New Works / Trudie Moore Exhibition October 2020
New Works
/October 2020
An exhibition of painting and installation
Join me for my solo exhibition of new works created during my residency at Gray’s Wharf in September and October 2020, and of key works from the last 12 months.
On show at Gray’s Wharf Gallery from Tuesday 13th – Sunday 18th October 2020
My 2020 solo show is an exploration of my abstract painting into installation, an amplification of the experience of colours, layers and planes of the painting surface into three dimensionality and enhances the vibrance, brilliance and clarity of colour.
With the aim of using my residency at Gray’s Wharf to push the boundaries of my practice, I have used the space to stretch out and expand in size and concept. Through use of the light and airy space awarded by Gray’s to me, I have been given mental space, time, physical space and opportunity for reflection and deep focus.
Together with the team at Gray’s Wharf, we would like to invite you to visit, experience and be surrounded by new works produced during the residency, along with a few other key pieces from the last year which have been produced exploring the same key themes of luminosity, material, process, composition, technique and colour.
My new paintings explore a range of painting surfaces including natural canvas, acrylic and wood, at times creating three dimensional installation pieces which bring close focus to the material of the paint and the canvas as being ‘as one’.
Through the exploration of the properties and abilities of paints to their most clear and luminescent ability, by using fluorescents, pastels and clean, pure colours, I aim to feel uplifted by the paintings and to share that energising impact of colour with the viewer. The paintings seem to glow and emit light bringing the colour to its highest light emission, in parts casting light out and off the canvas, bringing the focus on colour both into the painting plane itself yet also to its’ surroundings, and also showing the ability of paint with material (particularly in relation to pieces made from acrylic) to itself create light.
The ‘canvas’ both interacts with the paint as a layer itself, and provides the physical layer on which the paint can sit and perform to a great degree. By seeing surface textures through sheer veils of paint or heavy elevations in the paint application, we are reminded of the process of painting and the physicality.
By bringing the paint layers out from the ‘canvas’ we are able to experience two dimensions in a three dimensional way, in opposition to enclosing the three dimensions into a two dimensional illusion. We feel and we experience the energy that has been given by the artist to the piece through the process of painting which brings the painting into reality and this is reflected back at us.
Details for the exhibition and private view:
13 – 18 OCT 2020
TUE – FRI / 10 AM – 6PM
SAT / 10 AM – 5 PM
SUN / 11 AM – 4 PM
PRIVATE VIEW: THU 15 OCT / 5.30-9PM
BOOK HERE
Where to find the show
Grays Wharf
Commercial Road
Penryn
Cornwall
TR10 8AE
About my paintings
My paintings use fields of colour, transparencies and opacities that act as both a visual and an actual layer over one another, and which are layers upon the surface layer of the canvas.
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Update Gray's Wharf Residency 1st September - 12th October 2020
Latest plans for my Grey's Wharf Residency 1st September - 12th October 2020
This is an invitation to join me virtually in my art practise as I embark on a 6 week programme of scaling up and generating new paintings that break through the boundaries in my current work.
I’ll be occupying this beautiful studio at Grey’s Wharf on the river in Penryn undertaking an artists studio residency. I will be documenting the residency, my painting processes and development and creating a new, exhibitable body of paintings. I will be sharing my progress by streaming, blogging, taking video, and updating on my website and social media channels.
At the end of the event I will be creating an exhibition of the new work.
This is the first residency offered by Grey’s Wharf and I am very lucky to have been awarded this opportunity.
We aim to enable artists to develop their practice by providing a space to explore concepts, experiment with scale and materials, test ideas or take a new direction. We offer a supportive, professional creative community with 20 practitioners based in individual and shared studios as well as additional gallery and events spaces.
Through the residency I hope to:
- Push the boundaries and take risks to advance my work.
- Create a three dimensional experiential environment, amplifying the planes of colour (paintings as an installation to surround the viewer) with more 3 dimensional paintings that explore the use of different ‘canvas’ materials
- Make work that literally pops out of the canvas, transitions out of the canvas and is on and off the walls, the canvas and other three dimensional pieces around the room.
The residency offers me space in which to both do some big paintings, and also to stand back to review, critique and judge them. As a part of the residency, I am lucky to be able to gain critical feedback from artist practitioner Naomi Frears who is not only a hugely successful professional visual artist, but also tutor at the St Ives School of Painting.
