Views From My Studio, an exhibition by Norman Sutton-Hibbert

The Scotsman

GLASGOW. Iota Gallery - Unlimited Studios, 25 Hyndland St, Partick, G11 5QE  Views From My Studio - an exhibition by Norman Sutton-Hibbert.  Norman Sutton-Hibbert talks about his practice at his exhibition, Views From My Studio.  New Exhibition - VIEWS FROM MY STUDIO VIEWS FROM MY STUDIO - An exhibition of paintings by Norman Sutton-Hibbert. When: 2nd - 16th December 2023.  Where: Iota Gallery - Unlimited Studios, 25 Hyndland St, Partick, Glasgow G11 5QE “From my studio I look into a tidal river, a working harbour, the sea and along part of the Ayrshire coast. The paintings in this exhibition are my responses to the colours and patterns I see every day. Changes to the light, from the changes in the times of day and weather, provide me with a kaleidoscope of colours. This plethora of colours provides me with a rich palette to draw from. And the constantly changing display of ships, their various loads, harbourside buildings and machinery, provide me with another range of shapes, forms and outlines. Why I choose to paint what I see in an abstracted form can be partly explained in a quote from Alberto Giacometti, ‘The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create another reality of the same intensity’. And Georgia O’Keefe provides me with another apposite quote ‘I found I could say things with colours and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way’.” - Norman Sutton-Hibbert Bio: I’ve painted for most of my life and now consider myself to be a multi-media artist. This exhibition ‘Views From My Studio’ is mostly of small paintings – and I’ve used enamel paints on wooden panel. There is one woodblock print assemblage – the largest work in the exhibition. When I’m not painting I also print from woodblocks, make collages/mixed media works, do some performance and create sculptures and art installations. I began making sculptures and art installations, in which I primarily use found/domestic fabrics and clothing, when I was studying sculpture at Glasgow School of Art. CV  Born Manchester, England, 1947 Based in Scotland since 1969 EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS Educated in Germany and England. 1976-1978 Diploma in Social Work 1988-1989 Mental Health Officer Certificate 2010-2014 BA Hons (Fine Art) GSA 2014-2015 MLitt (Fine Art Practice) GSA PRIZES 2023 PAI Parallel Visions Award 2019 SSA Glasgow Art Club Prize 2016 VAS Lily MacDougal Prize 2013 RSA Keith Prize RESIDENCIES 2014 Dumfries House, Ayrshire SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1989 & 1990 Valley Arts Resource Centre, Glengarnock 1995 Café Cosmo, Glasgow Film Theatre 2002 ‘No Bigger Picture’, Glasgow Print Studio 2005 ‘Images of Love’, LUV Gallery, Glasgow 2009 ‘Small Stories’, Glasgow Print Studio 2016 ‘Café Language’, Nito Café, Tokyo, Japan 2017 ‘Conversing With Walls’, Featured artist in July at Glasgow  Print Studio 2019 ‘Kinder Kinder’, Iota Gallery, Glasgow 2022 ‘Narratives in Times of Absurdity’, Royal Glasgow of Art,  Kelly Gallery, Glasgow

Transcript

00:00 My name is Norman Sun-Hibbert, I'm 77 in January and I'm an artist.

00:13 The last 50 odd years I've been fortunate to be able to show my work through various

00:18 groups and solo shows in various places, Glasgow and Ayrshire.

00:23 I would go to a lot of exhibitions and look at other people's work as well and that got

00:29 me thinking about sculpture and art installations.

00:32 I saw people using materials and scale that I wanted to use but didn't have the confidence

00:40 to do and by this time I'd retired from my professional role as a social worker and a

00:46 mental health officer and I applied to Glasgow School of Art and was fortunate enough to

00:52 get a place in the Sculpture and Environmental Art department.

00:56 I did my degree there and then later did a Masters in the Painting department.

01:03 I've always been interested in fabrics because we all wear fabrics from day one so we're

01:09 all exposed to colour, to pattern, to repetition.

01:13 When I see people I see their clothes they've got on before I see them, so I started using

01:18 fabrics a lot in my work.

01:20 Glasgow School of Art were going to be putting on their 70th anniversary fashion show, annual

01:26 fashion show and I was 70 and I got asked if I'd like to be a model in the fashion show

01:33 and they said yes without thinking about it and then they thought about it afterwards

01:38 but no I went through with it and I kept saying to people it was never on my bucket list at

01:44 all to wear heavy leather jackets with big rubber tubing on it, hand painted torn jeans

01:52 with torn fishnet stockings over them, but I loved the experience, I really enjoyed the

01:59 experience so I was pleased to have been asked to do that.

