The Expressive Mark Symposium

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The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery

Join us for an online symposium that considers issues around the production and reception of abstract art in post-war Britain.

The Stanley &amp; Audrey Burton Gallery (University of Leeds), in collaboration with Leeds Art Gallery, presents this virtual symposium exploring abstract painting in Britain, from the post-war to the postmodern period. Coinciding with the exhibition ‘The Expressive Mark’ at The Stanley &amp; Audrey Burton Gallery as well as ‘The Expressive Mark Extended’ at Leeds Art Gallery, a display of abstract painting from the collection, this symposium considers issues around the production and reception of abstract art in post-war Britain. British abstract painting in the second half of the twentieth century is frequently understood as being led by Abstract Expressionism in America. Though acknowledging the power of this influence, this symposium aims to expand understanding of this era, placing the production of British abstract painters within a European and indeed, a uniquely British history of abstraction. The powerful and signature mark making of British artists of this era – such as Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Sandra Blow – and their processes, added significantly to the development and history of British abstraction. Significant attention will be paid to women artists working in this style, some of whom have had less attention than deserved by art historians and curators. Speakers Dr James Finch (Tate Britain) - 1950s Abstraction and its Critics Dr Clare Nadal - In(Visibility): Locating Post-War Abstract Painting by Women Stephen Feeke (Ph.D. candidate, Courtauld Institute of Art) - Curves in Space: The Interplay between Hepworth’s Sculpture and Tachiste Painting Dr Natalie Ferris (Durham University) - Visual Signs: Abstraction, Poetry, and the Pope of Modern Art Dr Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews) - Abstracted Subjects: Residues, Memories, Traces Booking essential. This event takes place online, a Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees one day before the symposium. The Expressive Mark exhibition is open in The Stanley &amp; Audrey Burton Gallery until 2 April 2022. <a href="http://bit.ly/ExpressiveMark" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Find out more and plan your visit. </a>

Schedule

Abstracts

Dr James Finch 1950s Abstraction and its Critics This paper will focus on the reception of contemporary abstract art in Britain during the 1950s, a formative decade not only for many of the artists exhibited in ‘The Expressive Mark’ but also for key critical voices including Lawrence Alloway, John Berger and David Sylvester. These critics, along with other notable writers in the British art press such as Patrick Heron, in his guise as critic, all developed distinctive analyses of abstraction in keeping with their broader critical projects. In this paper I will assess the common ground and differences between these critics, and the resulting impact of these critical debates for the broader reception and development of gestural abstraction in Britain. Dr Clare Nadal In(Visibility): Locating Post-War Abstract Painting by Women (abstract subject to change) In 1960 the first Situation exhibition was held at the Royal Society of British Artists, an exhibition which required works to be both ‘abstract’ and ‘not less than 30 square feet’. Of the twenty artists selected, only one was a woman, the painter Gillian Ayres. Situation is now viewed in scholarship as the ‘most revealing manifestation’ of ‘the state of play in British abstract art in 1960’ (Michael Bird, 2005). Yet, if we consider this to be a benchmark of British abstract painting, we continue to adhere to a narrative that almost entirely obscures the presence of women. The example of Situation is no anomaly, with similar patterns evident in many of the major survey texts and exhibitions of British abstract painting from the post-war period. In group exhibitions of British painting, such as those mounted by the Arts Council, only a handful of women’s names appear, most notably those of Ayres and her peers Sandra Blow and Prunella Clough. This exclusion – or invisibility – of post-war abstract painting by women similarly continues to dictate current scholarship and exhibition practices. While recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in abstract sculpture by women in Britain, the same has arguably not yet been extended to women’s abstract painting. This paper aims to consider how we might move beyond this list of ‘exceptional women’ to begin to more fully recognise the wider complexities of women’s painting practices.Stephen Feeke Curves in Space: The Interplay between Hepworth’s Sculpture and Tachiste Painting My paper will focus on the drawings and paintings Barbara Hepworth began making in 1957 and the ways in which they relate to the sculpture she had started producing in different kinds of metal the year before. In this period, Hepworth’s sculpture became increasingly open, complex and expressive, reaching something of an apotheosis in Meridian (her first bronze commissioned for the public realm and, at that stage the largest, sculpture Hepworth made). Likewise, Hepworth’s new endeavours on board and on paper were quite unlike her previous two-dimensional works and constitute, I shall argue, an important stylistic shift in her practice which warrants greater attention. The resultant series of works is characterised by Hepworth’s use of bold, black, looping lines in oil paint and ink, and evoke a remarkable sense of speed, spontaneity and motion. As a result they have often been linked to Hepworth’s interest in Tachisme and the extent to which Hepworth engaged with this Paris-based abstract art movement will form the centre of my argument. Whilst it appears that contemporary painting more than sculpture was the more important influence on Hepworth in this period, arguably, Tachisme’s significance was waning here by the time its effects were evident in her work. Yet Tachisme not only allowed Hepworth to maintain the close connections with Europe she had forged with artists in the 1930s, but also expanded the diversity of her interests to include aspects of Chinese calligraphy, morphology, Gestalt psychology and Zen Buddhism. And such ideas as these altered profoundly the way Hepworth both conceived and made art. Dr Natalie Ferris Visual Signs: Abstraction, Poetry, and the Pope of Modern Art 'What is a Poem?' Herbert Read asked at the close of his final volume of poetry, Collected Poems (1966). This question echoed across the final decade of his career as both a poet and a critic, to reach its most intriguing conclusion in his oft-overlooked sequence of poems, the 'Vocal Awowals'. First printed in 1959 in Encounter, Read revisited these poems on many occasions during the final decade of his life. Misidentified by critics as the invention of a 'supremely subjective romanticism', these poems were composed at a moment of great philosophical curiosity and artistic ambition. This paper will consider the 'Vocal Avowals' as a radical attempt to explore the expressive potential of language, and gesture towards connections to work by artists such as Jean Arp, Alberto Burri, Ben Nicholson, and Sengai.  Dr Catherine Spencer Abstracted Subjects: Residues, Memories, Traces Across her 40-year sculptural practice, Veronica Ryan has consistently explored states of containment, dis/placement, salvage, and support. In a 1993 conversation with the curator Sheena Wagstaff, Ryan shared some of the terms that have been vital reference points for her fabrication processes, explaining: ‘There are key words which are important for me, acting as triggers for thoughts. Residues, traces, memory, deposits. They are all about kinds of end.’ This paper explores how Ryan's work activates these states, and reflects in particular on the operation of the trace, considering the relational questions it poses, and their experiential, psychological, and ethical ramifications. Although in a 2021 conversation with the art historian Darby English alongside her major exhibition at Spike Island entitled Along a Spectrum, Ryan explained that her sculptures are not abstract, this paper examines how the trace might be understood as an abstracting process through which Ryan has consistently centred questions of reciprocity, relationality, and care in her work.

