Ford’s Factory at SYSTEMA
29th August - 1st September 2024
Vitrine
Juliette Lena Hager
17th June - 6th July 2024
Diaries
Lucinda Purkis and Rose Sevink-Johnston
11th April - 27th April 2024
Hard Work
Jack Otway
14th March - 6th April 2024
Coffee
Sam Cottington
17th February - 2nd March 2024
Something Seasonal
Yui Usui, Nancy Allen, Georgia Dickie and Maddy Whitelaw
5th October - 4th November 2023
Ground System
Evie Savini
7th September - October 1st 2023
Projects
About
Newsletter
11th April 2024 - 27th April 2024.
27.03.2024
I am sat at a café on Regents Canal, waiting to go to work for a sculptor up in Angel. I like it here because there is a lock that water gushes out of and a small doorway in a wall where water crashes down two steps around ninety degrees. I walk past a lot of houseboats on the canal and always think about how sculptural they are. My partner thinks it is to do with compression. Things are stacked on top of each other or squeezed together or in odd positions by necessity.
I am thinking about Rose and Lucinda’s work and how to write about their art practices which I have known for nearly ten years now.There are other artists that I think mine similar veins - Corita Kent’s snipped and ecstatic language and Yuji Agematsu’s precious and cartographic trash calendars and Moyra Davey’s diaristic photographs folded and taped and battered by their movement from place to place.
I have lived with Rose for maybe three or four years now. I am about to move out to live with my partner and my room is empty asidefrom stacks of boxes and me in my bed. The floor of the house is often scattered with crumbs of wax and plaster and resin. Rose’s sculptures are in every room and nearly every cupboard.I have lived with Lucinda’s work for even longer. Every morning I look at a drawing of a sun bisecting a striped field in wax crayon.When I stay with my partner I look at an ink drawing of a crying figure overlaid with birds who is declaring I ENVY THE SIBERIAN CRANE I ENVY ANYTHING WITH WINGS.
28.03.2024
I am sat at London Bridge station waiting for my train home from work. It is my last night in London and I have not had the time toorganise to do anything to mark the occasion. Yesterday I packed a vase that Rose made for me a couple of years ago which I keep pens in. Curving round it is my name written in capital letters and it is covered with flowers and spiders. Some of their spindly legs have broken off and they rattle around in the bottom. When I get home I will put a cut out painting by Lucinda with all of my boxes, a large head in profile with splashing spray paint tears.
In a couple of weeks I am starting a year of more or less full time work and I am worried about how it will impact my ability to make art. Rose and Lucinda both seem to incorporate their work so seamlessly into their lives. At least from my romantic outside perspective their work seems to unfold from their day to day and vice versa. It feels honest and earnest to the point of embarrassment. Dining chairs are held up on a level with saints and angels and skyscrapers are the size of flowers or the other way round and everything is whirring and still. I have got an ink drawing of Lucinda’s that looks like a Richard Scarry Busytown illustration with cars puffing exhaust and ladders sticking awkwardly into the sky.
I was in a period of very heavy drinking when I first met Rose. When I left the pub she looped my house keys onto my earring to stop me losing them and wrote KEYS ON EARRING on both my hands with lots of pointing arrows.
31.03.2024
It is Easter day and the clocks have gone forward. I am writing this at half six and it is full daylight. My brother and dad start listing the names of flowers. I am thinking about the blossoms and bulbs on Rose’s sculptures with welcoming archways of lemons. Lucinda’sdrawings so often feature Christian figures but without ever feeling pious or out of time. Clustered with graffiti tags and sunbeams and cars they are brought back into the world and are an active part of it. Frantic when grouped together in isolation they become meditations.I am staring out of the back door window at the hammering spring rain and TEACH HIM TO LOVE NATURE repeats in my head.
Thirza Smith
Lucinda Purkis, Teach Him to Love Nature. Pastel, ink and colouring pencil, collage, assorted paper on plywood. Volumes. Assemblage of 3 paper cut outs - ink and assorted paper. Archangel Gabriel Treading Pebbles. Ink collage onto cartridge paper on plywood.
Lucinda Purkis, Drawing Lesson. Fineliner, pen and colouring pencil onto printer paper.
Lucinda Purkis, Cave Weeping. Watercolour, ink, collage, assorted paper. Hallam. Tracing paper and ink collage onto paper. Jacob’s Ladder. Tracing paper and ink collage onto cartridge paper.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, Willing (part 2). Billiard balls, paper, ceramic, glue, wool, masking tape.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, March, as a name. Ceramic, chicken legs, resin, necklaces, chocolate coins,coppers, glasses, necklaces, wire.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, We three. Ceramic, door stop.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, thief. Glass, lolly pop, ceramic, coins, glitter, paper mache,water colour.
Lucinda Purkis, Walter Benjamin gets LOST in the american midwest. Quilt: silk paint, appliqué.
Lucinda Purkis, BOOK OF JOB. Quilt: appliquéd shirt fragment.
Lucinda Purkis, Tobias and the Angel. Quilt: patchwork, silk, cotton, hand-embroidery.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures,kill nothing but time. Ceramic, beads, conker shells, hot water bottle, maskingtape, graphite.
Lucinda Purkis, Archangel Gabriel Treading Pebbles. Ink collage onto cartridge paper on plywood.
Rose Sevink-Johnston, Pond. Ceramic, dandelions, glitter, cotton, teabags, thread,chewing gum.
Lucinda Purkis, Saint Ambrose and Saint Amos vying for my attention. Ink on printer paper. SILVER BIRCH. Ink on printer paper. Cool. Ink on printer paper. Secret in the Desert. Ink on printer paper. Apple Core. Ink on printer paper. Anne HURRY UP. Inks, fabric, collage onto cartridge paper. Untitled. Ink on cartridge paper.
Lucinda Purkis, Prayer Requests. Quilt: patchwork, appliqué, assorted fabrics.