Always and never the same

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Always and never the Same | James Hugonin and Nick Kennedy

Artshed, Glaisdale | 19 July -19 August 2024, by appointment

A review by Dr Harriet Sutcliffe

Always and Never the Same is a joint exhibition by British artists James Hugonin and Nick Kennedy. Although distinctive and visually different, their practices share a close bond through affinity to time, process, systems and the parameters they set themselves. For both artists, it’s a voyage of discovery into how their works manifest themselves to a place beyond the artist’s mind and the excitement this engenders. As Hugonin explains:

The reason that I am still excited about making paintings and going on with further paintings is that you really don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re working in the unknown, which is scary sometimes, but also very exciting.

The show's title, Always and Never the Same, is a phrase coined in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay History, which discusses the ever-shifting temporality of nature. He says, “Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same”. Emerson eloquently encapsulates the notion that nature is in a state of perpetual flux yet remains reliable at its core. Clouds epitomise this paradox perfectly; they endlessly morph in form, dimension, and hue, demonstrating both the unpredictable and the nature of transformation. Consequently, clouds can be viewed as "consistently and reliably inconsistent and unreliable”, mirroring the vibrant, ever-changing essence of life itself. ‘Mutability’ is a phrase that chimes with the approaches of both artists whose work is displayed in this beautiful rural setting of Artshed in Glaisdale. The iridescence of Hugonin’s paintings interacts with the fluctuating light from the large windows, bringing it into conversation with the countryside beyond. This peaceful but active landscape speaks to the works, and the paintings in this exhibition reflect its call. There is a sense of time becoming still in this chapel-like rural setting: a place for contemplation and calm.

Wall left to right, JAMES HUGONIN, Illumine (Light Grey/Yellow), 2022 - 2024, acrylic and oil on wood, 200.2 x 178.5cm; JAMES HUGONIN, Study for Illumine (Pale Violet/Pink: Pink Light Red), acrylic and oil on wood, 500 x 450mm. Stand, NICK KENNEDY, Timecaster (VIII), 2014 - present, mixed media (silver and white gold), 269mm x 269mm x 232mm (h)

Hugonin’s two paintings are from his latest series Illumine. For him, this new work is about:

…shining a light on something, trying to find the light within something. It's a question to myself, really. How do you find a way of creating coloured light in a painting that is both continually intriguing and also possesses meaning and conviction?

This series marks a turning point in Hugonin’s practice after the last series was completed in 2022, after almost seven years in the making. The end of the pandemic marked a period of time for reflection and change. It also demarcated a shift in thinking and process. As he has remarked,

“I … reached a sort of endpoint. I felt I was painting myself into a corner … I've got to set the space within the painting free and come out of this so I can move further into some other direction.”

The new work is about light itself, akin to illuminated manuscripts. There is an almost spiritual and certainly emotional quality to the work. The artist returns to a more muted colour palette but appears to be loosening up, allowing more space for intuitive decision-making and more painterly gestural marks.

The scale of the larger work engulfs the viewer. One can become absorbed and momentarily lost, wondering if a large rectangular brushmark of colour sits within the foreground or background of the painting. There is a constant push and pull across the work. This is not just an optical experience at play but an emotional one. After some time looking, you begin to gain your bearings and realise there are repeated rhythms and motifs working harmoniously across and folding into themselves from one side of the painting to the other. Like the light in a meadow, Hugonin’s work captures order and disorder and taps into our natural circadian rhythms. As light and dark have the biggest influence on our biological clock, there is a balance within Hugonin’s new series where light and dark hues provide a quiet sense of order in a seemingly disordered world. The painting provides a visual melody whereby vibrations are mapped out, creating optical echoes that pulse and drift across the entire painting.

