PREFACE :
Anima Mundi is delighted to present ‘Thought Barefoot’, a solo exhibition of new works by Phoebe Cummings taking place on one floor of the gallery. ‘Thought Barefoot’ is Cummings' second solo exhibition at Anima Mundi.
The exhibition draws together different elements of Cummings’ practice, from ephemeral sculptures and objects, to works on paper and text. Through these different manipulations of material and time, attention is brought to the solace of gentle observation: toward the tenderness of shoots and the weight of fruit, growth and rotting, the hum of amorous insects and ultimately, silence. Attention shifts scale, it augments and magnifies, stretches and compresses, offering both a mirror and an escape, acceptance and hope. The title of the exhibition is taken from a fragment of writing by the Greek poet Sappho, whose words and their fractured material legacy, bring attention to the gaps where myth and lived experience touch.
The exhibition draws together different elements of Cummings’ practice, from ephemeral sculptures and objects, to works on paper and text. Through these different manipulations of material and time, attention is brought to the solace of gentle observation: toward the tenderness of shoots and the weight of fruit, growth and rotting, the hum of amorous insects and ultimately, silence. Attention shifts scale, it augments and magnifies, stretches and compresses, offering both a mirror and an escape, acceptance and hope. The title of the exhibition is taken from a fragment of writing by the Greek poet Sappho, whose words and their fractured material legacy, bring attention to the gaps where myth and lived experience touch.
ONLINE CATALOGUE (CLICK TO VIEW) :
INTRODUCTION :
‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’
There comes a time when we all stand by the open grave, clumps of earth held in our hand staining our fingers, our unfocused eyes staring into the infinite abyss. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. As these poignant, bittersweet words are spoken, the soil drops like tears, falling into the void from where it has come. Earth returns to earth, a reminder of our fragile physicality. In our life we stand on the spinning ground, in our death we are enfolded in it. These words form an ending that is also a beginning. As granular soil disappears into the darkness of solid earth and words disperse into the aether, they remind us that our solidity is an illusion, our edges an impossibility. We are an energy field of atoms, a momentary coagulation of matter caught in the gravity field of this Earth.
The painter takes ground up earth, loose dust particles of pigment and binds it into coagulated matter that solidifies on the paper surface, each mark an arrested gesture, a frozen moment of bodily flow...
There comes a time when we all stand by the open grave, clumps of earth held in our hand staining our fingers, our unfocused eyes staring into the infinite abyss. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. As these poignant, bittersweet words are spoken, the soil drops like tears, falling into the void from where it has come. Earth returns to earth, a reminder of our fragile physicality. In our life we stand on the spinning ground, in our death we are enfolded in it. These words form an ending that is also a beginning. As granular soil disappears into the darkness of solid earth and words disperse into the aether, they remind us that our solidity is an illusion, our edges an impossibility. We are an energy field of atoms, a momentary coagulation of matter caught in the gravity field of this Earth.
The painter takes ground up earth, loose dust particles of pigment and binds it into coagulated matter that solidifies on the paper surface, each mark an arrested gesture, a frozen moment of bodily flow...
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Even in our stillness there is infinitesimal movement, a breathing in and a breathing out, the gentle rise and fall of the diaphragm, our edges dissolving as we inhale the void: earth, air, ashes, dust, our body, all floating in an atomic sea of potential creation, remembering in anticipation what will come; time past, present and future bound together in fragile forms.
But in-between the reuniting of earth and earth, ashes and ashes, dust and dust there is the ‘to’, two letters holding the space between, the gap where we exist. Two letters that contain the whole journey of life, a brief coalescence of particles, where ashes dance and dust floats and we exist for a short moment of time.
Joy Wolfenden Brown’s paintings allow us to glimpse the ‘to’. Her figures are caught in the space between, suspended in momentary stasis, a reminder that we are a breath of stardust; a fleeting, fragile form caught like condensation on a window; a passing shadow crossing the earth, leaving behind the subtle imprint of our passing. They confront us with the transience of the ‘to’, their stares inviting us to fall again into the void, where we find an emptiness full of presence. We reach out to hold them, but they dissipate before our gaze, evaporating into an evanescent mist of exquisite memory. They appear before us, kneeling, staring, standing, sitting; gentle souls too fragile to be grasped, teasing us like a half-remembered whisper, or a tender annunciation of invisible presence.
These figures are held in delicate spaces where what was solid has dissolved into shimmering clouds of immateriality and where colourful prisms surround them in a waterfall of invisible light. In this stillness her figures find quiet communion with nature, the deep interconnectedness of the earth’s shalom, a peace that transcends time and space, heaven and earth, life and death pulling us into an eternity where we are all one.
Dr Richard Davey, 2020
Richard Davey is an internationally published author, curator and member of the International ‘Association of Art Critics’. He was a judge of the John Moores Painting Prize 2016 and recently wrote the major exhibition publication for Anselm Kiefer’s solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, in 2014 alongside the 2015 and 2016 ‘RA Summer Exhibition’ catalogues.
BIOGRAPHY :
Phoebe Cummings is a British artist born in Walsall, England in 1981. She currently resides in Stafford.
Cummings sculptural work builds on an ongoing interest in time and nature and how this has been represented and stylised through design. She works predominantly using unfired clay to make poetic and performative sculptures and installations that emphasize materiality, fragility, time, creation and decay. Cummings' impressive interventions are constructed directly on site, allowing an instinctive development of tensions between object and location.
Phoebe Cummings studied ceramics at Brighton University in 2002 before completing an MA in ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art in 2005. She has undertaken a number of artist residencies in the UK, USA and Greenland, including a six month residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2010. In 2017 she won first place at the inaugural Woman’s Hour Craft Prize with work exhibited at the V&A Museum, before touring to venues around the UK. Cummings was selected as the winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award in 2011 and awarded a ceramics fellowship at London’s Camden Arts Centre (2012–13). ‘Supernatural’ was her first solo exhibition at Anima-Mundi. In addition, Cummings’ work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including '60|40 Starting Point Series’ at Siobhan Davies Studios, London, 'Formed Thoughts' at Jerwood Space, London; and 'Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design' at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. In 2013, she had a solo show at the University of Hawaii Art Gallery in Honolulu and The Newlyn Art Gallery.