Rachael House - Resistance Sustenance Protection

2021, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm

Throughout lock down, as we were dealing with isolation and the extraordinary new circumstances, Rachael House was documenting her thoughts through almost daily drawings that she published on Instagram.

Launching on Friday 28th May is a book of those drawings - Resistance Sustenance Protection.

Resistance Sustenance Protection is a year of drawings - a pandemic record, an archive and a call for change.􀀃It reflects on the political and personal of the pandemic, locally and globally, addressing queer issues, mental health, daily walks and raging about government.

To coincide with the launch, Rachael and I have published 12 of those drawings as limited edition prints. 20% of the cost of each print will be donated to the Alzheimers Society, and the remaining 80% of one particular drawing, the viral ‘Wash your hands’, will be donated to The Good Law Project.

Wash your hands, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm

“In April 2020, House posted a comic strip reading ‘However thoroughly you wash your hands, if you voted for this government – they will never be clean’ (9 April 2020, p.x). Each window of the four-square grid features a close-up of hands, washing. While the first three drawings refer to the government’s illustrated handwashing guidelines, the blemished palm in the final square refers to Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean character whose ambition leads her to murder. Despite getting what she wants, she is ultimately driven to psychosis, unable to escape the vision of her bloodied hands. House’s drawing summed up our collective rage. It was shared by thousands.”

Rosie Cooper, Head of Exhibitions, De Le Warr Pavilion

Gaslight the nation, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm

“Rachael House is part of a transtemporal, feminist family of artists and makers whose work is a form of resistance. She revels in the space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, making use of performance, comic strips and ceramics to address themes such as queerness, ageing, mental health and gender-based discrimination. Presented in galleries and museums, House’s art can also be found in places where it can get things done: in parks, nightclubs and in the streets…

Rachael House gives us space to think, feel, and act. Her work is an affirmation that being political can be fun, that anger must be a force for change, that we cannot do without solidarity, ever, and that by sharing experiences we might be able to free ourselves from the toxicity of shame and find compassion for ourselves and for those around us. And she reminds us that, whatever happens, we must smash the patriarchy.”

Rosie Cooper, Head of Exhibitions, De Le Warr Pavilion

Bottle tree, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm

The Artworld Post Lockdown

Milly Thompson, Solarium Trope, 2020, acrylic and ink on canvas, 235 x 213cm

An Anniversary

Passing the one year anniversary of lockdown felt like a milestone. The art world has, in most cases, navigated its way through the pandemic. As art lovers we were inundated with online shows and artists began to create thoughtful, original work under the new and challenging conditions. One example that particularly caught my attention was Lisa Fielding-Smith’s Quarantine Collage Series - an ongoing body of work reconfiguring fashion model images of women from popular lifestyle magazines. Once completed, it will take the form of 100 handmade paper collages produced within the lockdown and quarantine periods in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021. Lisa shared ten beautifully framed pieces with me.

Lisa Fielding-Smith, Eve's Non Party Dress, 2020, Editions of 1/1, Hand-made paper collage (+1 artist’s proof), 63cm x 45cm x 3.5cm (A2 size), black wood frame with black mount

Clyde Hopkins, Reluctance State Peach, 1984, acrylic on canvas, 221 x 166cm

Last monthl also saw the reappearance of a beautiful early eighties Clyde Hopkins that had long been hidden away in a Private Collection in Long Island. David Sweet, when writing about this period wrote:

“The non-tactile forms were replaced by much more aggressive and interactive elements in the next signature style. The change took place around late 1983 and the results were displayed in an exhibition of new paintings that toured nationally between late 1985 and the spring of the following year. A notable innovation was heavy black drawing creating a structure that spread throughout the painting like a burnt root system, particularly visible in Kent to Yorkshire (via the D.T.). That the structure resembles a chain of letters, albeit consisting of a limited alphabet, suggests that the works may contain hidden messages, once legible, but scattered and garbled when subjected to a highly active painting process.

In ¡Box Box! 1984 the black drawing is more wristy and dynamic, and supports another layer of gestures all tangled together. The fibrous combined structures are anchored to the canvas ground by a filamentous system of vertical drips hanging down from the tracks of liquid pigment. A Working River 1985 also consists of drawing on drawing, though the lower part of the lattice has been washed away dramatising the section of light toned cryptic writing that has survived and would be clear enough to be deciphered, if its meaning had not been irrevocably lost.

The angry, rhizoid drawing defines the second signature style. But I want to bracket this set of works with other paintings to add what I think might be a productive dimension. When looking at ¡Box Box! recently I was struck by how good it was, and not just good in a general way. It was as good specifically as a good Abstract Expressionist picture is. Then I thought of the paintings in that category that I’d seen, and concluded it was better than a lot of them.”

Clyde Hopkins: A path through dark and light by David Sweet

Please get in touch if you’d like to know more about this piece or other work by this superb painter.

Kent to Yorkshire (via the DT) 1984, Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 170 x 200cm, TATE Collection

Contact info@gregrookadvisory to discuss how and what to collect.