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Sprats, 1948 copyright Estate of Prunella Clough

Prunella Clough, Fishermen with Sprats, 1948 copyright Estate of Prunella Clough

Prunella Clough at the Jerwood

It is always fascinating to see the journey an artist has travelled during their lifetime. Some continue to mine the same theme, others turn somersaults, change and develop. HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths was delighted to see the gamut of Prunella Clough’s paintings at the exhibition, Unknown Countries in the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings.

As I work through the rooms it is a revelation to see Prunella Clough’s exploration (1919-1999) through different art styles and approaches. She certainly didn’t stand still. She worked with many different techniques and materials: painting, drawing, plaster, assemblages, print making and to create texture, she applied paint with brushes, scourers, nail brushes, potato mashers.

Her palette is dark: browns, russets and greys, but look into, underneath and through the overpainting, scraping, scuffing and scratching there are a myriad of colours. The exhibition called Unknown Countries demonstrates her interest in the overlooked, the mundane to some people, but the extraordinary to her.

As much as she celebrates the English industrial landscape, silhouettes of black block-like industrial buildings and the geometric shapes of cranes, she applauds the dignity of working people; their strength, their skills. She apparently watched for hours a roofer, moving nimbly across a roof carefully positioning the tiles. In Four at Winch 1950, although solidly static in the drawing, I feel the choreographed movement of the four men as they work in concert, each confident in their task. Fishermen Carrying a Tarpaulin 1948 shows the shape of the man in his waterproof clothing, the tarpaulin draped over him like a shelter.

Prunella Clough, Lorry and Crates, 1951

Prunella Clough, Lorry and Crates, 195

Then there is fragility of Fence and Bindweed 1963, the lines deftly drawn as the bindweed crawls and curls over the fence. It is difficult to describe the quiet impact of the painting; the presence and power of man and machinery, as well as nature and abstracts. All painted with a free confident hand of experience, observation, memories, half-glanced impressions – whatever has taken her attention. When asked what inspired her, she answered: ‘Where do the pictures come from would be a better question. Just glanced at, perhaps in passing, noticed rather than stared at.’

Industrial landscapes and machinery are strong shapes, unembellished with detail; solidly what they are made for the job in hand. Clough painted cooling towers, blue in the gloom; cranes and block-like factories, dark satanic shapes. Fishermen stand strong and resolute as they empty their fishing nets of sprats, the fish flying from the nets into the bottom of the boat, opportunist seagulls waiting for scraps.

Her perspectives sometimes are interesting. My eye travels down from the top of A Lorry with Ladder 1953, from the ladder to the bottom a chiselled face behind a steering wheel, cubist-like there is strength in those hands, is staring back at me.

In the third room, into the 1980s, the work becomes more abstract. Although she evidently disagrees with the description of abstraction. “Nothing I do is abstract. I can locate all the ingredients of painting in the richness of the outside world, the world of perception.” Nor was any painting, drawing or sketch kept that did not meet her exacting approval.

Not all the images are static.  Consider Windswept 1988, the reddy brown turmoil of leaves, all bunched together with single leaves whipped up by the wind flying in the gluey green tinged air. A setting sun, the sun partially obscured by the environment’s smog or dust. A curl of a rope descends into the swirling currents of the watery depth, the line of the top of the water like a horizon line separates the sea from the sky. Bird 1983 is a tender study of a solitary bird flying over pink, pearlised wallpaper. And what looks like a circuitry board painted in the early 1950s, with blue blips like electrical activity lighting up the circuit.

Many of the paintings are worked away at, worried at; the blues and greys overpainted and scratched possibly evoking memories and emotions.

“Well it’s just paint in the end – that’s all. You push it around until it works.” That statement alone shows someone who is not self aggrandising about herself or her work. Clough was acknowledged and appreciated by other artists in her time. But, whether it was her sex or that she did not push herself forward, she wasn’t fully appreciated by a wider audience during her lifetime. Hopefully, that will be rectified in the future. An interesting artist.

 

Unknown Countries is at the Jerwood Gallery, Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings TN34 3DW is on until 6 July 2106

Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm Bank Holiday Mondays, 11am – 5pm http://www.jerwoodgallery.org/

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Posted 09:31 Wednesday, May 4, 2016 In: Visual Arts

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