The Touring Exhibition Take 4: New Perspectives on the British Art Quilt
by Celia Eddy
published: 19/01/2001
printer friendly version
The touring exhibition Take 4: New perspectives on the British art quilt featured the work of four leading British Quilt artists, Jo Budd, Pauline Burbidge, Dinah Prentice and Michele Walker. The exhibition visited several venues in the British Isles, beginning at the Whitworth Museum and Art Gallery in Manchester in September 1998, and ending at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, in September 1999.
In a series of articles published in The Quilter, the Magazine and Newsletter of The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles, I discussed the work and progress of each artist up to and including the work in the exhibition. The article about Jo Budd in this issue of QuiltStory is the first in a new series in which I shall describe each artist’s directions and progress since the exhibition closed in October 1999.
Less is More in Jo Budd’s Quilt Art
By Celia Eddy
‘Earth, Sea, Sky No.4’ 1998, 122 cms x 69 cms
This work is a prelude to Budd’s new ‘Elemental Landscape’ series, using the same techniques as ‘Corrugated Iron’ (see no. 2) but exploring a more abstract, minimalist composition. The subject occupies a bigger visual space (a broader landscape) but is dealt with on a smaller scale.
The retrospective element in the works Jo Budd exhibited in Take 4 charted her progress from the straight lines and clear, sharp-edged images of early works, like ‘Boatyard with Cranes’, 1981, to wonderfully subtle abstract landscapes such as ‘Enough to Patch a Sailor’s Trousers’ (below) Elemental Landscape Series, 1998.
‘Enough to Patch a Sailor’s Trousers’ 1998,
102 cms x 33.5 cms
A work in the ‘Elemental Lanscape’ series. The effect of this piece rests on subtle contrasts of surface texture and marks on the collaged materials, as well as on anomalies of perspective and space.
In a recent essay published in Art Textiles of the World, Budd sets out her underlying philosophy and motivations. ‘The act of making is for me one of trying to understand the world.’ She speaks of the ongoing search for balance between contrasts, between ‘…the large and the small – the overall structure and composition versus surface detail…., between abstraction and figuration, colour balancing with tone, and two-dimensional surface versus three-dimensional illusion. This last contrast between surface texture and the illusion of space has been an overriding visual concern.’
‘Colour is the reason for my existence'
‘Oil Rigg Module’ 1996/8,
260 cms x 320 cms,
Collaged, hand-sewn dyed silks and cottons.
This is Budd’s swan song to ten years of work in a studio overlooking the sea at Lowestoft, the most easterly point in Britain. It is both figurative and abstract, depicting an oil rig module under construction at the harbour mouth. The module was clad in plywood, which turned grey or gold according to the light, and with blue plastic. Its wonderful colours and textures provided a monumental last seaside subject, which in turn demanded a work on a monumental scale.
Her most recent works appear as horizontal strips of painted fabric, reflecting her observations of landscapes and seascapes, capturing the colours of the countryside as observed at different times of day, in different lights and weather conditions. The results are what she describes as ‘distillations of feelings about landscape.’ She relates this ‘minimalist’ way of achieving depth and complexity to the sort of infinite exploration of basic themes in, say, Bach’s ‘Art of the Fugue.’
‘Corrugated Iron’ 1998,
176 cms x 260 cms
The first major piece Budd completed after moving to an inland, rural setting. Re-visiting a favourite subject – semi-permanent buildings - it depicts the side of a rusty corrugated iron shed. The hard building material is rendered in the softest of translucent layered silks which are delicately hand-stitched. This piece shows Budd moving towards new techniques and a new series of works.
The two series, Cornfield and Elemental Landscapes, are, she says, ‘also about inner landscapes with other resonances and layers of meaning.’ All her fabric is now hand-dyed and/or printed, using a process which ‘allows the dyes to flow and produce the patterns of earth and sky on their own'.
Although Budd’s work is unequivocally painting, the fact that she works with fabric rather than on paper or canvas is not incidental: it is essential to her aesthetic intentions. Apart from her desire to ‘shed the weight of art history’, there is the fact that the pieces have an element of ambiguity. They are ‘made to be read’ in two ways, as a three-dimensional illusion of space, or as a surface with a pattern and rhythm of its own, the minimal hand stitching enhancing the textural qualities.’
Ultimately these are intuitive pieces and it is a feeling of 'inevitability' and 'rightness' which Budd is exploring in these compositionally pared down latest works.
All works, with the exception of ‘Enough to Patch a Sailor’s Trousers’, are for sale. For prices, and information about other works available, please contact the artist on: +44 (0)1986 781 725
For extended articles on Jo Budd see the following:
Jo BUDD, Essay in Art Textiles of the World: Volume 2 Great Britain. Telos Art Publishing, 1999.
Barbara Taylor, Essay in Catalogue for Take 4: New perspectives on the British art quilt, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, in association with Telos Art Publishing.
Celia Eddy, article in The Quilter, Issue 77, winter, 1998. The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles, Halifax.
© Celia Eddy
|
