Rebecca Harper talk at Tate St.Ives.
Rebecca Harper has a show at Anima Mundi gallery in St.Ives.
Bloody bean bags to sit on and thankfully a few chairs and Tate just have not got to grips with
getting their speakers to project their voices although I asked them to speak louder.
Rebecca Harper is likeable with quite a bit of nervous laughter but she does try to answer peoples'
questions.
She spends a lot of time applying for opportunities and says she has been fortunate. Anima Mundi
emailed her as a result of seeing images on Instagram.
She draws on canvas, unstretched, on a roll on the wall, using observational sketches, memory
etc. She then paints on unprimed canvas but using a ground, sometimes fluorescent, colouring life
size figures on the floor, avoiding drops and feeling more in the centre of her work than seeing it
separate on a wall. The large scale is important to her..
She thinks it helps her career to be in London and would like to visit New York.
She enjoyed art school for the lively conversation and motivation and says the peer group are
important when you leave and want to organise shows and applications. She went to The Drawing
School in London and did an unaccredited Taps course.
Rebecca Harper at Anima Mundi, St.Ives, Cornwall
‘Chameleons and Urban Nomads’ March-April 2019
‘Cinema [Between Two Worlds]’ is a painting about 6 feet high with the unusual subject of some people in a cinema, although the film screen looks more like a painting or a shot of a painting in the film. Its painted fluently, the seats look like plush. its a cinema with small tables between seats, and two young men are turning to speak to a young woman. It evokes comfort and enjoyment and escapism.
‘Peckham High Street’ similarly has a scene that seems to be on a canvas in a room. One seated figure inside the room looks out at a figure outside on the canvas, or outside a window painted on the picture within the picture. Other figures outside look in at the seated figures. The paint is sloshed on, the colours are luscious, there’s plenty to look at and notice and it reminds me in a way of Gauguin - a frieze with life going on and you don’t know what exactly is happening except just whatever passes by somewhere where people pass by. The way the paint is put on reminds me a bit of the work of Michael Andrews, painting swimmers.
There’s a couple in a jungle, maybe somewhere like the Eden project but with monkeys, or on a stage set with a painting of monkeys but the leaves from the trees are coming into the space where the couple are seated. Its called ‘Insight’.
So I see this as Rebecca Harper playing with what is a painting or a painting within a painting. her subjects come from contemporary life, from her own experiences and the scale of the figures being life -size helps to make the viewer feel part of the scene.
There is a lot in the blurb issued by the gallery about ‘the diasporic condition’, about ‘global citizens with itinerant lifestyles’ but to me this is imagined. There is nothing to say whether these people are travellers or have lived in these spaces all their lives. I don’t see the work as very profound or having something political to say. I do see it as very enjoyable, confident and exuberant.
Somehow Rebecca Harper by producing such large scale works is claiming attention and it seems she has launched herself successfully into a high priced circuit of exhibiting and selling, an arena where she has been chosen for projects and galleries and it will be interesting to see what happens next.
