Artist in Residence, Education
Katherine Jones – Rabley Artist in Residence 2016-17
The Rabley Drawing Centre at Mildenhall has a new Artist in Residence – print specialist Katherine Jones. She will be visiting Rabley over the coming months and working on a new portfolio of prints inspired by the countryside that surrounds the Drawing Centre.
Katherine Jones has been a South Londoner for fifteen years – she studied for her MA there – at the Camberwell School of Art (now known as the Camberwell College of Arts): “They had a great print department – and still do.”Among the public galleries that have bought her works are the Victoria and Albert Museum, the London National Art Library, the House of Lords and Yale University.
For the past three years she has lived with her family – which includes two small and active boys – on a south London housing estate and this estate is the subject of the portfolio of prints she is currently working on.
Katherine Jones on Looking In – Looking Out
” ‘Looking In – Looking Out’ comprises 32 etchings, half of which were made (drawn, etched and printed) at Eton College during my residency there in the autumn of 2015. ‘Looking in’ is a portfolio of 16 etchings that began with simple observational drawings of the College. The new portfolio of 16 etchings ‘Looking Out’ were made from the Tulse Hill Estate in South East London at the beginning of 2016.
Being invited to live within the beautiful, historic buildings of Eton College with its connections with the British Royal Family and its powerful alumni was naturally a fascinating experience. Since I have small children I took up the residency on a part time basis, unlike previous residents who remained for the term. Travelling to Eton for half of the week and back to my housing estate in South London for the remainder of the time, I was continually faced with the differences. The affluence and beauty of the perfectly maintained Eton ‘bubble’, were in stark contrast to the buildings surrounding me at home. Eton has been recorded so often, both in visual terms and otherwise. It has a vast archive, libraries and museums documenting its existence. After the residency was completed I wanted in a small way to redress the balance by making a portfolio describing the Tulse Hill Estate which i find no less beautiful or interesting, in exactly the same way as I had the Eton ‘estate’. As far as possible with the second set of plates I have tried to find equivalents to the places I had made the initial 16 prints at Eton. For instance, the nearest equivalent to the ‘Chapel’, a neon cross on a building now used jointly as nursery and church. A classic cheap paper lampshade (Eton) and a spider plant (Tulse Hill) are also equivalent in their ubiquity.
The initial idea came from a conversation with a friend who mistook a description of my ‘estate’ as ‘country estate’ and didn’t understand why I didn’t know everybody living there. The disparity of the same vocabulary used in different contexts sparked the idea for ‘Looking In, Looking Out’”
View Eton Portfolio Catalogue online
View Tulse Hill Portfolio Catalogue online
For enquiries about any of these works please contact Meryl Ainslie on 01672 519999
email: [email protected]
Marlborough News Online
Marlborough News online asked Katherine, what led her to choose, out of all the varieties of the plastic and visual arts, print making: “I’ve always drawn, but with etching the embossed line on a plate is a beautiful thing – and print making is very addictive.”
She explained that the process was in itself an artistic expression: “As you move a drawn image onto the plate – translating lines into a textural form that will take the ink – you’ve lost the drawing, but you have the basis for the print version. The image changes a lot in the process – it generates a progression in the work and you can edit it and colours can change.”
link to Marlborough News Online article
Katherine – Artist Tutor at Rabley
Last year Katherine Jones had an exhibition at the Rabley Drawing Centre and taught some its members – and she was very pleased to see that some of the techniques she taught had found fertile ground with one of the artists in the Rabley Summer Show.
In September Katherine led an in-depth printing course at the Rabley Drawing Centre.
“The Rabley residency has come at an interesting time. Having completed a traditional portfolio of 16 etchings on the last residency at Eton College followed with a self-funded second portfolio in the same format on my housing estate ‘The Tulse Hill Estate’ in South London I am keen to make a body of work which feels more expansive.
So far coming from London to the farm I am struck by the obvious difference in scale. Things which are large in the setting of my own flat and my small studio in London, naturally seem miniscule in the context of the Whiltshire landscape. The A0 sized prints I have wrestled with look tiny when brought into the beautiful Rabley Gallery space.
Thinking and reading about scale on even the most simple level becomes immediately complex and overwhelming but is also inherently fascinating. Though I might change the direction once the work gets underway, scale and context are the starting point for this new body of work.
So far a pile of small drawings in watercolour and graphite are gradually stacking up. The germs of ideas, photagraphs and drawings jotted in sketch books and as written notes on my brief but regular visits to Rabley are slowly becoming more resolved. ”
Katherine Jones, September 2016
Over the coming weeks and months we look forward to following her progress at Rabley and we will keep you updated here on the blog.
More about Katherine
Katherine Jones is a fine art printmaker and painter. She combines traditional forms of intaglio and relief print (etching, collagraph and block-print) to produce her distinctive images. Fragile flora are covered with protective environments – each luminous and held in the surface of print and watercolour. Jones’ images play with the balance of botanical history and the metaphors of a fragile world.
Awards – 2014; London Original Print Fair Prize; Printmaking Today Prize; 2015 Artist in residence, Winchester School of Art; Eton College, UK. Public
Collections – Victoria and Albert Museum prints and drawings collection, London National Art library, UK; The House of Lords, UK; Yale University Library, USA