Speakers

Stephen Feeke is an independent writer and curator. Alongside freelance projects, including public art consultant to the Renzo Piano building at Paddington Square, London, he is researching a PhD on Barbara Hepworth’s early bronzes (Courtauld Institute of Art). Stephen is a member of the Hepworth Research Network and is contributing to the catalogue accompanying the first Hepworth exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (summer 2022). He was previously a Director at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, where he curated a programme of modern and contemporary art for the gallery and sculpture park as well as external projects such as Caro at Chatsworth. Prior to this, he was a curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Dr Natalie Ferris is Lecturer in Literature 1945–Present at Durham University. Her first monograph Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980 will be published by OUP in early 2022. She has held research fellowships at a number of institutions, including the Henry Moore Institute, the Yale Center for British Art, the Getty Research Institute, and the Harry Ransom Center. She is contributing editor at ASAP/J, and the English Editor of SPACE. She is co-convening a March 2022 conference on Text/Art and the poet, artist and educator, John Furnival, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre, and as co-founder of the Christine Brooke-Rose Society, she is planning a conference and connected publications to mark Brooke-Rose’s centenary year in 2023. She is presently researching dynamism and deception in literature and design, and working on a new book on the women of asemic writing. Dr James Finch is Assistant Curator, 19th Century British Art at Tate Britain, where he has worked on exhibitions including Van Gogh and Britain, Turner’s Modern World, and Life Between Islands. Before joining Tate, James was a Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Academy of Arts. James wrote his doctoral thesis on the criticism of David Sylvester, and has published on artists including Lucian Freud, Barnett Newman and Alberto Giacometti. Dr Clare Nadal is a curator and art historian. She completed her PhD at the University of Huddersfield and The Hepworth Wakefield in 2020 on the personal library of Barbara Hepworth, examining the significance that reading held for the development of Hepworth’s art. She has published on Barbara Hepworth for Barbara Hepworth (Musee Rodin, 2019) and Sandra Blow for The Expressive Mark (Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, 2021). She is currently working as Programme Co-ordinator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and was formerly Assistant Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield and Exhibition Assistant at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Dr Catherine Spencer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. In 2021 she co-curated the group exhibition Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism with Caroline Gausden, Kirsten Lloyd, and Nat Raha at Glasgow Women’s Library.

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The Expressive Mark Symposium

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