GALLERIES

SEPTEMBER 2017 GALLERIES

and 17 others, and lauded with

many commissions for now iconic

public sculptures.

Frank Brangwyn bought ‘The

Jointure’ in Ditchling in 1917 four

years after the starting of the Gill

community, and while not a part

ofit, his national and international

commissions gave him a more

cosmopolitan outlook; he

remained a village resident until

his death in 1956.

While the original community

buildings have gone, the village

has a smart local museum in the

old school and Brangwyn’s

former house is now a B&B with

an art gallery in the former

workshops,

Jointure Studios

The museum has an important

show ‘Eric Gill: The Body’ (ends 3

September) confronting issues in

the light ofan artist’s sexuality.

Meanwhile Jointure Studios is

hosting work by the late Carol

Farrow, a creative innovator who

in ‘Crossing Boundaries’ shows

an appropriate melding ofthe

divide between art and craft. This

particularly in artefacts made in

‘paperclay’, her invention, which

enabled light, large scale ceramic

wall panels and latterly sculptural

forms. Carol’s paintings were

rendered on her own bespoke

hand made paper, allowing a

realisation ofher fascination with

the contour and patina of

decaying stone and woodwork

bearing the scars ofyears ofuse.

Paul Hooper

Interiors have traditionally been

considered a woman’s domain,

much as ‘unconventional’ media

have been the tools of scores of

anonymous female artists – those

women who sewed or weaved or

otherwise engaged in ‘crafts’

rather than ‘fine art’. Both

domestic confinement and the

use of a-canonical materials have

also been offered as the reasons

women’s achievements,

particularly in art, have gone

unrecognised.

When Rachel Whiteread won

the Turner Prize in 1993 she was

the first woman to claim the

prestigious award since it was

launched at the Tate in 1984. Her

winning piece, ‘House’, was a

concrete cast of the interior of a

terraced London home, a full-

scale, mirror image of a deserted

interior. Without playing overtly on

either theme, Whiteread weaves

the concept of the interior into

works that use unusual media

including plaster, concrete and

resin. In one early work, she

explains that her goal was “to

mummify the air in the room” and

her elaborate, large scale casts

suggest immobilisation, the

stilling of energy within the

confines of a particular space.

Large or small, her works are

neat encapsulations of inertia and

often monuments to the stilling of

talent or skill. Since ‘House’, the

concept behind Whiteread’s

works has not changed

significantly, but she is still

considered a leading light of her

generation of artists. She has

created some large scale public

works, such as the ‘Holocaust

Memorial’ in Vienna (2000), the

interior of a library, down to books

shown page – rather than spine –

outwards. But she remains

concerned with enclosure of

lesser dimensions, also

demonstrated in pieces such as

her 2007 ‘Charity Box’, which

measures just 16 cm high.

Now, an upcoming survey at

Tate Britain

tracks Whiteread’s

career, including seminal works

such as her 1995 installation of

100 resin casts of the underside

of chairs ‘Untitled (One Hundred

Spaces)’ and the 2003 piece

‘Untitled (Room 101)’, a cast of

the room at the BBC thought to

be the model for the room in

Orwell’s 1984: testaments to a

creativity fully realised.

Frances Allitt

To a greater or lesser extent

artists seek out the company of

other artists, often working and

living in close proximity. If St Ives

is the most familiar such colony

then Ditching in Sussex, though

familiar for its Beacon and St

Dominic’s Press, is not so but

nevertheless it was home for 70

years to a close community of

artists, craftspeople, weavers and

carvers, three of whom founded

the Catholic organisation The

Guild of St Joseph & St Dominic

for the promolgation of their

talents and commmunal life.

Most famous was Eric Gill,

influential through his eponymous

typeface, Gill, Gill Sans, Perpetua

CODA

from left

achel Whiteread

‘Untitled (Clear Torso)’

Tate Britain

Carol Farrow

‘Paperclay – Long Implements’

Jointure Studios

illage

life

House

call