Primary Times - the definitive what’s on and where to go family guide of activities and events for children of primary school age. Things to do with your kids during the school holidays including arts and craft activities, music and theatre for children, parties, competitions, days out, and family attractions along with term time drama schools, dance classes, after school clubs and sports activities. Things to do at a place near you!
LONDON LINOCUTS GAIL BRODHOLT EXHIBITION OF PRINTS AT STAPLEFORD GRANARY
17 NOVEMBER 2023 - 11 FEBRUARY 2024 | FREE ADMISSION
Artist talk: Saturday 18 September, 11am, all welcome (no need to book)
'What I’m really interested in is those unconsidered and unnoticed places that people pass through. Places where people are on their way to somewhere else, presumably more important – on the escalators, on the tube, train station platforms, motorways. I like the sense we all have that between here and there anything can happen. Although of course it almost always doesn’t. When you are travelling you are free from normal life with all the anticipation of an adventure ahead of you.'
- Gail Brodholt
Gail Brodholt is a leading painter and printmaker of contemporary urban landscapes, renowned for her vibrant, exotically coloured depictions of tube platforms, railway stations and motorways. She was born in South London to immigrant parents, her father Norwegian and her mother from Trinidad, and obtained her BA from Kingston Art School. Her work has been exhibited widely and is found in many private and public collections. Gail is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers.
CEO Kate Romano in conversation with Gail Brodholt
Gail Brodholt likes in-between places; motorways, stations, subways, fleeting glances from a train window or the upper deck of a London bus. She depicts them in vibrant linocuts, transforming the mundane routines and habits of our lives into a series of intricate lines and curves and introducing striking new colours to old familiar views. ‘I’m intrigued by the places that people don’t really see’ she says. ‘The alleyways, the back of shops, the forgotten, unexplored and quiet corners. I like the idea of travelling; everyone is so focussed on where they are going to end up that they don’t notice the details of the journey’.
The humble linocut became a medium for the masses in the 1930s with the trailblazing work of artists Claude Flight, Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power. They captured interwar Britain, revolutionising the genre with exhilarating scenes of late nights in the city, buses hurtling down Regent Street, swing boats, aeroplanes, skaters, racing cars and commuters, all created from sweeping graphic curves and sharp lines juxtaposed with soft grainy colours.
The linocut has far less status than etching or lithography, ‘Anyone can do it‘ says Brodholt. ‘We’ve all done potato printing at school’. Linocut printing developed in the 1860s, driven by German expressionists and Russian constructivists. Lino was cheap, easy to get hold of, was more tractable than wood and easier to gouge or cut into. Claude Flight, lino’s tireless pioneer, believed in the linocut as a democratic medium for the working classes. He wrote instruction books, organised travelling exhibitions and taught the medium at the famous Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where students could apply to study art for as long as they liked without any qualifications. Flight’s own subjects were those chosen by most of the Grosvenor School; depictions of the heady speed of urban life, transport and sport. Bucking an artistic trend for a reassuring post-war ‘return to order’, Flight and his students were excited by the relentless pace of the machine age, and the necessity of creating a ‘real and vital art of tomorrow’.
Selecting scenes-in-transit without obvious edges or boundaries is part of the appeal for Brodholt. ‘I have to create the scene and I do this firstly by travelling around and just looking. When I find a place I’m interested in, I make a note and then every time I do that journey I have another look, and then I start to do a lot of little sketches. Finally, I’ll take some photos for reference. But sketches are far better than photos; photos flatten everything out and it's too easy to get distracted by all the detail. Sketches help me to work out how it all sits on the page. I’m interested in things looking like they should do, but my images are not wholly accurate. If you overlay a photo on top, you'd see the difference. I might widen roads or buildings and I shift things around and bring things to the fore which I think are important in the view.’
Brodholt’s striking colours are the result of a lot of trial and error. ‘I love colour’ she says. 'No colour is off bounds. I like to think that my colours both are and aren't realistic. Even if the colours aren’t representative of what I’m actually seeing, they have a dialogue with each other. For instance, if a light hits something in the scene, that brightness will be reflected in the colours I’m using within their relationship to one another.’
What's the lasting appeal of the linocut? I ask Brodholt. ‘I think it's the immediacy’ she says. ‘There’s no secret as to how it's done; you can grasp very quickly how the artist has created a print. Craft is not like fine art; there is no mystique. Anyone can take up a bit of lino and make a little print with it. For me, the pleasure is all in the making and the working things out. Once my prints are exhibited, once all the decisions have been made, I move on to the next one. It's the anticipation of the next adventure ahead of you.'
Kate Romano
—---------------------
Gail Brodholt Exhibition
www.staplefordgranary.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions-overview/gail-brodholt
Gail Brodholt website
Gail Brodholt instagram
gail_brodholt
OPENING TIMES
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday 8:30am - 4pm
Wednesday - CLOSED
Saturday 9am - 3pm
Sunday 10am - 3pm
The gallery is also open during evening events for concert ticket holders.
Occasionally, we have to close the foyer area of the exhibition due to recordings or events taking place in the concert hall.