The Secret Life of Stuff | ARTHOUSE1
Group show | 2020
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The Secret Life of Stuff at Arthouse1 Gallery
‘The Secret Life of Stuff’ 2018
Eileen Agar | Bernice Donszelmann | Catherine Ferguson | John Gibbons | Della Gooden
at ARTHOUSE1 Gallery
London
Curated by Catherine Ferguson and Della Gooden
In the summer of 1936, Eileen Agar took a trip to Ploumanach in Brittany. Fascinated by rock formations which seem to exist with more meaningfulness than geology can quite explain, she took numerous photographs and painted a watercolour called ‘Thumb Rock’.
Decades later in the 1980’s and towards the end of her life Agar turned again to these natural motifs to make her ‘Rock Painting’ series. It was a return not so much to the subject matter of landscape itself, as to the strange anthropomorphic or animalistic hauntings which she first caught glimpse of in Brittany all those years before.
Inspired by her photographic endeavours of 1936 and propelled by the inconsistencies of memory and the subjective nature of her imagination, she foregrounded new meaning into a notable series of paintings on canvas. Many have not been seen in public since they left Agar’s studio on her death but their making inspired the curators, and drives the premise for this exhibition.