02:04 First fire at Glasgow School of Art was in 2014 and I along with other fourth year students

02:12 in Fine Art we were getting our work ready for our degree shows in the Macintosh building

02:20 and mine, I'd finished, I think it was the final day of install and I'd put all my work

02:28 up and all my documentation, went for lunch in the Reid building and before I left the

02:34 Reid building it was pointed out to us that the Macintosh building was on fire.

02:38 We weren't allowed to leave for safety reasons, leave the Reid building so I had to stand

02:43 at the front door or inside the front door and watch the windows of the studio where

02:48 my degree show work was blackened, cracked and in flames pouring out.

02:54 Like all the other fourth year students who lost their work or had it smoke damaged I

02:58 was upset because I'd put a lot of effort into making the work but when I was asked

03:02 by one of my tutors why I wasn't as upset as some of the young people for whom I realised

03:08 it was their opportunity to showcase their work for the first time, I explained it in

03:14 my professional life as a social worker and mental health officer, I'd often, well not

03:19 often but on occasions had to support families who'd lost children or members of their family

03:24 in house fires so in comparison, you know, there wasn't any comparison.

03:29 When the degree show was burnt in the first fire in the Macintosh building we got a bursary,

03:36 the Phoenix bursary which allowed us to make new work and the plan was that, I think it

03:42 was a year later, we would exhibit in the Reid building and I got a great space in the

03:47 Reid building and I decided because of that time I think people were still sort of remembering

03:53 the start of the First World War and there were various artworks and art installations

03:58 relating to that done by other artists throughout the UK.

04:02 I decided to, my research into the First World War really honed in as an ex-mental health

04:08 officer on people who came back from the war but were either physically horribly damaged

04:16 or mentally scarred and in particular I was aware that PTSD was unknown at that time,

04:25 often it was referred to as soldiers being shell-shocked and the sad thing was that often,

04:31 I think there were about 350 odd men who either deserted from the front line or wouldn't go

04:40 over the top into battle and were accused of cowardice and were shot at dawn by their

04:46 own comrades.

04:47 So that got me to think even more about what I could say with the fabric works.

04:55 The piece I made, I called it Landscape and the reason I called it Landscape was because

05:00 sadly for a lot of those who died, they actually disappeared into the landscape.

05:06 The mud was horrendous in a lot of these battle areas so the bodies were lost altogether but

05:12 then I thought about men who were lost in their heads as well so the fabrics I used

05:19 were all from men's shirts and the colours and the patterns on them related to elements

05:26 of the landscape so I called the work Landscape but it was made of 102 small fabric figures

05:32 and from a distance the work, it was a big installation, it looked very pretty, it looked

05:38 very attractive but then when people got up close they discovered that all of the figures

05:43 without exception had one or more limbs missing and they all had identifying items attached

05:49 to them which was really meant to replicate dog tags.

05:52 I've continued to make sculpture and installations and to do some performance.

05:58 I've never stopped painting, I've never stopped making collages as well and then just over

06:04 two years ago I moved down to Ayr and my studio looks into a tidal river, a harbour, a working

06:11 harbour that daily has small boats coming in to deliver loads.

06:16 There's a wonderful array of buildings, storage buildings in the harbour as well.

06:21 Beyond the harbour I can see the open sea and I can also see up part of the Ayrshire

06:27 coast and again it was just the shapes and the colours that I was exposed to on a daily

06:37 basis and there was constant change because of the weather, the time of day, the lights

06:43 were always changing and so my exhibition that I'm installing at the moment, Views from

06:51 My Studio, was really just a celebration of all that I've been exposed to every day from

06:59 all the windows in my apartment and I've loved doing it because I said earlier the sculpture

07:08 and art installations are more political works.

07:10 These are more of a celebratory nature, because of what I'm exposed to.

07:15 I keep saying that there's a mixture of landscapes, seascapes and they're abstracted.

07:23 I'm not trying to recreate reality, I'm playing about and making another reality if you like,

07:33 but just as intense as well and I realise that a lot of what I'm seeing and what I'm

07:40 doing with what I see is maybe personal to me but I'm hoping that the work will still

07:47 prove attractive to others as well.

07:50 I see people doing big paintings that I admire, I've no inclination to do big paintings.

07:57 For me, and again it maybe goes back to the sculpture idea, I like them to be objects

08:05 and the reason I put them into box frames as well is so that it can be handled by people.

08:11 For me, in my own head, every painting has its own story, maybe a little story but it

08:17 has a story and in the way that stories, whether novels or short stories, are put between two

08:24 covers I put a frame around my stories to contain them.

08:29 I want them to be, I think the word is domestic, paintings and I want people to be able to

08:37 hold them and not feel that they're something that just has to be on a wall and can't be

08:41 touched.

08:42 So the exhibition at Ioto Gallery runs from Saturday 2nd December to Saturday 16th December.

08:51 [Music plays]

08:56 [MUSIC]

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