NICE TO MEET YOU
Nice To Meet You was funded by Arts Council England to highlight emerging neurodiverse artists or historical artists whose practice contributes to the dialogue of self-taught and working outside the cultural mainstream.
HELEN RAE
July 2020 / by Lisa Slominski
Helen Rae in the studio. Courtesy of the artist and Tierra del Sol Gallery. Photo credit: Sami Drasin
To say Helen Rae’s drawings are aesthetically complex and intricate would be an understatement. They are elegant and electric; extravagant but examined. At 82, Helen’s creative practice has produced a signature scope of works on paper that balance between figurative and kaleidoscopic. Tempted to describe her drawings as psychedelic, that feels too frantic. Her interpretations of fashion editorials are very considered, rendered more like a proposed alternate reading of today’s ubiquitous culture.
Extracting and referencing the pages of magazines has been a fundamental part of Helen’s discipline. Evolving from a wider scope including advertisements to her now predominant use of fashion editorials. She is steadfast and committed in her production: elected fashion scene, graphite for mapping out intentions, and Prismacolor pencils to populate. This aesthetic exercise recomposes the scene in a way that transcends its initial reading; releasing the models, clothes, and props from their intended cultural significance into Helen’s personal experience.
Rae only began drawing in her fifties when she joined the First Street Gallery Art Center (now Upland Art Studios). Part of Tierra del Sol Foundation, the center is a progressive studio for artists with disabilities. Helen, who was born deaf and is limited verbally, has been developing her practice at the studio since 1990. It was not until 2015 that she had her first solo exhibition at Good Luck Gallery in Los Angeles. Good Luck founder, and current Director of Tierra del Sol Gallery, Paige Wery has been an integral advocate in Helen’s career. To date, Helen has exhibited internationally including a solo-show with White Columns in New York and private collectors of her work include Sotheby’s Amy Cappellazzo, artist Kaws, and fashion designer Cynthia Rowley.
Considering her drawings as outlines for a new normal, Helen’s oeuvre seems more relevant than ever. Particularly significant is how she democratises her compositions. Looking at Untitled (May 28, 2014), the figure, objects, and background sublimely separate, join, multiply, and divide into each other. The female face is surreal but not too abstract, while the model’s body oscillates between a recognisable hand to a poignant distorted shape which can be viewed as foreground or background. The garment’s pattern, as well as the background, becomes fractal and weightless; floating through the composition to areas that otherwise may be considered meaningless. For Untitled (June 15, 2016), Helen chose a more discerning distinction between figure and surroundings, but there is still acute attention to the background. Subjectivity is not single but plural and all-encompassing.
Helen’s body of work is often discussed as having a cubist quality. That is apparent, but with this observation of an edge to edge democracy, her practice brings to mind the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Crosby addresses the totality of a canvas (foreground, figure, background) in a similar manner to Rae. Treating a plain coloured wall or seemingly banal object with layers of transferred photocopies from various personal materials or cross-cultural media. Echoing, as Helen’s drawings do, the reminder the slipperiness of significance.
From interventions that are conceptually democratic to reinventing the zeitgeist via existing popular imagery, Helen Rae’s drawings are a welcomed (and needed) invitation for us to see the world as she does.
Exhibitions include Vanguard: Origins of Tierra del Sol Arts, Claremont Museum of Art, Claremont (2020); Helen Rae, Art Absolument, Paris (2020); Outsider Art Fair, Tierra del Sol Gallery, New York (2020); Vernacular Woman, Ricco Maresca, New York (2020); Summer Exhibition, Andrew Edlin, New York (2020); Helen Rae, The Good Luck Gallery, Los Angeles (2019); Outsider Art Fair, Tierra del Sol Gallery, New York (2019); Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles (2019); Ladies on Ladies, Art Absolument, Paris (2019); Beyond the Bouquet, Descanso Gardens Sturt Haaga Gallery, La Cañada Flintridge (2019); Helen Rae, White Columns, New York (2017); Art and Advocacy, California Museum, Sacramento (2017); Helen Rae, The Good Luck Gallery Los Angeles (2016); Outsider Art Fair, Good Luck Gallery, New York (2016); Helen Rae, The Good Luck Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); Full Circle: 25 Years of First Street Gallery & CGU, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont (2014).
