In June 2012, my four triptychs Undergrowth, Riverbank, Rock and Rose were exhibited in the Young Masters Art Prize Fundraising Exhibition & Auction at Rupert Cavendish Antiques on London’s King’s Road.
The invitation came from Cynthia Corbett, who had seen the works the previous month at Detours, an exhibition at Wimbledon Space. I had developed the pieces during an AA2A artist residency at Chelsea College of Art, exploring relationships between historical textile design, digital processes and contemporary abstraction.
What interested me about this next exhibition was not simply the opportunity to show the work again, but the considerable change in its surroundings.
A Different Context for Painting
At Wimbledon Space, the triptychs had been presented alongside four digital animations. Their relationship to moving images, experimental processes and contemporary artistic research was central to how they could be encountered.
At Rupert Cavendish Antiques, the same works entered a setting associated with historical furniture, decorative objects, collecting and the market for luxury interiors.
I found the shift revealing.
The triptychs were made from silk, polyester and wood, combining the material language of textiles with the format and presentation of painting. Their repeated forms, colour relationships and abstract compositions belonged to my continuing exploration of pattern as a painterly language.
Placed among antiques, however, they could also be encountered as desirable objects within an interior. Modernist abstraction entered into conversation with historical furniture and decorative arts, while the distinction between an artwork and a collectible design object became less straightforward.
The change of setting brought another aspect of their identity into view.
Art, Design and the Marketplace
I had long been interested in the distinctions made between fine art, design, decoration and the applied arts. At the Royal College of Art, my experiments with printed and embellished plastics had already revealed how differently materials and surfaces could be understood depending upon the disciplinary context in which they appeared.
The Young Masters exhibition extended that question into the commercial world.
An artwork presented in a university gallery invites one kind of attention. In an antiques showroom, surrounded by objects with established histories of ownership, craftsmanship and value, it enters another conversation.
I was particularly interested in seeing contemporary abstraction presented in a setting where art and design were closely associated with collecting, taste, luxury and domestic space.
The exhibition’s fundraising auction, hosted by Christie’s, introduced me to another dimension of the art market and to the ways in which artworks are positioned within systems of cultural and financial value.
I did not regard these different contexts as mutually exclusive. Rather, I was becoming increasingly aware that the meaning of an artwork is shaped not only by its making but also by where, how and alongside what it is displayed.
The Continuing Life of an Artwork
The journey of these four triptychs was relatively short in time but significant in its implications.
Developed through a residency at Chelsea College of Art, they were exhibited at Wimbledon Space, where Cynthia Corbett encountered them, and subsequently entered the Young Masters exhibition at Rupert Cavendish Antiques.
Each setting offered a different reading of the same work.
At Chelsea, the emphasis had been on experimentation and developing processes. At Wimbledon, the relationship between material compositions and digital animations became visible. At Rupert Cavendish, the works entered a dialogue with collecting, interiors, historical objects and commercial value.
The four triptychs remain together in my studio today.
Looking at them now, I am reminded that an artwork’s history is not necessarily measured by changes of ownership. The same objects can pass through very different cultural contexts, acquiring new associations without physically changing.
Their continued presence in my studio also leaves open the possibility of another encounter, another exhibition and another interpretation.
I increasingly understand artistic development not as a sequence of replacements, but as an accumulation of materials, techniques, encounters, places and histories that remain capable of being reactivated.
These four works belong to that continuing history. Their physical forms have remained intact, but my understanding of them has changed through the places they have occupied and the people who have encountered them.
Their story may not yet be finished.
Exhibition
Young Masters Art Prize Fundraising Exhibition & Auction
Rupert Cavendish Antiques
610 King’s Road, London SW6 2DX
18 June – 4 July 2012
Presented by the Young Masters initiative, founded by Cynthia Corbett. The fundraising auction was hosted by Christie’s on 21 June 2012.
Works exhibited: Undergrowth, Riverbank, Rock and Rose, 2012. Four triptychs, each silk, polyester and wood, 117 × 66 × 2 cm.
Current location: Artist’s collection.
Photograph: Daisy McMullan.
Further information: Young Masters — Rupert Cavendish Antiques, 2012