This exhibition is a mixture of collaborative work from 2016 to the present, alongside our individual work. In our collaboration, we work individually on pairs of paintings and swap them between us until we consider them to be complete. Our last exhibition at the Copeland Gallery in September 2015 was based on paintings made in a similar “Back and Forth” collaboration. We used our respective studio spaces as inspiration for those paintings, and also worked together in the open air in the Pennines. Since September 2015, we have worked on three projects. In Margate, we roped our canvasses to the promenade railings. Over several visits we worked on a total of seven paintings, two at a time, swapping paintings during each visit. We exhibited in Margate in summer 2016. In spring 2017, we were awarded a two-week residency on Cape Cornwall. The paintings from Cornwall were made from drawings and sketchbook ideas done during the residency. We exchanged the paintings between our studios in north and south London via the overground train. More recently we have worked from Anthony Van Dyck’s painting “Samson and Delilah” in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Our Van Dyck paintings have been worked on in our respective studios and again exchanged between us by train, sometimes as little as twice, and sometimes as much as six times. The train journeys back and forth with the rolled-up canvasses have become a symbol of our collaboration!
2 Collaboration between artists is not as unusual as is often thought: Warhol and Basquiat; Gilbert and George; Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings; Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin. It’s an exciting and experimental way to work. The paintings are generated by two lots of energy instead of one, and weave together ideas and techniques from two minds, four hands and two imaginations. Do we make better paintings as two people or as one? We make different paintings. Is the “process” more important than the “product”? Sometimes. That applies to a lot of artistic work. The results are much more unpredictable with two people rather than one, as we don’t “edit”, but try to grow…. two painters bringing forth work alongside each other. There is a “rescue” element when we work together which is very liberating, and there are therefore always possibilities for experiment and expansion. Freeing ourselves from the pressures of working alone helps to break out of creative “safety”. Collaboration is not necessarily for making mistresspieces, but rather as a way of breaking habits and a way of breaking new ground. There’s always the chance that we’ll go beyond the boundaries of more conventional ways of painting, and, as collaboration works in other disciplines, science, music, theatre etc., why not painting? Keith Haring said about Warhol and Basquiat ‘s work, “it’s as though they’re having a physical conversation in paint rather than words”. Our back and forth conversation can be seen particularly in the drawings, photos and painted sketches of the Van Dyck no 5, which show the stages the painting went through.
Margaret Kerfoot and Ali Shipton
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Margaret Kerfoot Artist 