SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WATCHING HER CHILDREN GROW - collection Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museums
MOTHER AND CHILD
Celebrating birth, fertility and hope
THE HOLBURNE MUSEUM OF ART - BATH
GREAT PULTNEY STREET - BATH BA2 4DB
telephone01225 466669 Email e.c.witt@bath.ac.uk
18 May - 2 September 2001
This exhibition celebrates the theme of intimacy, chosen for this year's bath International Music Festival, by exploring that most intimate of relationships - the bond between mother and child. For the first time we will be focussing on a single theme over 4000 years - from the ancient Egyptian Iris and Horus through this important Christian theme to its treatment today, still central to our world.
The exhibition will use art drawn from Wst Country collections to focus on three themes. First comes Madonna and Child, evolving from an ancient tradition into a central Christian idea. Exquisite Egyptian figures have been lent by Bristol Museum and Art gallery and tender madonna, rarely seen, come from the Holburne itself: 15th century Italian (Neri di Bicci), 16th century Flemish (bernard van Orley) and others.
Second follows Mother and Child, the response of later artists in a secular world, creating idealised or realistic human images like the charming Mrs Perdita Robinson and P.J.Crook's lively contemporary family, Portrait of the Artist watching Her Children Grow, from Cheltenham Art Gallery. Lastly comes Mother and Child - the Idea, the redisovery of its universality in the 20th century. henry Moore's exquisite Mother and child with an apple comes from the Study gallery, Poole, inspired by wartime sleepers in the London Underground, while Bristol Museum and Art Gallery's wood engravings by Eric Gill fuse the religious and the human to create works of tender intensity. This rich legacy continues in todays painted and photographic images, such as that of the child born in a tree during last year's floods in Mozambique, seen world-wide as a symbol of hope as well as tragedy.
".......My subject matter is wide and diverse, drawing on my observations of others, including my father and his passion for gambling. But central to it all is motherhood itself, providing inspiration for works such as PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WATCHING HER TWO CHILDREN GROW (Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum). In this I peer through the door to one side of the composition, into an interior which although not exactly like our own family living room, has such a similar feel that people think it is a portrait of that interior. Playing with time I show the children at several stages in their lives, held together at one moment, starting with the infant Nathan on the floor with the building bricks we had made. Then a tiny Henrietta, aged four in her first school uniform, and again in a tutu slightly older; like many little girls she loved to dance and is here manipulating a marionette, much in the way that parents' lives are dictated by the needs and requirements of their children. Meanwhile Nathan, in sailor suit, plays the violin.
Although Nathan did not have the sailor suit, my
Father did, and the painting makes reference to his childhood too - reflections
of the grandfather in the son. The toys painted here played an important
part in their childhood and mine. I show them again, this time almost fully
grown in their mid teens. To the left hand side of the painting Nathan stands,
wearing the red and white striped waistcoat I had made him to wear to perform
with the Punch & Judy puppets he is holding. These he had carved from
lime wood. He had made and performed with puppets since the age of ten,
becoming the youngest Professor in the Punch & Judy Fellowship. At eleven
he appeared in the Glyn Edwards television film 'As Pleased as Punch'. I
used his Punch and Judy puppets within the painting not just for their personal
associations but because in their grotesque way of battling with each other
over the baby they mimic an uncomfortable version of family life. The family
group reflected in the mirror central to the painting shows me playing the
piano (a wish fulfilment) with my parents and partner Richard, who had some
years ago decided to become a father to the children, nurturing their creativity
and my own........" extracted from PJC's essay 'Portrait of the Artist
Watching Her Children Grow' in FRUITS OF LABOUR ed. Penny Sumner pub. Womens
Press 2001
Pictures of Innocence
Childhood through the eyes of the artist
curated by Lisa Webb lwebb@leics.gov.uk
Leicestershire County Council Museums Service.
Millennium Festival Exhibition
MELTON CARNEGIE MUSEUM
FIN DE SIECLE - oil on wood 90 x 70inches
In my painting FIN DE SIECLE I make reference
to the historic tradition of religious icons particularly the image of the
Madonna and Child which for two millennia has held such an important place
in western art, where this vision of motherhood which over the centuries
has offered a role model of unconditional and tender love.
The Madonna in my painting is shown wearing her traditional blue, a colour often also associated with the nurse but transformed into a somewhat disturbing and surreal figure by the addition of the gas mask. As a mother myself I was equally disturbed by reports through the media during the Gulf War of Israeli families having to wear gas masks during the Iraqi scud missile attacks. It struck me that it would have been very distressing for babes and infants to see their parents transformed into these frightening elephantine creatures. Thus the image of their mothers that would normally be associated with love and affection, could in fact become the opposite.
A mothers greatest fear is that anything should harm the children she has lovingly nurtured and protected through infancy and childhood. Those mothers whose sons make the ultimate sacrifice, losing their lives fighting for country or ideal, know the anguish that the madonna also suffered.
Thus the threat of war and conflict to her young is abhorrent to her. The infant here is not only making reference to the infant Christ but also symbolic of the new century and the world which is under constant threat. Not only the threat of war and famine but also degradation by pollution and overindulgence (symbolised in the predella which makes the bottom panel), the disregard for our natural resources, wildlife and our fellow Man.
Again in the tradition of religious painting, there is always the presence of hope and peace symbolised here by the white dove ( frequently the symbol for the Holy Spirit or in modern usage by Chagall and Picasso as a symbol of peace) whereas the crows, living off carrion, are used more usually to evoke fear of death and the aftermath (as in Van Gogh's late paintings and Hammer Horror films).
This particular work was painted at the end of 1998 and beginning of 1999 during the Kosovo war. It seemed appalling to me that as we neared the end of the 20th century(hence the title, end of the century) that we were still capable of being as barbaric and greedy in our dealings with our fellow beings as at any one time, looking across the globe there are wars, many of them civil, holding back the progress of mankind.
photo courtesy The Leicester Mercury
148th Autumn Exhibition
29 October - 9 December 2000
EXCHANGE
acrylic on corrugated wood - 37 x 35 inches
LA NAISSANCE, LA PASSION ET LA MORT
WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS
RIVINGTON GALLERY
69 RIVINGTON STREET, LONDON EC2A 3AY
telephone 0207 739 7855 email rivingtongallery@btinternet.com
Women Beyond Borders is a collaboration among over 500 artists, curators, critics and sponsors. It was begun in Santa barbara in 1992. Our exhibition is a much travelled one, a cross cultural show which aims to link women from around the world and build a community through dialogue and creativity.Each artist was given a box measuring 3.5 x 2 x 2 inches, to provide a catalyst for their creativity and expression