Exhibition at the Orleans House Gallery, Riverside, Twickenham, TW1 3DJ from 5 October 2013 - 26 January 2014
With no training and no aspirations to fame, Madge Gill produced thousands of ink drawings during her lifetime. Her work remains an enigma: is it true she was inspired by an ethereal spirit guide? Was she genuinely in touch with 'the beyond', or was art-making a form of self therapy?
Orleans House Gallery hosts a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Madge Gill (1882 - 1961). The exhibition is funded by a People Award from the Wellcome Trust and features over 100 original artworks, and contextual photographs and documents. Madge Gill was championed and collected by Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term ‘art brut’ (raw art), the precursor to the term ‘Outsider Art’. Gill is considered the most important, influential and recognised British woman ‘outsider artist.’ This project explores Gill’s work, history and psychic / mediumistic context in-depth, in order to question the use of such terms, whilst celebrating the benefits of creativity for wellbeing.
Working mainly on paper, card and textiles, Gill used pen to create maze-like surfaces with a glittering, almost hallucinatory quality that often reveal a female face. Ranging from postcard size to over 10 metres long, her work immerses the eye in a dark world of mystery, beauty and obsession.
Curators have worked with psychologists, medical historians, biographers, art historians and art psychotherapists to bring different approaches to Gill together within the exhibition and accompanying catalogue. This exhibition is a must-see for all those interested in art, psychology, spiritualism, social history or all of the above.
Orleans House Gallery, Riverside, Twickenham, TW1 3DJ
Free admission
Gallery open Tuesday-Saturday 1.00-4.30pm, Sunday 2.00-4.30pm
Tel: 020 8831 6000
For more information please visit: www.richmond.gov.uk/arts/
Many thanks for posting this.
The recent Madge Gill panel discussion is now online here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sslBan180xQ&feature=em-upload_owner
The exhibition also features in the BBC1 Imagine documentary exploring outsider art. The programme is available here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03js57h/imagine..._Winter_2013_Turning_the_Art_World_Inside_Out/
Posted by: Mark De Novellis | 29/11/2013 at 11:07