Making a Mark curated with Jonathan Pinn, Dulwich College, London
March 2019
Alex Gibbs | Anthony Banks | Cate Halpin | Clara Hastrup | Corinna Spencer | David Troughton | Edmond Brooks | George Little | Helen Bermingham | Jamie Limond | Jon Pinn | Simon Foxall | Sui Kim | Tinsel Edwards | Twinkle Troughton
Forward by Sue Mulholland, Director of Art and Design Technology, Dulwich College
In our 400th year at Dulwich College we are reflecting on our creative predecessors, marrying tradition with the current zeitgeist of contemporary art. Our pupils, the post internet generation, have the world at their fingertips. Yet, the importance of ‘making’ is at risk of becoming a bespoke experience for the few, rather than part of our everyday learning experience for all. We are convinced that in a world where so much is instant and immediate, taking time to create and make is invaluable.
In early discussions with our curators Twinkle Troughton and Jon Pinn, we came full circle on the concept of how marks communicate ideas and stories. Mark making can be a language with powerful impact that can evoke or provoke responses across multiple people, generations, time and cultures. In the early planning stages I happened to be reading Gijs Van Hensbergens ‘Guernica’. Throughout an art teaching career I have grown to loath the multiple pastiche responses to this great artwork. Hensbergen helped remind me that this is an image that draws our constant attention to the proximity of catastrophe, a series of painted marks that can awaken the nightmares of our historical past whilst also projecting a terrifying scenario of what is yet to come. In the end it was Twinkle’s painting in response to Janos Pilinszky’s ‘Fable’ and Jon's reflection on uncertainty and clichés that finally anchored the overarching theme of the ‘mark’.
Twinkle’s experimental fusion of oil and chemicals to create the grim fairy-tale landscape in which humanity is rejected, lost and possibly found again worked in response to what Picasso started when he made Guernica – paintings that resonate, tell the story to remind and warn.
For artists, a mark is a language, a compulsion, a driving force, an obsession. A mark is felt as well as been seen, a mark can trigger multiple senses. This is certainly the case with our fifteen artists. I hope you become lost and found in the stories told; marks that appear to fall off the canvas, revealed landscapes, political and social starting points that challenge the viewer’s narrative so often assumed. Imagery connects us to memory and place, acting as a ‘physical gestures’ married with nostalgia. Inside the exhibition, painters who depict tactile ‘everyday’ objects rest against the big conversations around love, obsession, death and the unrequited.
Every action provoking a reaction, a reaction that leaves its trace. Its permanent mark.
Forward by Sue Mulholland, Director of Art and Design Technology, Dulwich College
In our 400th year at Dulwich College we are reflecting on our creative predecessors, marrying tradition with the current zeitgeist of contemporary art. Our pupils, the post internet generation, have the world at their fingertips. Yet, the importance of ‘making’ is at risk of becoming a bespoke experience for the few, rather than part of our everyday learning experience for all. We are convinced that in a world where so much is instant and immediate, taking time to create and make is invaluable.
In early discussions with our curators Twinkle Troughton and Jon Pinn, we came full circle on the concept of how marks communicate ideas and stories. Mark making can be a language with powerful impact that can evoke or provoke responses across multiple people, generations, time and cultures. In the early planning stages I happened to be reading Gijs Van Hensbergens ‘Guernica’. Throughout an art teaching career I have grown to loath the multiple pastiche responses to this great artwork. Hensbergen helped remind me that this is an image that draws our constant attention to the proximity of catastrophe, a series of painted marks that can awaken the nightmares of our historical past whilst also projecting a terrifying scenario of what is yet to come. In the end it was Twinkle’s painting in response to Janos Pilinszky’s ‘Fable’ and Jon's reflection on uncertainty and clichés that finally anchored the overarching theme of the ‘mark’.
Twinkle’s experimental fusion of oil and chemicals to create the grim fairy-tale landscape in which humanity is rejected, lost and possibly found again worked in response to what Picasso started when he made Guernica – paintings that resonate, tell the story to remind and warn.
For artists, a mark is a language, a compulsion, a driving force, an obsession. A mark is felt as well as been seen, a mark can trigger multiple senses. This is certainly the case with our fifteen artists. I hope you become lost and found in the stories told; marks that appear to fall off the canvas, revealed landscapes, political and social starting points that challenge the viewer’s narrative so often assumed. Imagery connects us to memory and place, acting as a ‘physical gestures’ married with nostalgia. Inside the exhibition, painters who depict tactile ‘everyday’ objects rest against the big conversations around love, obsession, death and the unrequited.
Every action provoking a reaction, a reaction that leaves its trace. Its permanent mark.