I have already been starting to work out what I need to order to achieve a project over the 6 week period. I’ve downloader an AR (Augmented Reality) app to help with planning for the space and to help me to visualise the end result I might achieve. This is a jump forwards in my process from simply jumping in to ‘doing’ from my head or from a quick sketch. I’m investigating the processes that interior designers use to show prospective designs to clients (and if you are an interior designer reading this, then please do get in touch with me if you are happy to share your tips!). I hope to be able to post visualisations prior to the finished work being created.
Having visited Grey’s Wharf Studios yesterday I now have canvases to order, suppliers to research, materials to test and decisions to make as to what the end result is going to be.
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Naum Gabo at Tate St Ives 2020
Naum Gabo at Tate St Ives 2020
The Naum Gabo exhibit at Tate St Ives started in March this year and has been extended to run until this September. I went along in early March and here are my takeaway impressions and some photos of what you might expect if you have a chance to visit.
We are so lucky in Cornwall not just to have an amazing local wealth of creative and artistic talent locally, and an immense history of modern art in the area, but also to have facilities like Tate St Ives to visit ‘on a rainy day’, to stretch the mind, educate and inform us without even leaving the Duchy (County to you and me!).
When the Naum Gabo exhibition in St Ives started in early spring I went along with my (slightly short attention span and tantruming throughout the exhibit) son to take it in.
My visit was, as such, quite short and so will be the information in this blog as a result, but short turned out to be very sweet. I found this was an exhibition I could go to see, learn and enjoy immensely, because the work here is very fast to comprehend and enjoy. Even if you look at it in amazement for the sculptural skill, visual impact, mathematical precision and calculations, or, as I did, the complete surprise surrounding the manufacturing techniques available in the era, you can be impressed by the forethought and modernity of it that still makes it feel futuristic and timeless today.
His work combined geometric abstraction with a dynamic organization of form in small reliefs and constructions, monumental public sculpture and pioneering kinetic works that assimilated new materials such as nylon, wire, lucite and semi-transparent materials, glass and metal.
Two preoccupations, unique to Gabo, were his interest in representing negative space—”released from any closed volume” or mass—and time. He famously explored the former idea in his Linear Construction works (1942-1971)—used nylon filament to create voids or interior spaces as “concrete” as the elements of solid mass
Source: Tate/ Wikipedia
What I enjoyed about Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life.
The first extensive presentation of Naum Gabo’s sculptures, paintings, drawings and architectural designs to be held in the UK for over 30 years
Tate St Ives
I didn’t know that Naum Gabo had lived in Carbis Bay during WWII and been considered one of the St Ives Artists. This felt great to me as it drew a link for me between the location in which I now live. I have a pull towards the geometric visual style in my paintings, and the relationship of the three dimensionality in this sculptural work that resonates with the three dimensional direction I am currently taking in my own work. I could feel a connection with the sculptures and plans. I can feel the organic
I made a mental note to myself to look up: Hyperbolic parabaloid, tensegrity structure and history plastic manufacturing (although these days I’m researching more into plastics re-use)… and you might add to that Constructivism (and give that to your child to do as homework for the school holidays!).
I couldn’t believe how well some of the pieces have survived – the geometric acrylic sheet sculptures that have remained in immaculate condition are nearly 100 years old. You could be mistaken for thinking they were made in the 1970s, influenced by Star Wars or some other space odyssey, but in fact perhaps the reverse is true, perhaps films and architecture drew on the work of Naum Gabo as the innovator.
The precision of the hyperbolic paraboloids, the mathematical calculations that went into them and the precise execution of the pieces. The hyperbolic paraboloids make for beautiful sculptures which are perfectly hand tensioned, each string or wire having the same degree of tension.
For me this is a stunning exhibition, beautifully presented, amazingly well preserved and extremely educational and inspirational. If a 3 year old can lie on the floor having a tantrum because they don’t want to leave, that’s a good sign for taking older kids or the rest of your family along.
Open Studios Cornwall 2020
Open Studios Cornwall is from 29th August to 6th September 2020.
Open Studios Cornwall is a coordinated Cornwall-wide event where artists from all over Cornwall open their studios at the same time,
creating a county wide festival of art, design and craft.
More than 200 artists, designers and makers are taking part in the Open Studios, 30 of those are located at Krowji in Redruth and so if you plan to visit me in my studio there, you will be able to see an even bigger selection of the wealth of creative talent Cornwall has to offer all in one place.
I am aiming to create a gallery-level experience during this event, so whilst you might have been missing the pleasure of visiting exhibitions and galleries for contemporary art in the spring and summer this year, I will be bringing a feeling of this to you through my plans for an integration of in person, virtual (videos & documentation) and connecting with me live through a stream of me at work.
