Hampshire Open Studios - See you next year!

We have closed the doors on Hampshire Open Studios for another year.  It is a melancholy time, the final hurrah of the summer. September is here: a time to harvest apples in the garden (no pears, again), to pick brambles on walks, the air feels fresher, and the days are beginning to shorten.

Soft Blush Nasturtiums, with a few weeds, in a metal trough outside my studio

Open Studios, which I share with my jeweller daughter Phoebe (find her on Instagram as @phoebepod), is initially a time of trepidation.  Will anyone come? Is the entry in the brochure good enough to attract the eye? Soon though we are in the swing of it, the kettle goes on and the chats begin.  It is a great opportunity to share thoughts about art, making and what keeps us going through the highs and lows of producing work.

Roses having a last flourish of summer

Two etchings shown during this year's HOS.

Unravelling, holding together I & II

Many visitors are artists and makers themselves, knitters or, as one visitor described herself, a curator and consumer. Here is a chance to explain techniques and thinking, to exchange views about materials, suppliers, writers, inspiration.  We end each day grateful for the interest shown in our work and buoyed up by lively conversations.

An additional bonus is to have the opportunity to bring work out of the studio and to see it displayed together. Connections become obvious, further avenues to explore come to mind.  I have come away keen to get back into the studio and see where some of these ideas take me.

Consuelo Simpson is a forager and finder of orphaned objects, an artist and maker working from her studio in Hampshire, honouring histories and reweaving stories. She remains obsessed with string!

The Excitement of Possibilities

Discovering the possibilities of paper lithography

There is always something exciting and energising about discovering a fresh method of working which opens new possibilities.  I recently spent a weekend with Dr Ralph Overill (find Ralph on Instagram as @between_the_images), an enthusiastic and generous tutor who introduced his students to the magic of paper lithography. The process, as with traditional stone lithography, relies on the immiscibility of oil and water.

As the plate is a sheet of paper, the process feels very immediate and freeing, which is unusual in printmaking. I could see possibilities opening up and I think this process will have a place in my practice.  The method of printing requires little in the way of materials, does not require much printing ink and even the clearing up is relatively quick.

I have much more playing and experimenting to do, but already have projects in mind – I can’t wait to spend time in the studio!

Paper lithography printed on walnut dyed paper, 2024

Paper lithography on proofing paper, 2024

Come back soon and see more of the work that has developed as I explore this ‘new to me’ way of working.

A version of this post was first published on the website TheFiveArtists.com in April 2024.

Consuelo Simpson is an artist and maker living and working in Hampshire. Her multidisciplinary practice is focused on seeking moments of enchantment and on reaching an accommodation with the world.

She remains obsessed with string!

Deep Looking, Looking Deep

An initial review of the works i choose for deep looking.

Seeing work in a gallery, out of the studio, allows a more dispassionate assessment.  The pain of birthing, the struggle of making has dissipated and the pieces reveal themselves more fully.

Concatenation (2023), Etchings on paper, hammered steel, wire

Cube I, print on paper and plaster (2024)

Seeing my work displayed alongside Dawn Langley’s delicately observed photographs and Janet McWilliam’s bold painting, brought previously unseen or overlooked elements into focus - new avenues to explore perhaps?I chose to exhibit a selection of work made over a period time.  Seeing pieces alongside each other was

the perfect opportunity to reflect, to examine the cohesive thread which runs through the pieces and equally to reflect on the asides which merit further investigation, or not. It is always intriguing to see how each work holds the seed of the next, ideas tumbling along, never stagnating, offering new perspectives.

Some of my work shown in Deep Looking in The Art Fund Gallery, The Lightbox, Woking

Seeing my work displayed alongside Dawn Langley’s delicately observed photographs and Janet McWilliam’s bold painting brought previously unseen or overlooked elements into focus - new avenues to explore perhaps?

Consuelo Simpson is an artist and maker living and working in Hampshire. Her multidisciplinary practice is focused on seeking moments of enchantment and on reaching an accommodation with the world.

She remains obsessed with string!

Deep Looking, The Art Fund Gallery, The Lightbox

A Three woman show featuring a painter, a photographer and a printmaker

Deep Looking, with Dawn Langley, Janet McWilliam and me, was our first joint exhibition: a roller coaster ride which was nerve wracking, a lot of fun and from which we learned about working together and about how well our very different practices come together to produce a cohesive show.

Consuelo Simpson, etchings, linen thread, wire

Gallery view: Consuelo Simpson (sculptures), Dawn Langley (photography), Janet McWilliam (painting)

Our practices and outcomes are very different but the hang went very smoothly and the works all sat comfortably in the space and with each other.

We are so delighted with the responses from visitors to our first joint venture that we talking about another exhibiting adventure. Hooray!

Visitors to our Meet the Artists session

It has been a pleasure to put our work out into the world and to spend time with it in a lovely gallery and with each other. Connections, hitherto unseen, have sparked conversations and hold the kernels of future work.

Consuelo Simpson is an artist and maker living and working in Hampshire. Her multidisciplinary practice is focused on seeking moments of enchantment and on reaching an accommodation with the world.

She remains obsessed with string!

MARINA ABRAMOVIC AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON 2023

MEMORABLE, VIOLENT, DISTURBING, SOME EXHIBITIONS STAY WITH YOU.The first retrospective of a woman artist to be held at The Royal Academy HAD IT ALL.