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NNENA KALU
June 2020 / by Lisa Slominski
Nnena Kalu’s practice has two distinctive but dialectical strands. Her temporal, often durational, sculptural installations and her vortex drawings. Both use physical and instinctual repetitive motions and are at once elaborate but simple, expressive but restrained. In her drawings, the performative rhythm is documented by circular layers of pen, pencil, and ink. In one aspect, her drawings are visually abstract, in another, they evoke the body through the scale of spherical marks relating to the Nnena’s own body and arm length
Kalu’s sculptural discipline has a more symphonic quality involving a myriad of materials, architectural elements, smaller sculptural ‘cocoons’ (which like percussionists during a symphony provide a continual rhythm in many of the installations), and most vital, time. A stage allowing her installations to reach their crescendos. These materials, continually sourced and often donated, include old VHS tapes, yarn, string, cardboard, and various adhesive tapes. Architectural elements provide the foundation for Nnena’s sculptures to form. For Spring Syllabus at J Hammond Projects (2018), it was an existing pillar in the gallery space. For her Glasgow International installation Project Ability (2018) and Studio Voltaire’s elsewhere commission (2020) they provided a built wooden substrate for commencement. As part of her studio practice, Nnena creates smaller wrapped pod-like forms, binding paper, plastic, and fabrics together with yarn and tape. These ‘cocoons’ are repurposed over and over again.
Also integral to Nnena’s work is her relationship with artist facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead. Nnena, who is autistic and limited verbally, has been developing her practice with ActionSpace - a studio for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Nnena and Charlotte have been working together at ActionSpace since 1999. Onsite for installations, Charlotte is with Nnena offering support and assistance with materials. Charlotte and ActionSpace encourage Nnena’s personal creative decisions and artistic vision, while also working to further develop her professional and exhibition opportunities.
From the tactility and scale to the colourful abstract quality of her sculptures, Nnena draws a strong connection to other female sculptors such as Karla Black, Sheila Hicks, and Shinique Smith. Practical, poetic, and progressive, the inherent use of donated or unused material, as well as, repurposing sculptural elements is also something Nnena shares with British sculptor Phyllida Barlow. Likewise, Barlow’s conviction that abstraction holds the potential to address identity - pointing to a feminine voice or something more personal - feels poignant looking at Kalu’s body of work.
Karla Black stated the “most important thing about the work is that it prioritizes material experience over language as a way to learn about and understand the world." This statement seems to really resonate with Nnena’s practice. In many ways, Nnena Kalu’s actions are the material - the tangible components are just a part of the process so that her actions can be recorded physically and visually.
Recent exhibitions include Fair Vanity, Summertime, Brooklyn (forthcoming 2020); elsewhere, Studio Voltaire commission at 50 Burlington St, London (2020); Nnena Kalu: Wrapping, Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2019); TUBE LINES, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London (2019); Spectrum Arts Prize, Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); Glasgow International, Project Ability, Glasgow (2018); Spring Syllabus, J Hammond Projects, London (2018); Watch This Space, Wandsworth Arts Fringe, London (2017); Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2017); Capharnaum, Theatre de Liege, Le Madmusee, Liege (2016); Studio Voltaire OPEN, Selected by Cory Arcangel and Hanne Mugaas, Studio Voltaire, London (2015); Dizziness of Freedom, Bermondsey Project, London (2014); The Trouble with Painting Today, Pump House Gallery, London (2014); Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art, St Pancras Hospital, London (2014); Side by Side, Southbank Centre, London (2013); SV12 Member’s Show, Selected by Jenni Lomax and Mike Nelson, Studio Voltaire, London (2012).
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