+64 021.453.418:: thelab@fe29.com
“While searching through old photos, I came across two images of myself as
an infant with a rocking horse. In one I wore a red hooded dress and red shoes. These characters became “Little Red” and her “Equine Companion” and are the origin and inspiration for my November 2024 exhibition at Fe29.” Bronwyn Gayle-Mohring
When Sam Henderson walked into Fe29 and asked whether we would like to exhibit works by Clive Barker, we had to admit that we didn’t know who he was. That was until she mentioned Candyman and Hellraiser movies. Having spiked our interest, Sam proceeded to show us some of Barker’s paintings from the web. These works were certainly not what we had previously shown at Fe29, but it was obvious to us that Barker was indeed a very talented artist.
We searched the web further and found that, not only was Barker a talented film maker and artist, but also a poet, novelist, director, screenwriter and dramatist. Apparently his early creative journey began in Liverpool, England – he ran the Dog Company performing plays and theatre productions. He then moved into writing, drawing and painting. He has been described as a polymath in the same manner as the artist, director, and poet, Jean Cocteau.
We found the following quote from film director Quentin Tarantino where he sums up Clive Barker’s work as an author:
‘To call Clive Barker a horror novelist would be like calling the Beatles a garage band. Always creating and always pushing into the farthest reaches of the human mind, he is an artist in every sense of the word. He is the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also (what) delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful. These are the words we can use to describe Clive Barker only until we invent new, more fitting adjectives.’
Apparently Sam and her partner (also in films) knew Barker, and had been in his home/studio in Hollywood on numerous occasions, even getting the opportunity to watch him working. Sam told us of 30 something works that she wanted to sell from her private collection, and we agreed to take a look.
It turns out that many of the works form the inspiration for paintings that later evolved, as well as fantastic illustrations for his fantasy novels of Abarat and Weaveworld. The images in this blog show some of these drawings alongside the finalised paintings.
Sam shares briefly a little of what she learned about Barker during her visits to his studio.
‘I first met Clive Barker in Los Angles in 2004 at his Hollywood hills home. Although best known as a successful novelist and filmmaker, Clive Barker has been creating paintings and drawings for over twenty years, but the man I met also had drank cups of British tea by the litre and had a sweet tooth requiring Tunnocks tea cakes and Kendal Mint Cake. I spent much time in Clive’s huge triple height studio, access only gained by a winding multi levelled staircase. The room was full of stacks of paintings, leaning up against one another. The easel area was surrounded by tubes of paint, some squirted onto paper plates, others used directly onto the canvases. Clive painted in a very physical manner, with huge large pieces needing him to move across the canvas. In creating his deeply expressive paintings, Barker brings to life the landscapes and figures that inhabit his mind. His colours are bold, paint application thickly layered, and surfaces often scratched or sanded, his tools were what ever he found at hand, including steak knifes and forks from his lunch plate.’
While we showed these works at Fe29 in 2016, we had not long been open and many people had not heard of the gallery. We decided that this years Fringe exhibition would be a good opportunity to exhibit them again alongside the works of a couple of other interesting artists – Marion Beaupère – a young French artist currently living in NZ – (also exhibited in 2016, not long after we opened), and Peter Bradburn (an itinerant Kiwi artist and poet) new to the gallery.
Enjoy!
MARIAN FOUNTAIN – Sculptor & medal artist
Marian Fountain is a New Zealand artist who has lived in Paris for 22 years and returns regularly to the country of her birth. She takes her inspiration from simple and recognisable forms in nature: a fish, a leaf, a pea pod – food from the earth. And on the surface of these forms the traces of underlying life – movement and energy are evoked with fine reliefs of waves, camouflages or tattoo. Her work has been exhibited at the British Museum, The National Gallery of Scotland, the Museo Archeologico of Milan, York Museum, Auckland Museum, and the French Mint. Some of her creations include the winners’ medals for the Commonwealth Games in 1990 and the America’s Cup in 2003, and the “Entente Cordiale” centenary medal in 2004.
Fountain currently lives in an ‘atelier d’artiste de la Ville de Paris’ (social housing for artists), which was provided for her in 2008. Up until that time, from the time she arrived in Paris (1991), she had been living in official squats. For the first eight years, she was in a little house built in 1900 in Montmartre with no bathroom and an outside toilet. Conditions were very ‘bohème’ but the garden cascaded down three terraces to the Bateau Lavoir at the bottom. ” The little house felt like the Grandma of Paris so I had an open-door policy and met Parisians that way.”
For the next eight years she lived in a 400m2 factory space in the centre of Paris, and there too it was open door with people using
the downstairs area for theatre, music and various courses. “In 2000 we held ‘Picnicart’ parties every month where people bought
their own food and five or six artists exhibited.”
She is happy now to have her own workshop and living space with a garden at the end of a grassy courtyard. “I have been extremely
lucky to be able to work outside and to have had three gardens and sky in Paris.”