Visit Trudie Moore’s artist studio in August and September
Because we have had a little longer to prepare for the new dates of this event, I have come up with more of an experiential format for the event incorporating exhibition, private views and appointments, online (virtual) videos, a documentation experience streamed from my live residency and, of course, the usual drop-in format.
On show at my studio at Krowji, Redruth –
Gallery style exhibition, private appointments, drop-ins at the main event and a live stream to my residency.
Open studios are a brilliant way for you to see my work, my art is meant to be enjoyed by the natural eye for the greatest benefit of the colour, scale, textures, lines, edges, transparencies, surfaces. You can’t get a good enough impression of my paintings from an online image as it’s very hard to convey the experience (one of the reasons I have started doing talk-through videos on IGTV – Instagram TV, so show and describe the work). So coming to see me in person in the studio where you can come simply to chat and find out more will offer so much more.
I will be showing a selection of recent and older work, and I will have pieces for sale to take away with you.
Come and have a chat with me about my work, how I work, what my work is about, buy a painting or even give me critical analysis! I have loads to talk about, The Christmas Open Studios at Krowji delivered some really deep and insightful conversations that were enjoyed immensely on both sides.
A virtual window into the creation of my newest work – streaming from my residency 1st-4th September
I will be working from a residency in Penryn on the weekdays of Open Studios and so I am working to create an online journal/ diary of me at work on my new project. The residency commences on 1st September and runs until 12th October and so you will see me via a stream, blog, video and IGTV in the studio there between 1st to 4th September and be able to chat to me on 5th and 6th about it, and my ambitions for the future in person at Krowji (Studio 108c!).
This will be an additional experience to visiting me in Krowji as my space in Krowji is small it doesn’t allow room both for showing work in progress as well as visitors and exhibition/ viewing and so by making my big residency project available by documenting it online, not only will you be able to share in the experience of this online documentation (and I will be collecting the documentation by way of a critical aspect of my work) but you will also be able to get an insight into the future of my work, it’s direction and the ambition and scale I have for it. I will be aiming to set up a screen in my studio to show me at work at the times I’m not present at Krowji.
If you are still in Cornwall, or back in Cornwall in mid October 2020 I am hoping to hold a Private View of the new work. To be invited to this please request to sign up to my email list here.
Collect website orders from me in person
If there is a piece you would like to buy in advance of the event, you can buy it through the website and collect it at Open Studios either when I am there, or by appointment. The website has a PayPal payment gateway and takes all mainstream card payments. If there is something you wish to reserve and pay by bank transfer or cash, please get in touch with me.
Seen something you like that’s not in the shop?
If there is a piece of my work you have seen online either through my website, social media or through my old blog or old website, I can bring it to Open Studios for viewing. My back catalogue is in storage and not everything has been photographed, so if there is something you like and want to know if I have more of, I can email through images.
Like something but it’s the wrong size, colour or you have an idea for a variation or a specific place?
Likewise if you would like to discuss a commission or a project, I can compile examples for discussion and meet you to show you more! Here is some further information on Commissions and projects and an outline on what you can achieve by commissioning an artist.
Visiting Open Studios Cornwall 2020
How I will be opening my studio to visitors for Open Studios Cornwall
Because the dates for Open Studios moved back from May to August, the dates now run at the same time as my residency at Grey’s Wharf in Penryn. Here is how I will be opening up my studio:
- I will be opening physically over the two weekends of Open Studios Cornwall in my studio at Krowji and so I will be present to welcome visitors into my space.
- My space will be open when there are other artists present in my space as a gallery exhibit. I am hoping to be able to show the video/ my blog on some manner within my space and there will be contact cards to make an appointment to see me and there will be pieces hanging in the hallway to look at.
- I will be opening virtually in two ways:
- By taking bookings to meet you at Krowji for an appointment
Drop in and Visit me at Krowji on 29th & 30th August 2020
Opening hours for weekend visits: 11am – 5pm Saturday and Sunday
I will be in the studio for the normal opening on the weekend days for chats, sales and information.
Make an appointment with me for a studio visit during Open Studios 2020 on weekdays
Available Hours: 9am – 8pm Monday to Friday
I will be taking bookings to show you my studio in person during the week. If you can’t visit me on the weekends, if you are an architect or an interior designer looking to source artwork or discussion during working hours, or if you are worried that the studios will be too busy, I can offer you a quieter visit to see my work when the doors to my studio space are closed.
I will be uploading a booking system to my website soon, in the meantime, Make an appointment with me by using my website contact form here.
