Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking
The Crypt Gallery
St Pancras Church
Euston Road (entrance in Duke’s Road)
London
NW1 2BA
October 5th – 20th, 2013. 11-7pm every day
http://www.toknowandtounderstand.co.uk
Mid-October in London over the past few years has steadily become known as ‘Frieze Week’, as the International Art Fair draws in the big buyers, critics, students and avid fans of contemporary art. It’s the perfect time for artists to maximise on the Frieze hype by curating and putting on other exhibitions and art fairs (The Other Art Fair, Moniker and Zoo Art Fairs are just 3 of many art fairs known to be held in London at the same time as Frieze) as well as unique performance events and art happenings.
This year Frieze week sees Jackson’s Art Supplies’ very own Julie Caves exhibiting a comprehensive overview of work she has created over the past 3 years, at the Crypt Gallery in King’s Cross. As well as being an established artist who is particularly obsessed with colour, Julie also interacts with much of the Jackson’s Community through our Facebook, Blog and Twitter pages. I asked Julie about her show, and what it tells us about the world. May I introduce to you Julie Caves: Social Media Guru, art materials expert and Master of Colour.
Installation shot of Julie Caves’ ‘Monolith’ Paintings
Lisa: Tell us a little bit about your artistic background/education.
Julie: I started my art education with drawing and painting classes in California and made ceramics for a few years. I became interested in sculpture and screen-printing while I lived in Texas where I received a BFA from UT, Austin. I created mostly video and sound works while I was at art college in Valencia, Spain. Then I received an MA in Bookarts at Camberwell College in London because I was looking for a way to take my prints off the wall, make them sculptural. I completed a course on independent curating at Central St Martin’s last year and I regularly take courses at Prince’s Drawing School. Today my practice is a mixture of all these forms with a concentration on the painting I started with; I’ve sort of come full circle and connected it all together.
Lisa: What can visitors to your show expect to see/experience?
Julie: Three years of work – painting, sculpture, and drawing – in an amazing space, with arches, shadows and atmosphere. The artwork stands up to the space and isn’t overshadowed by the magnificent architecture. The colour and light contrast well with the brick walls and unusual maze-like space.
Julie Caves: Monolith Paintings and Egg Tempera Portrait Panels, Installation shot
Lisa: To what extent is this show site-specific?
Julie: All the sculpture and installations were designed and made for the space and the six large ‘Monolith’ paintings in the back room were all made for that space. From visitors’ comments I think that the site-specific works might be the most successful of the works. It turns out that the two most popular pieces are not the ones I would have expected. One is the one which I thought would be the most difficult for people to understand, ‘Pool of Sunlight’. I am really pleased about that. It has taken a few years to work that one out and it has many layers of meaning, even though the format is really simple in the end. The other really popular work, ‘Colour Wheel Bells’, took some experimenting to get it to work as I originally visualised. I am grateful to my friends Julian Beere and Roan Allen for figuring out how to install it so that it did what I wanted. I have been pleasantly surprised that the location of the installation within the pattern of walking through the exhibition has affected the perception of the piece so much. As it is near the entrance but tucked to the side many people miss it on their way in and see it only after they think the exhibition is finished, like a bonus artwork. It gets an ‘ooh and ahh’ every time. The few people who see it on the way in get a quite different view as their eyes have not yet adjusted to the lower light level and they have a different experience of it because to them it looks like it is floating in a pool of water.
Julie Caves: Colour Wheel Bells – PET Plastic, acrylic resin and colour, lights, 2013
The set of 10 plaster sculptures of large eggs, ‘Infestation’, has also been well received. Those were made for the three alcoves they are in, piled up in groups in dark corners. The six ‘Monolith’ paintings were made as large as the space could accommodate. They sit on the floor and lean up against the walls, all close together filling the space. There is one work in the exhibition that isn’t by me, H Locke’s drawing installation ‘Curio-city’, which was also made for the space and has been another very popular work. It activates that room brilliantly.
Julie Caves: Infestation – 10 plaster paper and resin forms, 2013
Even the work that isn’t strictly speaking site-specific, was chosen for the show because of where it is located and how it works in that space. The egg tempera panels in the main room were painted and framed knowing where they would be going. The self-portrait at the entrance that starts you off into the exhibition is titled ‘Curious’ and was made for that space.
Lisa: What qualities do you get from egg tempera that you don’t get with acrylic paint?
Julie: I don’t use egg tempera in the traditional manner (where you build up layers of tiny hatch marks), I use it more like oil paint with wiping and blending, but because it dries as quickly as acrylic, I can create glazes and I can do all the work in one sitting. So the method is very different for me from acrylic or oil and although the results might look like acrylic I do not use acrylic like this; if I did this painting in acrylic it would not look like these.
Egg Tempera Portrait Panel, egg tempera on wood panel, 2013
Lisa: In the ‘Spring’ paintings there is a lovely ‘glassy’ quality to the paint, as if colour has been painted on glass then placed over another sheet of painted glass. How did you achieve this effect?
Julie: For the ‘Spring’ paintings I built up over 40 layers of acrylic glazes, creating a substantial structure of paint to refract light.
From the ‘Spring’ Series, Acrylic on canvas, 30cm x 40cm, 2011
Lisa: The exhibition almost feels like a retrospective, with groups of work that differ hugely from one another – from huge abstracts that look like tree trunks to very quiet tiny egg tempera portraits, to illuminated coloured resin bells. Do you ever feel uneasy about this diversity in your practice?
