Sunday Salon 13

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

Sunday Salon 13 | Finishing Lines

Natalie Ryde

12 September 2021, 1:00pm to 5:00pm, then open by appointment until 18 Sept.

A piece of fabric hangs in the studio. It is a discarded section of material from the point when a punch card knitting machine changes from one pattern to another, a stretch of textile with a boundary in the middle that is both a finishing line and a starting line. A remnant of the lineage of my own family history; the knitted scrap reminds me that the lines I weave in pen are bound to me in strands of DNA. Employing a systematic approach to the making of a drawing is what brings me to Saturation Point and yet this exhibition occurs as new modes of expression enter my practice. I want to question my finishing lines.

I intend to hang a series of works at different stages of completion, revealing the forces at play behind the veil of refined line. The tick-tock metric of the drawn lattice speaks of circadian rhythms, the heartbeat, routine and security of actions continued from moment to moment. Woven pen lines undulate over painted surfaces and are increasingly sucked back into washes of colour. The forms that emerge have connotations of the patterns nature replicated at different scales and the systems and forces that shape the way life plays out. I find myself pushing against the repetitive mark-making that I know to offer me some satisfactory end point to a piece of work, breaking my own system of rules. Something more solid or expressive is fighting through and colour, which at first seeped into drawings, has found a foothold and is grappling for centre stage. I am learning a new language.

I am interested in states where these opposing forces are held together in tension. Rather than resolution or harmony, the situation I find most alluring is compromise. There are battles happening between surfaces, brush-stroke against pen line, the expressive versus the refined, hard edges and soft openings, tangible forms or ethereal colour fields. Often a previous incarnation of a painting is the finished state I long to retrieve. Working in layers of colour, painting and line drawing, different strata exist within a delicate balance of concealment and revelation.

The works on display at Sunday Salon will challenge my own commitment to the reductive artistic language that anchors my practice.

Close Observation, 100cm x 100cm, acrylic ink and paint on canvas, 2021

The dense body of a passing god, acrylic ink and paper on canvas, 100 x 140cm

Field Study, 2021, acrylic ink on Somerset satin 300gsm paper 19cm x 26cm

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view