First experiences with bronze casting – “It was actually a piece of wood that introduced me to the foundry. I was in my second year at art school studying design and sculpture. In the wood workshop on the first floor, a small piece of wood that I was trying to mill, shot out of its clamp and nearly took my stomach out on its fast trajectory towards the window, which luckily was open. Rather shaken, I went outside to look for the wood and came across David Reid, who ran the foundry in the courtyard. Then and there he started showing me the process of simply burying polystyrene and pouring metal into it : the simplest of molds/casts. I was immediately hooked. Somehow it seemed to me a more ‘balanced’ process than the violent machines often used to manipulate wood. And it seemed you could create something from scratch.
An opportunity to go to Italy and receive training at the Rome Mint – “I’ve been involved with the British Art Medal Society since 1984, attending weekends most years which provide a fantastic opportunity to visit museums with curators, around the UK and on the continent. During an international congress (FIDEM) dinner in 1984 in Stockholm, I met the person in charge of medals at FAO in Rome, who helped me apply for the school at the Rome Mint. There were no fees but I plunged into Roman life, earning my own living and also making enough work to exhibit in a gallery on the Spanish Steps. I was involved with a family who cast sculptures in their foundry on the seventh floor of the medieval tower where they lived. It was fantastic to have first-hand experience of the artistic and artisanal traditions in Italy.”
A sense of touch shared with our ancestors – “It’s a thrill when sculpting to feel in touch with the artisan ancestors by repeating exactly the same manual gestures, understanding better how many artefacts from the plethora of cultures and eras were made. Through practice, the hand-eye coordination blends the conscious and the unconscious, and we begin to feel part of the collective lake of consciousness. I feel that creating things with the hands is like keeping the sap flowing through the branches and roots of a plant, keeping the organism (myself and the community) alive and healthy.” Fountain’s Ancestral Remote is reminiscent of Maori rakau whakapapa (used as a mnemonic aid to Maori elders reciting long genealogical histories).
Bridging Time – ” Bronze is a material which has a rich history in many cultures through time. Making sculptures from it seems to bridge time, informing us at once of our present and our distant ancestral past, and emphasizing that the present is but a notch in time. In the process of making a sculpture I mainly work with plasticine, wax and plaster. They are natural materials which are pleasing to manipulate, not toxic, and furthermore the negative and positive steps in mold-making add more stages in which to intervene, building up a situation of many creative possibilities.
See how Marian Fountain came to exhibit in Fe29 Gallery, and learn more about Marian and her works.
We’ve been busy getting ready to open the Fe29 Art Lab here in Wimberley to the public. And boy is there a lot to do. Manuel has been busy chainsawing and burning and we now have a pretty good walking track through our 5 heavily wooded acres. The plan is to turn this into a sculpture walk. We have had a couple of our artists working here over the weekend. They are ceramists Sarah Rohlack and Daniel Armstrong, and they have been working on a project to build a tiled bench seat for the walk.
We’ve been mowing lawns, and cleaning up the gardens. The rain sure helped green things up around here, but then of course it also got the grass and weeds growing like, well weeds I guess. Our ride on mower gave up a few weeks back and we have been dependent on artist friend Mark Love, who very kindly loaned us his mower, until this weekend when we managed to secure a replacement. Thank you Mark!
We have also been accumulating artworks – quite a lot of artworks – sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, furniture, paintings & metal artwork for the walls.We have been framing and mounting, and setting up gallery spaces. And then there’s this pesky website, and the signs and rack cards we need to let everyone know where to find us. So much to do! But don’t panic, we’re almost there.
Sculptor Ishmael Soto and ceramicist Julie Isaacson came to see us at our Satellite Gallery in Austin. We all hit it off fabulously and so were invited to visit Ishmael at his home and studio in Blue (near Lexington). Ishmael has developed quite a compound for himself and his very large family. He hand-built three homes on his +-50 acre place in the woods and has a wonderful and serene lifestyle that he willingly shared with Cecilia and I. We spent most of a day touring and admiring his artworks, kilns, gardens, books, knives and homes. He even cooked us lunch, which is apparently not a common event. We had the privilege of seeing some of the treasured works he has produced over many years, and uses in his day to day life. It was such a treat. To top off this wonderful day, Ish agreed to let Fe29 represent him and we all three worked in the rain, to fill up our entire truck with as many sculptures as would fit to bring back to Wimberley for our opening that is scheduled for late July/early August. It was like Christmas when we returned to the Art Lab and began unpacking and arranging his works. They look so good among the other pieces and we feel privileged to be representing such an icon.
At 80 years old, Ish was more than a little skeptical when Cecilia asked him to consider collaborating with another of our metal artists. The look on his face was priceless when she first brought up the subject, but she proceeded to hand over to him a favorite unfinished work. The artist had made numerous unsuccessful attempts to finish the work and hoped that Ishmael may just have what it takes to turn it into something they can both be proud of. While Ishmael has stated more than once that he doesn’t do collaborations, as a little more time has passed, he seems to be warming up to the idea. Last time we met with him at ACC he mentioned something about putting it through the roller, so, watch this space for his first collaboration. I think this old dog will be learning a few new tricks!