Julie: Diversity in my practice makes sense to me because making art is my way of looking at the diverse world around me. The title of the exhibition ‘Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking’, has helped the people who were not expecting the variety of work – it seems to click for everyone that this is what results from an artist curiously exploring the world around them, especially over the length of time it took to make the work for this show. I look at things and want to find out about them by using art as my experimental tool; it is the way I examine things. The world is vast and very interesting and the variety of the work reflects the variety of things I am interested in. Some things I want to explore through painting but for some things it is more useful to use 3D or motion, or installation of found objects. Many contemporary artists have a wide practice, but some art colleges still teach that you need a recognisable style. Maybe it depends on why you are making art.
Lisa: Is there a particular work in the show that you are most satisfied with, and for what reason?
Julie: I think there are more ‘Monolith’ paintings coming up, I am really happy with that direction. I think they are successful because they work from a distance, which is important when the work is big, but there is enough subtle detail to be satisfying up close. They refract light and glow as I intended. I am glad they work together as artworks having a conversation and I want to keep that going.
As the curator, one of the things I am most happy with in this show is how well the work interacts with the space. I am very pleased with how the individual arches frame the large paintings like ‘Roast Dinner’ that are displayed one per ‘room’. I am also quite happy with a phenomenon I noticed while documenting the show: if you stand in certain places in the space you can see into three different rooms at once and the work seems to rearrange itself in surprising ways. I am pleased with the ‘Spring’ paintings being in the room with the remnants of hospital green paint on the walls. I think H Locke’s work is very successful in the space, as such a large amount of white paper catches a lot of light.
‘Roast Dinner’, Acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 150cm, 2011
Lisa: Who or what inspires your work?
Julie: Nothing gets the ideas going faster for me than looking at my paints. Colours suggest things and they form groupings, like teams that can cooperate or can challenge each other; how they relate to each other is like a conversation. I first start putting them together in my mind and then when I must see if what is in my mind is actually possible to create, I make a painting.
Lisa: How do you select a palette for a painting?
Julie: I go to the studio to paint because I have something I want to look at, to see how it works, and that idea always includes the colours I am visualising in my head – their relationship is the most important part for me. A coral red colour (such as Cadmium Red Light) relating to a light turquoise colour is a completely different idea than a magenta red (such as Quinacridone Red) talking to the same turquoise.
Lisa: How do you balance your work for Jackson’s Art Supplies with your work as an artist? How do they support one another?
Julie: I am fortunate enough to have found a day job that allows me the flexibility to have a proper studio practice and that I find interesting as well. Art materials and how to get them to do what you want is fascinating stuff, so doing research and helping artists solve their materials questions is interesting for me. My studio practice supports my Jackson’s work because I will sometimes have just done something in the studio, which is similar to what I am being asked about. For instance: I will have tried egg tempera on acrylic gesso and found it doesn’t work well (it isn’t absorbent enough, you need genuine rabbit-skin gesso) or I have a method I use to make some transparent colours more opaque without altering the colour too much (add a very small amount of titanium white) so I answer the question by saying how I personally solve the problem.
A is for Obsession by Julie Caves and Curio-City by H Locke, Installation shot
Lisa: How would you describe a good day in the studio?
Julie:I think this is my favourite question. I had never thought about it before like this. There are a variety of types of good days. One factor is probably that I am not too far behind schedule on a deadline and rushing, though even that sometimes invents a work-around that is interesting. My studio days are often quite long, quite varied and almost all are good days.
A typical day in the last year working on this exhibition: I arrive to haul a delivery of materials upstairs and unpack the paints or canvases. I usually have 2 or 3 things in progress and a list of deadlines I am working to for exhibitions or for photos for submissions; I still had other projects going on in addition to the work for this exhibition. I begin working from where I left off the previous evening and when something needs to dry I work on something else. I might do some work on the large self-portrait, spend a few hours adding another coat of plaster to the egg forms and then put them all back in their drying place under my tables. Then I might make a cup of tea and email my model for the egg temperas to arrange a time. Next would be applying more coats of resin to the bell forms and putting them back to dry in their space (on top of another table with a dust tent erected over them). After lunch I might then work on an oil painting for the Quantum exhibition and varnish a work for a small exhibition I was participating in. After dinner I might be up and down my step stool working on one of the large monolith paintings. I usually paint until quite late in the evening.
Lisa: Where else can we see more of your work (online or in the flesh)?
Julie: A group of us have been working on an exhibition about science and art for the last year. I will have a number of paintings in the show on from Nov 7-24 2013 – ‘Quantum: a journey through the Standard Model’ at Espacio Gallery
http://www.espaciogallery.com
http://www.quantumexhibition.co.uk
Next year in May/June I will be participating in a few exhibitions and projects as part of the E17 Art Trail, including our Open Studios at Blackhorse Lane Studios.
http://www.e17arttrail.co.uk
http://www.barbicanartsgrouptrust.co.uk/blackhorse-lane-studios.html
My website: http://www.juliecaves.com
My blog: http://juliecaves.blogspot.co.uk
____________________________________
Julie Caves has a solo exhibition during Frieze Week, just down the road from the Frieze Art Fair, across the road from Euston Station.
The Crypt Gallery
St Pancras Church
Euston Road (entrance in Duke’s Road)
London
NW1 2BA
Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking
October 5th – 20th, 2013. 11-7pm every day
http://www.toknowandtounderstand.co.uk
________________________________________