Protocol for visiting my studio and Krowji
My space is small and I am hoping to rent a bigger room for the duration to allow for social distancing. But whatever the space available, there will be measures in place that visitors will need to adhere to to allow for a relaxed and safe environment.
- Face masks will be a requirement to studio entry, I will be wearing a mask and I will ask that you do too
- Hand sanitisers will be provided on entry to the building, and on entry to my studio room
- As my space is small, I’ll only be able to welcome one person/ one ‘family unit’ / couple at a time
- There will be a marked trail and marked waiting areas on the floor to create a comfortable flow and good spacing
- The studios will have increased cleaning during the event and I will clean the space between visitors
Where to find my studio
I am usually in studio 108c but for the duration of Open Studios, to exhibit my work and allow for social distancing, you’ll find me in studio 220 on the 2nd floor of the Percy Williams building, just upstairs from my usual space.
Address Studio 108c, Percy Williams Building, Krowji, West Park
Town Redruth
Postcode TR15 3AJ
Directions
From A30 take main Redruth exit and follow A3047 towards Pool/Camborne.æ Pass Redruth School on left, after about 200m, turn left into West Park just before the large roundabout.æ Limited parking available on site.
Facilities: Disabled access, toilets, disabled toilets, cafe
Open Studios artist listing for Trudie Moore
Trudie Moore’s contemporary abstract paintings explore control and restraint in the painting process. These paintings have luminous fields of colour, transparencies and opacities that act as both a visual and an actual layer over one another, and which are layers upon the surface layer of the canvas. Paintings are priced from £45–2,000.
Sign up to emails to stay informed
Sign up to emails to be informed about open studios and my residency
Book an appointment for Open Studios Cornwall 2020
Please use the form below to request a private appointment between 30th August to 6th September.
Inspirations from Tate Modern
Inspirations from the Tate Modern, November 2015
On my day out to see Ai Weiwei’s exhibition I took the opportunity to do some further research and to look for painting inspirations in the Tate Modern. Limiting myself to the free exhibits I was interested in narrowing it down to just the Energy and Process and Making Traces rooms. I was a bit disappointed in the painting selection, but there were a few key items that took me, and one completely unexpected body of work encompassing drawing, sculpture and performance by Rebecca Horn that was a real surprise.
First of all, the paintings.
Giorgio Griffa, Segni Orizzontali, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1975
This piece was of interest to me initially because the painting isn’t attached to a canvas stretcher, it’s simply painted straight onto canvas and pinned to the wall. There is a relationship between Griffa’s use of the canvas material as a raw object to how I apply gloss paint in the more process-led paintings where it wraps around the surface sides of the painting to amplify the three dimensionality of the painting’s surface.
Cy Twombly Untitled (Bacchus), 2008
I was particularly looking forward to re-acquainting myself with the work of Cy Twombly; massive, expressive canvasses with giant gestural marks of free flowing paint. Immersively large scale and full of impact.
I’ve always enjoyed doing large canvases, they are expensive to make and quite a big gamble to undertake given the cost involved to do one but when I do it pays off, the bigger paintings always lend themselves to space and freedom well for me and I feel able to stretch out and explore the space. I never like to waste resources or money so I know if I don’t get it right I won’t be a happy bunny.
Tomma Abts, Zebe, 2010
.
Making Traces exhibit
Mark Rothko (late 1950s)
Rebecca Horn
This is what the plaque says about House of Pain and Waiting for Absence, both 2005 (having read this after seeing the pieces):
‘to look inside bodies and meditate one’s own way into them… you approach a hidden centre, maybe the solar plexus, and follow the circular motion or energy threads of breathing’.
There were some other items in the exhibit that were quite scary and intimate. A video of Rebecca in the 70s making a drawing wearing a cage of pencils on her face, a Cockatoo headpiece that had ‘wings’ to envelope/embrace a partner into a kiss (this was really voyeuristic and a bit shocking) and then also, the piece that to me was the most raw and shocking item, a sculpture called Overflowing Blood Machine, 1970. This was bloody and to me, almost torturous looking, perhaps this was what gave such an impact of all the items that perhaps the mechanics had been inspired by medieval creations and inventions.
Overflowing Blood Machine was a plinth with transparent tubes that encased a wearer. I thought this looked less like a therapeutic hospital device than one of dystopia and torture or perhaps even unnatural genetic engineering or some other sinister device. The wearer (a performance artist) is ‘tied down on top of a glass container, tubes are wrapped around his body. Blood is slowly pumped from the glass container through the plastic tubes. This garment of veins encases his body, wrapping him in a pulsating skin.’ I think this is the stuff of horror movies, see what you think from the photos!
