A conversation with Cathie Pilkington, Bridget Riley Fellow, in which she speaks about the work she has produced during her residency at the BSR from September to October 2024, ahead of the Winter Open Studios.
SCULPTURE IS LIKE ARCHEOLOGY, YOU DIG AND YOU FIND SOMETHING
John Skeaping RA
I am a sculptor who makes site responsive installations.
I am currently in Rome making drawings, thinking about sculpture. The title of my project is “The Braided Borderline: a graphic exploration of the tension between object and image in relief sculpture”.
I have naturally divided my 6 months’ residency into two halves – The first for research, collecting and testing and the second for assembly, and material manifestation – where some of the (vast) materials collected will be synthesised and deployed.
How does a visual artist talk about ‘research’? Is an artist’s research more like an obsessive quest for expression, a pathological drive? The artist might be described as someone who starts with ‘the self’ and then attempts to make connections with existing knowledge in the world rather than the other way round – if you believe there is a self that is.
ROME AS OBSTRUCTION
I have been thinking about Harold Blooms book The Anxiety of Influence, in which he introduces the figure of The Covering Cherub – an obstructing presence – representing the daemon of continuity and inherited tradition, the problematic baggage of cultural history, the embarrassments of a tradition too wealthy to need anything anymore.
This feels like a particularly helpful acknowledgement for an artist anywhere, let alone in Rome. After visiting all of the incredible sites that many have studied and spoken about, the artist has to stand in the face of all of this overwhelming material, pick up their pencil or brush or camera or sound equipment and attempt to make something happen in their studio.
STUDIO
As a sculptor and an assembler, assembling ideas as well as objects, my practice is porous. I often feel my way into a situation by making site responsive installations which acknowledge the history of the place I am working in. Every studio at BSR is haunted by the energies of its predecessors.
I have been trying to inhabit this space with my own energies and started work by situating my ‘self’ alongside strong associative imagery. I began by making Bridget Riley drawings in felt tip, unmeasured, mostly from memory, bound to fail, like a broken or repaired mosaic that deviates from its logic but you fill in the gaps in your head.
I also climbed into the BSR fountain wearing an archaeologist’s wellies to make large rubbings from John Skeaping’s beautiful relief carvings of deer. I am here to think about drawing and relief sculpture, so this felt like the right place to start – turning the sculpture back into a drawing.
As time has passed, I have been growing my studio into a thought space – a Denkraum as Aby Warburg would put it. Tuning in to vibrations and connections between Bridget Riley and antique mosaics, John Skeaping and Roman animal sculpture.
DRAWING
PICTORIAL ELEMENTS ARE THE AGENTS
Bridget Riley
Drawing is hybrid it moves in-between things – cultural registers and disciplines.
Drawing is decoration, diagram and preparatory study, graphic sign, narrative instruction, ritual embellishment, renaissance cartoon, relief sculpture. Drawing is hybrid, it finds its way through obstacles like water. The imagery I have been encountering is built, assembled, excavated and applied.
Frescos excavated in Pompeii and decorated Etruscan tombs – their ancient colours surviving as raw energy.
Established and stylised figurative animations applied to Etruscan vases with a powerful, limited colour palette.
Mosaics are physically embedded into a situation – you encounter them with your body, you walk over the image.
Changing the context of encounter – changes everything.
What happens if I draw on the floor?
Library of forms: Sala Degli Animali
I am now involved in the engrossing process of developing content – making drawings of various animal tropes I have encountered. Here are some examples from the extraordinary Vatican Sala Degli Animali and Museo Arceologico Nazionale di Napoli.
The Leaping piglet of Herculaneum – believed to embody Epicurus’s doctrine of innocence and pleasure.
Deer being attacked by dogs – a metaphor for psychological and physical torment, violence and power.
Duck with fish demonstrating the formal ingenuity of creating this image-object, as carved stone is rendered transparent.
Drawings inspired by some of these objects will form the basis of a series of cartoon friezes exploring the tension between object and image. Occupying the entire studio space, this immersive work aims to present fragmented recollections from the bric-a-brac of civilisation.
