THE USES OF AN ARTIST : CONSTABLE IN CONSTABLE COUNTRY NOW

12 September - 25 October 1998
Wolsey Art Gallery

Colin Painter, a painter and occasional writer about art, followed his highly successful and controversial 1996 National Gallery exhibition At Home with Constable’s Cornfield by pursuing the relevance of themes identified in that show to the contemporary art world. In a groundbreaking study in the uniquely preserved Constable Country he explored the ways in which the work of Constable continues to resonate through contemporary life in the area in which he grew up and which shaped his practice as a painter. While not implying that Constable’s work is a model for today’s art, he suggested that his unique success in reaching such a wide public offers an agenda for the dissemination of contemporary art.

The exhibition featured original Constables from Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries Collection and works by a spectrum of artists who live and work in the area today and explored their varying relationships with Constable. It also included the experiences and views of members of the ‘general public’ - farmers, agricultural workers, teachers, gallery directors - whose personal and professional lives continue to be touched by the legacy of the artist. Photographic documentation was provided by Anne Painter whose critical success in the National Gallery exhibition was followed by the inclusion of her work in the John Kobal Photographic Award exhibition 1996.

Colin Painter has studied the ways in which people relate to pictures in their personal lives since the late 1970s. In the 1980s he undertook PhD research in Newcastle-upon-Tyne investigating the objects and images hanging on walls in a cross section of homes and the meanings these had for their owners. His work has been characterised by ‘doorstep’ research and face-to-face contact with people in their homes, rather than reliance on speculation and theory. He was founder and co-editor with his wife, Anne, from 1977-1987, of the fine art journal Aspects. From 1995-97 he was founder-editor of POINT, the art and design research journal of C.H.E.A.D., (Conference for Higher Education in Art and Design). From 1988-97 he was Principal of Wimbledon School of Art, London.

Constable has achieved in the twentieth century what the art of our time has not,
a widespread participation in British life.

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