Musings on Head & Whole in a busy week :-)
Well – what a busy week!
Fame of the Jeanne Donnadieu piece (possibly the only full length painting of van Gogh – ‘The Misunderstood’) has travelled country-wide and over the pond to L.A. this past week, and the gallery has been stcked-out with new audience – which is great for the Head & Whole show and the artists involved. All the busyness has not been so good for my blogging fingers, though, so apologies to anyone who has been following this, since I have dropped behind!
Am at the gallery now, which is really buzzing. Lots of people around, as I try to get back to what I intended to write about, which is the ‘family’ element with and around the show. Although there are two main themes – the reciprocal nature of artists working with artists, and the human condition through history, myth and process, there is a small family element to the work. First, it all feels ‘of’ a family in some kind of way – although there is a variety of media and process involved, all is linked by the human form. On from this, one of the artists, Eileen Bunn, makes work that primarily focuses on her family, and she has three pieces in the show which are of her children or sister. My father also has a piece of work in the show, and although this is not meant to be a portrait of a particular person and is from a hired model, it got me to thinking about that other really chancy aspect of things that run through families: if he had not had the ability to paint and do what he does – would I have had mine? Therfore, this painting is in the front gallery, alongside Wendy Elia’s Maxime Spinning, as part of the human condition display.
Wendy has just walked into the gallery. She is here to give a workshop tonight, and a talk tomorrow – which is looking as though it will be every bit as busy as last week’s Day of talk with John Devane, Margaret Ashman, and Maggie Cullen. A great day, that was – a great time, this has been, of the show and what I hope is the beginning of an ongoing project, which enables artists to continue to work together on a recprocal basis, whilst making the work that they need to work as individuals.
Head & Whole is drawing to an end for the moment, but we hope to have another show and series of events at Abbey Walk Gallery in 2012 – and to build on what we have begun, taking the project to different venues and publishing texts.
I’ll start a monthly blog, now – second Monday of every month, to continue to muse about subjects within the Head & Whole criteria. I hope that you will continue to follow this, and get in touch if you’d like to be a part of Head & Whole in any way.
Till October . . .
