Gretchen Blunt, Field System
BAG² ǀ Birkhill Art Group Gallery
Gretchen Blunt
Field System
Gretchen Blunt’s audacious new series of large-scale dimensional paintings and free-standing sculptures takes the notion of threshold as its starting point. The works in Field System suggest offerings of structure and containment alongside ideas of invitation and shared ritual. Working largely in watercolour with multi-media elements, Blunt’s playful use of colour and placement betray an underlying disquiet – at times melancholy, other times conveying a sense of mischief and even impending calamity. The paintings interrogate notions of space and scale – deploying a lightness of touch that seems at odds with the size of the works. These new pieces invite us into a range of hauntological landscapes (or versions of the same landscape), within which we may or may not be welcome, or allowed. Ambivalent spectre-like beings seem to populate these visions, accompanied by objects plucked from the environment. The beings’ awareness of their environments or the objects around them (or of us) is not guaranteed – indeed, it seems roles and identities are under negotiation. Blunt’s two new sculptural works for this exhibition, Polly and Short loop, create a textural and narrative counterpoint; echoing the whimsical discomfiture of the paintings, while offering an alternate language for being (beings)-in-space. Here then, are boundaries – real, imagined and restless; traversed, intersected and determinedly in flux.
1 Lock-up
2018
Watercolour and ink on paper with dimensional construction.
2 Daniel’s gang
2018
Watercolour and ink on paper with dimensional construction.
3 Legend
2018
Watercolour and ink on paper with dimensional construction.
4 Festoon (walled garden)
2018
Watercolour, ink and seed-pod on paper.
5 Polly
2018
Steel, brass, painted wood, gold leaf.
6 Short loop
2018
Steel, brass, gold leaf.
Gretchen Blunt b. 1974 (USA)
Born and raised in Astoria, Oregon, Blunt’s work is infused with a deep connection to landscape and place. Living amidst mountains, forests and on the banks of the vast Columbia river, Blunt admits that this dramatic landscape found an early place in her work: “I would look out across the river, or up to the very tops of the hills – I was always looking elsewhere, it seemed – trying to get across, or through something. To get lost perhaps, or find another place that was always just out of reach.” (New York Times, Northern Epic, Oct 2007). Attending the Emily Carr Institute of Fine Art in Vancouver allowed Blunt to further her fascination with epic outdoor environments; continuing to complete her MFA with the San Francisco Art Institute, before relocating to Washington DC. She exhibits regularly in the US and internationally. We are delighted that Field System is Blunt’s premier solo exhibition in Scotland.
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