Contemporary Art
Summer 2023
Features one of Fay’s circle drawings plus work by many artists who have shown at this Gallery including: Tim Allen, David Batchelor, Richard Deacon, Mark Fairnington, Graham Gussin, Lucy Heyward, Bob and Roberta Smith, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding and Gerard Williams.
Book your visit by emailing info@handelstreetprojects.com
Richard Deacon, One in the Bush, 2004 (detail)
3 June to 23 July 2023
Lines of Empathy book by Giuila Ricci
Open by appointment: Thurs-Fri 10 am to 3 pm, Sat 10 am to 1 pm. Tickets vis Eventbrite. Book on the Close Gallery website.
Opening PV Saturday 3 June, 2 to 5 pm, featuring artists in conversation and a performance by Carali McCall.
Read about the exhibition on Artnet:
https://news.artnet.com/buyers-guide/spotlight-close-ltd-simon-hitchens-2328451
Until 29 May 2023
This exhibition, curated by The Prince's Foundation, to mark the start of the Foundation's celebrations in honour of the Coronation of HM King Charles III has opened at the Garrison Chapel in London. A selection of about 20 of the Highgrove Florilegium watercolours including two by Fay Ballard are on display, together with both volumes of the Highgrove Florilegium books until the 29th May.
The exhibition shows how the garden at Highgrove has developed over the years and includes interesting early photographs and some of His Majesty’s sketch books and paintings of the garden.
Little Gem, 2006, watercolour on paper 40x30cm
Gunnera tinctoria, 2006, watercolour on paper 40x30cm
2 – 25 February 2023
www.patrickheide.com
Curated by artist Giulia Ricci: www.giuliaricci.co.uk
Event: Lines of Empathy Book Launch and Artists’ Conversation on Saturday 25 February at Patrick Heide
The following statement is taken from text written by Giulia Ricci in 2022.
Lines of Empathy began as a collection of interviews with a number of artists who were asked the same set of questions about one of their works on paper. Giulia felt a connection to each of their practices where concerns and approaches related closely to her own.The project originated as an idea for an exhibition before the pandemic struck but during lockdown when real life exhibitions weren’t possible, Giulia revised her thoughts spurred on by conversations with artists and online studio visits.
The idea to use interviews as the format for the project came from Autoritratto, a book published by De Donato (Bari, Italy) in 1969 and written by art critic Carla Lonzi. Giulia discovered this volume while she was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna the late ‘90s and it made a significant impact on her thinking as an artist.
Autoritratto is a collection of interviews with 14 artists who were working in Italy in the 1960s, including Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis and Pino Pascali. Lonzi recorded numerous conversations with them which she transcribed and edited into a sort of collage interspersing the various voices with one other, including her own as interviewer. She used interview as a method to let artists speak for themselves. A successful art critic throughout the decade, in the late ‘60s she was increasingly scathing about her colleagues in the Italian context; she saw the elite of art critics, primarily men, as being in control of the artists’ voices and was acutely aware of the sense of power struggle.
Unlike Autoritratto, Giulia's project is based on written interviews. Giulia writes: 'I wanted to collect the artists’ reflections through their own words in writing and ensure that they would have time to reflect on their answers, given the level of detail I asked of them. I have really enjoyed reading the variety of writing styles with which everyone has expressed their own thoughts. The second reason is that, like the eloquently titled Autoritratto, my project has a fundamentally autobiographical component which is manifested in the choice of the artworks, each touching on aspects I feel close to in my own practice, and in the nature of the questions, focus on characteristics that are very important in my own work’.
Fay Ballard
15 October – 17 December 2021
Monday - Thursday 12:00 – 18:00
Friday 10:00 – 13:00
By appointment
Handel Street Projects, 14 Florence Street, London N1
Fedja Klikovac, director of Handel Street Projects and curator of ‘In Circles’ writes:
Handel Street Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works on paper by Fay Ballard. In these drawings, Ballard takes the circle, rendering some in graphite’s subtle spectrum of greys, and others in luminous watercolour, exploring tone and colour. The series comprises 40 circles in total; many radiate a sense of measured calm and serenity, while others are more extrovert, their playful colours reminiscent of Ballard’s 1970s childhood.
Ballard’s working process is intuitive and each circle is the result of prolonged periods of concentration. The tone and colour of each circle evolves as the drawing takes shape. Although she sets herself a set of rules – a circle radius of 14, 18 or 56cm, divided into concentric bands of 5 or 10mm, the human touch is evident. Glitches of the hand are incorporated – a stray pencil line, a brush mark overlapping watercolour. No two look the same. As Gilda Williams writes in the catalogue to accompany the exhibition:
‘This is not a mechanical art-making practice, set on repeat. Each drawing gives rise to a unique space of contemplation – ‘a reverie’, as Ballard describes her state when working, echoing the term used by Wilfred Bion to describe moments of psychoanalytical break-through.
Ballard talks about finding an ‘emotional pitch’ and the series reflects a personal journey, perhaps an internal resolution after a decade of rediscovering her mother who died in 1964. Her interest in psychoanalysis underpins these drawings, especially Hanna Segal’s ideas on art as a reparative act. For Ballard, the circles could also be shelters offering containment. Others recall memories of her 1970s childhood growing up in Shepperton:
‘Fairground rides, psychedelia, gobstoppers, Spirograph and those cardboard spinning discs found in cereal packets’. Dr Williams adds ‘grooves of vinyl LPs’ noting that Ballard refers to ‘pitch’ and cites a resonance with Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus’ (1944).
Ballard began the circles after trips to Iran and Morocco, inspired by their art and architecture, especially the brickwork in Iran, and after visiting Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum in Cologne where brickwork is employed to elicit an emotional response.
A book will accompany the exhibition with an essay ‘The Ripple Effect’ by Dr Gilda Williams, designed by William Hall.
info@handelstreetprojects.com
020 7226 2119 / 07815754634
www.handelstreetprojects.com
Buy the exhibition book:
