled for thought space.

Lorna Mitchell-Bio

Lorna Mitchell is an artist whose recent work explores ways in which print and object combine as part of a practice that includes print, assemblage, drawing and sculpture. This furthers an exploration of creative communities and memory through consideration of collective and personal histories. Lorna is a lecturer in Contemporary Art Practice at City of Glasgow College/UWS.