I’m now looking forward to my next gallery visit, but first some more painting of my own!
This blog post was first published by myself 23rd Nov 2015 at http://trudiemooreabstractpaintings.blogspot.com/2015/
Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy of Arts, London 2015
Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy of Arts, London 2015
I picked up my camera and headed off to the Big Smoke for a day of treating myself to art gallery mooching.
I didn’t know an awful lot about Ai Weiwei before I spotted his exhibition was on at the Royal Academy of Arts, but I did know that it would be good with well executed work that would make me think harder and deeper not only about the work, but about its context.
He's the Beijing Andy Warhol... he wants to shock you
Never Sorry
Never go unprepared
The show opens with the first big piece, Bed, 2004 which is a piece recycled from Qing Dynasty timber, like much of Ai’s work, reclaimed salvage.
Headphones on
Detail from Kippe, 2006, on show at the RA, November 2015
For Ai Weiwei he felt that he couldn’t understand the event and the devastation of it and the Government’s response without going to see it for himself and so he travelled to the area with a team and they started to collect names of those children who perished which were collated and read out by followers of his blog. The blog was later shut down by the Government for revealing “state secrets”. This resulted in Ai Weiwei being beaten by police and denied the ability to give evidence in support of one his assistants, he was then hospitalised for bleeding on the brain.
Moving on from Straight, we move into a room that talks about Ai’s struggles with the Government, his oppression as an artist and the Government’s attempts to constrain his work by bulldozing his studio. Ai had criticised the Beijing Olympics internationally, fought for those who suffered as a result of the earthquake and for over 300,000 children who had been harmed by infant formula. He utilised this as an event to commemorate the studio and hold a feast of river crabs. Of the items in this exhibit, He Xie, 2011 is a pile of 3,000 crabs clambering over one another, I think is the most interesting part. The translation for river crab ‘He Xie’ means harmonious, which is a concept of the Communist party’s slogan ‘The realisation of a harmonious society’ and this is taken to denote censorship within Chinese society. The feasting on river crabs, to which he was then, due to the Government, unable to attend becoming a piece of performance art and defiance by those attendees. The crabs shown were anatomically correct and made of hand painted porcelain, a mischievous edge I believe is shown in the escape of one of the crabs up the wall. I later felt like one of the clambering crabs on the tube in the midst of the madness.
More references to surveillance, challenging traditional values and oppression follow, the use of craftsmanship carefully executed in the work, Ai’s art business giving work to skilled individuals using high value materials, marble, tea, crystal, Han urns and the highly crafted Treasure Box, 2014. All traditional Chinese items.
The exhibition becomes renewed when we get to one of the last galleries featuring the S.A.C.R.E.D. 2012 diorama depicting torturous aspects from Ai’s incarceration such as interrogations and being watched using the loo. These could be viewed from the side, but if you were tall enough (I barely was and I am average height) you could peer in from the top by standing on a step and experience the pieces in an ‘out of body experience’ kind of a way as though you were either Ai witnessing his own life, or a video camera surveilling the situation. This room was decorated in a blingy, gold-coloured wallpaper of handcuffs and Twitter logos with Ai’s face as the bird. I feel it is demonstrating that he can overcome the authorities and this treatment by still getting his message out through Twitter. The image of this was quite sinister, Ai playing the Government at its own game and by putting his face on the wallpaper as the bird, he’s become the more powerful force. The fact that the paper is only printed gold and not actually made from gold shows that the luxury material itself is unnecessary, but also refers to mass production techniques and mass distribution through social media.
More photos of Bicycle Chandelier
Finally the mass production is addressed again through the giant Bicycle Chandelier, 2015 commissioned to be re-fashioned with crystals for the Royal Academy, made from Forever Bicycles historically ridden all over China but ridden less in recent times due to increasing modernisation while riding a bike in China has become a luxury and not a utility. This piece suits the elegance and luxury gold leaf of its position under the atrium roof, the commissioning of the piece by the RA feeling like an act of extravagance by the gallery itself, possibly funded by sales of merchandise in the gift shop as you exit. I wondered whether Ai Weiwei embraces corporate souvenir sales to help fund his mission (given that some of the books themselves are his work) and the partnerships with galleries seeing it as a necessary way to enable art, or whether the monetisation of art, art galleries and the link to consumerism is seen as an additional issue, perhaps one not to be addressed given the number of problems he is already tackling.
I first published this blog on Thursday, 12 November 2015 at http://trudiemooreabstractpaintings.blogspot.com/2015/11/ai-weiwei-at-royal-academy-of-arts.html