This week: Upcoming exhibitions, digital and physical
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Bruce New was featured in Raw Vision 77, currently half price. A selection of his work is available to purchase from Raw Vision's online shop.
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Bruce New at the Koelsch Gallery
From June 11th to July 11th, Houston’s Koelsch Gallery will be exhibiting a new set of drawings by Bruce New.
New (b. 1970, Somerset KY) is a self-taught visionary artist for whom the act of art-making is first and foremost to satisfy a personal need to leave a visual mark of his experiences, and to reveal things that he alone sees. He is led by an impulse to create art as an external manifestation of his innermost visions, or as he describes it, a need ‘to document his existence.’
Image courtesy of Ted Degener
For New, art is inseparable from life. He explains:
‘I have a compulsive need to make these things, to do this. It ends up going on so long that it just becomes part of your life.’
New’s belief in the transcendent qualities of love is always present in his art. Celestial imagery, hearts, trees and flowers, houses, obelisks, the anchor representing hope, the hand symbolising creativity and skulls as memento mori also take their places in New’s pantheon of symbolic figures and objects.
"The Cosmic Trilogy"
“These pieces are all from a new set of drawings for my upcoming show at Koelsch Gallery in Houston, Texas. In these works I continue to explore themes such as love, dreams, and magic, of spells, visions, and rituals.”
"The Dream Connection"
“Robin and I have isolated ourselves for the most part throughout the pandemic. Our days are spent working, gardening when the weather permits, listening to music, drinking vodka tonics, watching movies, cooking, and taking walks through town late at night.”
"The Moon is Only a Mirror"
His art is derived through intuition and experimentation, in direct response to his own compulsion to create and his own artistic vision. In his words,
‘One piece of work leads to the next. It’s all a process, I suspect. Follow the work until you get there, wherever that may be.’
"The Muse Performs the Flight Ritual"
See more of New’s work on his website, brucenew.com, or contact him directly: bruce@brucenew.com
Mary Bishop showcase on Instagram
The Adamson Collection Trust has released on Instagram a series of the work Mary Cecil Hamilton Bishop (1914 – 1990).
Name unknown, 56 × 45.6, poster paint on paper, year unknown
Bishop’s father was killed at the battles of Aisnes in 1918, when she was four years old, leaving her alone with a strict mother who frequently took her to Euston station to see injured soldiers and coffins returning from the front in order to ensure she “grieved her father properly.”
"Cri de coeur", 55.6 × 45.3, poster paint on paper, 1959
She was consistently active in Edward Adamson’s pioneering art studios while an inpatient at Netherne asylum in Surrey from 1940 until 1980. Of her thousands of paintings, over 630 have survived and are in the Adamson Collection/Wellcome Collection, London, and with a small number at AVAM.
"See the nude woman. Nothing sacred. Walk up." 56 × 45.6, poster paint on paper, 1958
With a strong graphic sensibility and remarkable ability to convey distress, Mary created both narrative and abstract works, often with autobiographical or self-reflective titles written on the back. She frequently depicted herself as an absence – a skeletally sketched figure, pale, prone and under threat, while granting greater substance to her antagonists: the doctors, peep show audiences, stormy weathers and waters which encroach upon and engulf her.
"The doll of Nuremberg. My mother said I would be shut in the frame and pierced with iron spikes & I would never get out (4 years old)." 55.8 × 45.7, poster paint on paper, 1967
Line and cross motifs recur throughout her works, and in our current understanding of her chronology, latterly became its main subject. Reminiscent of war graves and tally marks, these abstract patterns in a visceral palette of red and purple, appear as a kind of visual accounting.
"I would like a good doctor I could trust." 56 × 45.6, poster paint on paper, 1958
Adamson tells us in his book "art as healing" (1984), In which Bishop is known as Martha Smith, "Fortunately (Bishop) Martha is better; she has left hospital and is living in a hostel. She feels, however, that now there is nowhere for her to paint.”
To learn more, contact: Dr David O’Flynn, adamsoncollection@gmail.com
Jennifer Lauren Gallery online exhibition
The gallery has launched her first ever online exhibition and zine, following a two-week call-out for self-defined disabled and/or deaf artists. 30 artists have been selected from 194 submissions from across the world.
Image courtesy of J Lauren: Roy Gabbay, "The Greyside of the Moonvine", 18" x 24", Mixed media on wood, 2020
You can see the exhibition "Art | Unlocked | Unearthed" at jenniferlaurengallery.com.
Paa Joe at the High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, is hosting the exhibition “Paa Joe: Gates of No Return” through August 16, 2020.
Joseph Tetteh-Ashong (Ghanaian, born 1947), also known as Paa Joe, is the most celebrated figurative coffin maker of his generation. In the tradition of figurative coffins—or abeduu adekai (which means “proverb boxes”)—the structures represent the unique lives of the dead.
"[Fort] Gross-Friedrichsburg—Princestown. 1683 Brandenburg, 1717–24 Ahanta, 1724 Neths, 1872 Britain." Detail of Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg sculpture by Paa Joe,2004–2005 and 2017
The exhibition features large-scale, painted wood sculptures commissioned in 2004 and 2005 that represent architectural models of forts along the Gold Coast. These served as way stations for Africans sold into slavery and sent to the Americas and the Caribbean between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Once they were forced through the “Gates of No Return,” these enslaved people started an irreversible and perilous journey during which many died. Relying on traditional techniques and materials, Joe crafts his sculptures to represent vessels ferrying the dead into the afterlife that speak to spirits separated from bodies in trauma.
Virtual Tour
"Paa Joe: Gates of No Return", HighMuseum
In addition to the seven architectural models, the exhibition features archival documents and recordings, including photographs and short films by award-winning filmmaker Benjamin Wigley and art historian Nana Oforiatta Ayim, curator of Ghana’s 58th Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Learn more about the exhibition by visiting the High Museum of Art's website.
COVID-19: French and Swiss galleries and museums reopen
Museums including Halle Saint Pierre in Paris and the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne have announced their reopening as the COVID-19 pandemic reduces in their countries. Special social distancing arrangements are in place with controlled numbers of visitors. Most institutions insist visitors wear a mask.
Meanwhile, infection rates in the UK and US result in the continued lock down.
As of Wednesday, May 20, 2020, Ferdinand Cheval's Le Palais idéal has reopened for visitors. For more information, visit facteurcheval.com.
Raw Vision 105 Out Now!
This new downloadable PDF version of the Environments section of the renowned Outsider Art Sourcebook features 60 spectacular visionary environments from around the world. Available to purchase now for $15 | £10 | €15.