Prunella Clough, John Fraser, Sheila Girling, Jules de Goede, John McLean, Robert Motherwell and Geoff Rigden

the seamless garment

24 June - 15 August 2009

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Robert Motherwell, Blue and White on Orange #2, 1974, collage and paper on canvasboard, 61 x 30.5cm

His secret and the secret o’ a’
That’s worth ocht.
The shuttles fleein’ owre quick for my een
Prompt the thocht,
And the coordination atween
Weaver and machine¹

In an art world recovering from the excesses of brassy individualism, the development of “Stepford collections” and the “me too” instincts of collectors, it behoves us to remember where the fulcrum of creativity sits.

Geoff Rigden, Discography, 1985-89, acrylic and collage on canvas, 61 x 61 cm

MacDiarmid’s poem, in parts blastingly Marxist in tone, through its references to Rilke and music pulls us to creativity and completeness. He talks not just about the process of weaving, but also about the fullness of work.

This exhibition of collages is built around the sense of completeness. There is perhaps against one’s first instincts a deep intimacy in the manner of collages and something very much of the real world. Unlike a painting, the tabula rasa of the blank canvas is not the starting point, the starting point is the scraps of paper, fragments of canvas or other materials to be assembled.

John Fraser, Cut Away, collage, 17.5 x 11.125 x 1in

There is a randomness in beginning, a sense of make-do in the middle and an instinctive locking-in at conclusion. In this exhibition there are works that have figurative leanings (Sheila Girling), a sense of constructivism (Jules de Goede) pure abstraction (McLean and Motherwell), found objects (Rigden and Fraser) and delight in composition (Prunella Clough).

Consistently throughout all of these works there is an authenticity, a delight at the fulcrum where the artist sits between the finished piece and the elements to be assembled. At the fulcrum is the imagination, honesty and integrity.

A poet like Rilke did the same
In a different sphere,
Made a single reality – a’ a’e ‘oo’ - ²
O’ his love and pity and fear;
A seamless garment o’ music and thought.

Prunella Clough, Ruin, 1993, collage, 26.9 x 34.5cm

Jules de Goede, Untitled 1, 1992, collage and graphite on paper, 68 x 85.5 cm

John McLean, Imperator, 2009, collage and acrylic on canvas, 40.5 x 40.5 cm

Sheila Girling, Bank Holiday, 2009, acrylic and collage on canvas, 155 x 256.5 cm

¹ Extracts from The seamless garment Hugh MacDiarmid (first published in his collection “First Hymn to Lenin ” 1931)
² a’ a’e ‘oo’ all one thing – a once common Scots phrase meaning a cloth woven so perfectly it was as though made from a single thread.