NICK KENNEDY, Painting that Tells Time (detail), 2024, acrylic and gouache on board, various clock parts, 200mm x 200mm x 40mm (each work)

Like many artists, both Kennedy and Hugonin produce rules and boundaries for ways of working, but there is always space within these parameters for intuitive improvisation. They both invite chance and embrace the way it challenges their self-imposed strictures and the tension this creates. These delightful, unpredictable moments are most evident in Kennedy’s Timecaster pieces. These clock-based performative drawing machines have been almost continuously and perpetually in motion for a decade, adding small amounts of precious elements, gold and silver, to the gessoed surface as they work. These kinetic sculptures beautifully and delicately flicker as they repetitively dance and spin with an auditory tick around their endless loop. They make a record of time itself, producing thicker and more distinctive marks as time goes on. There is something quite charming visually in seeing the traces and marks from past mechanical malfunctions to the machine’s normal repetitive trajectory. In a world of robotic, computer-driven reproduction and now AI, these errors have a strange appeal. The momentary blips in the fixed, never-ending merry-go-round route they take add an interesting dimension to the repetitive flow. These mechanical drawing machines have a similar approach to the mechanical performative machines created by German sculptor and performance artist Rebecca Horn. For Horn, her machines

…have a human quality, and they must change. They get nervous and must stop sometimes ... The tragic or melancholic aspect of machines is very important to me. I don’t want them to run forever. It’s part of their life that they must stop and faint.

NICK KENNEDY, Painting that Tells Time (7-58), 2024, acrylic and gouache on board, various clock parts, 200mm x 200mm x 40mm (each work); stand Timecaster (VIII), 2014 - present, mixed media (silver and white gold), 269mm x 269mm x 232mm (h)

Ten years on from making the Timecaster works, Kennedy returns to the theme of time in this new body of work called Painting that Tells Time, which has been specifically created for this show. The work consists of fifty-two paintings displayed in an asymmetrical grid formation on the gallery's large gable. They are part of an ambitious ongoing series Kennedy is working on where he plans to make a clock for every minute of a twelve-hour period, seven hundred and twenty in total.

From Christian Marclay’s The Clock, to Félix González–Torres’s work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) or Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), artists have been fascinated by the notion of making visible the invisibility of our subjective and objective time. Time is a common theme for both artists in terms of its perpetual passing and the considerable amount required to produce their works. Some of Hugonin’s work takes several years to complete, even with the help of assistants. Kennedy’s new work raises questions about the relationship between a painting and the artist’s labour that it incorporates. Each clock is set to its own unique time, referenced in its composition, but the price of each work is determined according to the time it took the artist to produce it. While making the work he recorded a timesheet per clock – clocking in and clocking out to make a calculation of its value. Through this method of placing financial value on the work, the artist’s labour time is made explicit. As Kennedy remarks,

I'm always interested in the way things work and how the world works. Time is a key social construct which enables us to organise and manage our lives. I’m interested in considering value in painting and its relationship to time.

Although these new works all share the same circular boundaries, each clock face is unique. There is a hybridity to the way Kennedy has produced these ‘functional’ but ‘unfunctional’ painted objects. Kennedy’s process is ingrained in the digital world, from the CYMK colour palette to the CNC-cut stencil symbols that adorn many of these paintings. Kennedy has been developing this symbolic hybrid language for some time. It mimics the term ‘telematic art’, coined by artist and theorist Roy Ascott to describe interactive art that uses digital means of communication. However, it is the human aspect of finding ways to communicate in this hybrid digital and analogue painter’s vocabulary that is interesting. The synthesis between these different processes and fields is an intriguing aspect of the work where the viewer witnesses the concept of change, impermanence and uncertainty. The observer is unlikely to witness the same composition twice.

Hugonin often refers to his work as ‘these extraordinary objects’. The same can be said of Kennedy’s work. There is a ‘magic’ in the combination of processes used by both artists where the work goes beyond their perceived imaginations, and that is why they continue to produce the work that they make.

Harriet Sutcliffe is an artist, curator, researcher and lecturer.

Please visit www.francescasimonstudio.com/artshed to make an appointment to view the exhibition.