Date: June 2020

Venue: Spout Yard Park Gallery, off Ludgate, Louth, Lincolnshire LN11 0NW

 

Jayne Cooper is an artist living and working in Louth. As part of the 2020 Zero Degrees digital platform she will be taking residence in the Spout Yard Gallery for the duration of what would have been the festival proper, had it not been for the pandemic. During this time Jayne will be installing a new collection of paintings, created in her studio on Queen Street as part of her Masters in Fine Art, which she is currently studying at the University of Lincoln.

Working in collaboration with curator Wendy House, the aim of the residency is to create several versions of the exhibition by testing out different conversations between the artworks and the viewer. The artist invites you to join the conversation.

 

Festival Image - Day 1
‘Painting Holiday’
Household gloss, paint skins and collage on cardboard

Festival Image - Day 2
'Shelf Life'
Jayne has had a satisfying first day in the gallery, playing with the paintings, objects and fab curator, Wendy House. Thinking of how the ‘accessories’ act almost like footnotes to the painted canvases, suggesting alternative narratives, depending on how they are arranged.

Festival Image - Day 3
Jayne says "I've been playing with the lighting today in the gallery and ‘painting’ with shadows . The painted shapes on the object are fragments from discarded work or just casual marks made when testing out colours in the studio. I often prefer these to more considered and predetermined marks and think of them as the paintings I do when I’m not painting. I have attached the shapes to a painted broken guiro to mimic an abundant floral bouquet, so am really pleased how the guiro morphs into a silhouette of a vase shape through its shadow. This is one of a series of three hand-held objects that accompany a large scale painting."

Festival Image - Day 4
Jayne explains "This is Wavy Lady with waving accessories. I can only look at her from the side, or the corner of my eye. Some days I think she’s lovely, others I think it’s an awful painting, but it’s this tension that keeps pulling me in, and that pink dress. Wavy Lady; DO NOT LOOK HER IN THE EYE!"

Festival Image - Day 5
Brilliant! Jayne has a solution for everything... "Today I discovered I have a talent for making radiator covers! The Farrow and Ball green walls of Spout Yard Gallery is such a lovely colour to work with, and I found a tin of left over paint.....This installation is called ‘The Fallen Pear’. Please do get in touch if you’d like me come and solve your ugly radiator problem."

Festival Image - Day 6
Preparing today for the next installation, ‘Outfits for Painters’.

Festival Image - Day 7
More preparations..... cardboard shapes, dressing up, colour and play, collars and handbags, pink, grey and black.

Festival Image- Day 8 Week two commences! Originally these works were meant to be wall based pieces; today Jayne and the wonderful Wendy House have been working out how to make them more interactive, through elevation, suspension, the introduction of props and jaunty angles. We really love a jaunty angle.

Festival Image - Day 9
Jayne has sent this image today! She says
"She’s up to something! This is a small fragment of a much larger and as yet unnamed painting that Wendy House and I hung in the gallery yesterday. Things are shaping up, bit by bit. Musician and sound artist Keith Angel visited Spout Yard today; we are going to collaborate to make some sound/song elements for the exhibition to accompany the paintings . Very excited."

Festival Image – Day 10

Jayne is having some time away from the gallery today, and is back in her studio. She says " I'm working on resolving some little paintings that can be ‘woven’ through the installations and objects at the gallery. Or at least that’s today’s thinking. These pink blobs are crusty emulsion paint placed on a neutral ground of oil paint. Blossom? Blancmange? I have no idea, but exhibition opens a week today. Enough time to paint over it and turn it into something completely different..."

Festival Image - 11
The Sensible Wall
It’s so interesting how things evolve and plans change during the process of installation. Getting the work out of the studio and into a different environment is such a useful thing to do. Jaye says "When we started this project I felt things would be constantly changing, but it seems each installation has found its natural home, for now. There are quite a few paintings not yet hung, and so Wendy House and I have come up with the idea of a ‘sensible’ wall, with sensible paintings (oil on canvas, no accessories). On the evening openings of the exhibition, next Friday and Saturday, we will be rotating the sensible paintings at regular intervals, a bit like a performance, to a collaborative soundtrack by myself and The Angel Brothers. Hope you can come along."

Festival Image - Day 12
Small painting on the Sensible Wall. ‘Turquoise Duvet’, oil on canvas, 8x10 inches.

Festival Image - Day 13
Little painting number 2
'The Purple Puddle'
Oil on canvas, 8x10 inches

Festival Image - Day 14
Jayne has added more wine bottles cascading from the ‘Private View’ dress painting. She might paint them different colours over the next few days. Shape and repetition, seeping out of the paintings, into spaces beyond the borders.

Festival Image - Day 15
Another little painting called ‘Party Leftovers’, and the show opens on Wednesday at 10 am! Everything is hung now thanks to Wendy House, and Jayne will be here in residence until Sunday. "I have paints and brushes, so I’ll be making changes and adjustments over the next few days, hopefully nothing too radical but who knows?! Do come along if you can."

Festival Image - Day 16
'Creepy Bridesmaid' stares through the ‘armpit’ of another painting. Fine tuning little details like this today....and taking some work away for a ‘less is more‘ approach. Don't forget - gallery in open Wed - Sun, 10am - 4pm and Fri & Sat night 6 - 8pm

Festival Image - Day 17
A cascade of little paintings and a pom-pom fan. Jayne says - thank you visitors for the good conversation and turning out in the rain!

Festival Image - Day 18 (belated!)
A belated post from a busy Friday... it was great to see friends' faces popping up out of paintings. If anyone thinks they’d be able to actually knit Jayne a jumper like this do get in touch; as she’d love to commission you!

Festival Image - Day 19

This painting has been made on plastic vinyl using household emulsion and gloss. It has a delicious sheen to it but consequently is tricky to photograph, hence the angle. The painting depicts two aprons in a cupboard. The frilly one looks like she’s going to make an exit, but she’s hooked onto a green hook. They are both hooked up, going nowhere. I think they are having an argument about something. They are rivals, in the world of aprons.

Festival Image - Day 20

Jayne says "I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to come and see the exhibition, which never did get a title in the end. So be it. The evening ‘do’s’ have been particularly lovely to have some socially distanced fizz with friends and familiar faces, for the first time in many weeks. Thank you for all your support, feedback and encouragement. And a big, big thank you to Louth Festival - Zero Degrees and Spout Yard Park Louth & Gallery”.