Pain

Anger

Danger

Fear

Self harm

Brutality

Grief

Loss

Endurance

Courage

Sorrow

Acceptance

Beauty

Joy

Peace

Visitors were invited to walk through the arch.

Balkan Baroque

The pile of beef bones at the Royal Academy, recreating the original work first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1997, was fake - a concession to modern sensibilities, to hygiene or to Health and Safety regulations? Less smelly, bur undoubtably a disappointing substitution.

The exhibition documents Abramović’s best performances, on film and as re-enactments.  Throughout the early part of my visit to the exhibition, I felt in a contest of endurance in thrall to the force of the artist’s huge personality and unrelenting drive. I felt almost crushed moving from room to room. The danger and the pain were like nothing I had experienced in an exhibition before. The artist was most definitely present, even through the medium of video and re-enactment. There was palpable relief in the audience as we progressed through to Abramović’s newer work. This is less intense, more New Age which comes almost as a relief, though on reflection it is, in parts, disappointingly bland. In the moment, it allows a gentle winding down between the intensity of Abramović at her very best and being spat out into the commercial glare of the exhibition shop.

A very personal review of my visit to one of the most powerful exhibitions I have seen. The courage shown by the artist is my foremost memory.

Consuelo Simpson is an artist and maker living and working in Hampshire. Her multidisciplinary practice is focused on seeking moments of enchantment and on reaching an accommodation with the world. She remains obsessed with string.

Ai Weiwei at The Design Museum

Making Sense

Through his exhibition Making Sense, Ai Weiwei is ‘trying to tell us something about the state of the world’ [exhibition leaflet, the Design Museum, 2023]. Ai can’t be accused of lacking ambition. This broad ranging show does not disappoint.  At every turn we are invited to question, to ponder and to wonder.

There are no dividing walls, the space is open, the different works jostle for our attention and yet the initial impression is one of calm and order. The floor space is divided into a grid of rectangular fields of varying materials.  The most garish of these, Untitled (Lego Incident, 2014), is made up of Lego pieces to the artist by the public to enable Ai to continue making portraits of political prisoners when the parent company briefly refused to send him bricks. The next field, (Left Right Studio Material, 2018), consists of a bed of broken blue glazed porcelain pieces, a reminder of the destruction of Ai Weiwei’s studios by the Chinese authorities in 2018. In the next field, Untitled (Porcelain Balls), 2022), more than 200,000 porcelain cannonballs illustrate Ai Weiwei’s interest in collecting objects, often ancient, of no great intrinsic value.  These illustrate the scale of mass production by hand in China over one thousand years ago, in the pursuit of conflict. In the next field, the porcelain spouts, broken off substandard ewers and teapots, Untitled (Re-firing Spouts from the Song Dynasty, 2015), are disturbing. They appear poised to writhe and rebel in the face of repression.

Ai Weiwei, Left Right Studio Material, 2018

Ai Weiwei, Spouts, 2015

In contrast, the last field (Still Life, 1993-2000) I found calming and beautiful.  Laid out methodically in an organised, single layer, the similarities and differences attest to the hands that made them.  Absent here is the quest for identical perfection, replaced in these stone artefacts by the ghostly presence of the humans who made them, before society became a monolith.  In this exhibition, people are only seen in the films and photographs and yet they are everywhere, makers, artists, citizens, displaced in the name of progress, repressed by authoritarian regimes, killed by shoddy workmanship.  Below the surface composure, visitors cannot ignore tensions: tensions between the old and the new, the individual and the state, the old ways and modern values. In juxtaposing past and present, superimposing modern branding on ancient artefacts and offering collections of ancient but worthless objects, Ai Weiwei scrambles perceived notions of value, asks us to consider the worth of skills, traditions and history.  

Ai Weiwei, Still Life, 1993-2000, Stone

I left reminded of many horrors and disasters and yet, ultimately, optimistic. Ai Weiwei’s social and political commentary shows us that resilience overcomes, that the human spirit can prevail.

It's good to be brave

I said ‘yes’, then went away and thought about it.

Leaping out of your comfort zone can be difficult but the rewards usually outweigh the fears. I was lucky enough to be asked to take part in an exhibition in Winchester. The exhibition was to take place during the second half of Lent and to finish after the Easter celebrations. The brief was to make work inspired by Malcolm Guite’s sonnets on The Stations of the Cross. I don’t often read poetry: there was the first challenge. I was struck by the materiality running through the sonnet I chose, “Jesus is given his Cross”. This was my starting point.

St Paul’s, Winchester Installation, image 1

St Paul’s Winchester Installation, image 2

My piece was displayed on a deep windowsill on two levels below a stained glass window which added a colour element to the work whenever the sun shone.

The first element I chose was a net made of paper string to represent the universality of our travels through life. More binds us together than divides us.  I added flints, as a reference to the stony path of life. On a cold February walk I found that the blackthorn hedgerows had been machine trimmed and the cuttings became part of the work. The flayed and torn ends illustrated suffering and pain. Once the twigs had dried, I gilded some of the thorns to signify hope. We must hold on to Hope, as best we can.

The experience was positive and energising.  It was a great pleasure to be part of a team with many recent graduates, a lovely reminder of how much I enjoyed that time spent at university, swept along by the energy and enthusiasm of younger students.

Thanks must go to Amanda Berridge for masterminding the project and for inviting me. Details of the exhibition ‘This Darker Path’ can be found here on Instagram.