Curator's Blog - Mark Bills
Monday 15 December 2008
So much is happening at Watts Gallery it is difficult to find time to write a blog! Openings, talks and moves have meant another busy and rewarding week. I suppose that the move of Physical Energy and Tennyson have been the most dramatic here. Each weighing about three tons, these essentially plaster sculpture [gesso grosso] made them both difficult to move as well as being extremely fragile. A further complication was that the statue of Tennyson was too tall to fit under the cross beams of the sculpture gallery. This meant that he had to lowered to an angle of 40 degrees to move him outside and into his new home. This was worrying to watch, but the careful planning of Oxford Exhibition Services meant that every possible thing that might go wrong was prepared for. In a kind of a giant sack truck, the great Victorian poet, was slowly lowered onto huge bags of air to protect the details of the sculpture, supported by an A-frame and moved on wheels bit by bit out of the gallery. The process took so long that it was dark when he finally reached the cold outside. Photographs show how dramatic and beautiful, if a little surreal, this all looked.
Tuesday 2 December 2008
It has been a very eventful week at Watts Gallery with the collection moving into storage and my family and I moving into new accommodation. On top of this hanging at St. Paul’s meant there was little time to draw breath. All the pictures were moved safely, even The Guelphs and the Ghiberlines which was lowered like a drawbridge gently to the gallery floor. The St Paul’s exhibition Parables in Paint is now open to the public and the new house already feels like a home. It is time to look at neglected Emails and see the completion of the new book on Postman’s Park. The gallery looks sad, bereft of its art, as we move the last bits and pieces from it and the asbestos survey begins.
Tuesday 18 November 2008
G F Watts Victorian Visionary opened at the Guildhall Art Gallery on 11th November. It was wonderful to see the Watts Gallery collection within a very different context. Rich red and green damask wall-coverings and good gallery lighting is such a contrast to the Watts Gallery. A different hang and environment makes you look at the paintings again and what a revelation! Everyone tells me that they are seeing the paintings for the time and how beautiful, powerful and engaging they are, which, I have to say, is a delight. To see G F Watts shine and reflect just part of his importance as a painter is a significant marker and I can’t wait to see them in the restored Gallery in Compton. The catalogue to accompany the exhibition was also launched and I hope that the new research it contains and its survey of Watts, the Watts Gallery and Collection will be well received, it has been a very rewarding process working on this with Barbara Bryant. Watts and the collection in Compton has often wrongly been seen as the work of a faded eccentric outsider, it is my hope that the exhibition as gone someway to address this misconception.
Monday 27 October 2008
This week Echo, that huge picture by Watts, painted whilst he was resident in Italy was taken down from the wall. Or to put it more accurately it was de-installed from its fixed position. For Echo, like the The Guelphs and the Ghibellines is a painting too large to fit into the gallery in normal circumstances so a special fixing for them was made in the 1940s. They were boxed in. I have always felt that they looked rather uncomfortable spilling over the picture rail and dominated the wall creating niches on either side. Furthermore, they were not added until well after Mary Watts’s death. I believe the wall is much more suitable for pictures now. This also allowed us to open the picture slot which will be used to take Echo back to the Tate to whom it belongs. It looks really remarkable seeing through the long narrow slot, the outside from inside and the inside from outside. Mary really thought about pictures and how the gallery had to work.
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Last week involved a meeting to see a ‘sky dome,’ at University College London. The reason for this was to test the day-lighting conditions at Watts Gallery and how we can improve the quality of light that enters the gallery. I had never heard of a ‘sky dome’ before and for those, like myself, who do not know what one is, a brief word of explanation is needed. It is a large hemisphere made up of lights with an artificial sun which can move to any position within the dome. Inside this dome is placed a model of the building to be tested and the sun is moved to replicate any hour on any day of the year. The lamps in the dome replicating overcast conditions. The experience reminded one, in part, of a BBC imagined alien spaceship, perhaps one that had escaped from a set of Doctor Who. In the hemisphere was placed a model of Watts Gallery and all conditions were tested to see how light would fall within the building. This is both to ensure that daylight continues to be the main lighting during the day and that no pictures are sun burnt in the process. It was fascinating and illuminated all of Watts Gallery’s struggles over the lighting in its 104 year history. The tests help us enormously in the architect designing to give a lighting that remains unique and shows the paintings to good effect.
Tuesday 14 October 2008
Today the Graham Robertson Gallery was cleared to make way for an exhibition of the Finnis Scott collection. This most remarkable collection focuses upon the genre and narrative elements of Victorian painting. Very different to G F Watts and not the kind of art he enjoyed, but full of exquisite scenes of Victorian life painted in great and revealing detail. It will be good to see them on the walls of the gallery. Last night was a celebration of the closing of the gallery and it was good to see a show of strong support that the gallery has from so many quarters. The information centre opened at the weekend which gives a continued presence of Watts Gallery where visitors can see a new film about G F Watts and visit the shop. With all the events and the information point, my hope is that interest in G F Watts will continue and grow and that expectation for re-opening of Watts Gallery with it.
Monday 6 October 2008
At the moment the gallery feels very much like it is in between exhibitions, paintings off the wall, getting ready for display. The odd thing is that the Watts Gallery will be left empty and the exhibitions will open elsewhere. I look forward to the day when the Gallery is being re-hung.
The picture slot in the main gallery was revealed as Eve Repentant came down from her place on the wall. This slot hasn’t been used in over 50 years as the tree that blocked its way outside proved. It is difficult to imagine that huge pictures haven’t entered or left the building in that time, even though many of Watts’s paintings, particularly the Italian pictures, are so huge. Malcolm has felled the silver birch and its roots have been removed so I can’t wait to see this concealed entrance used once more.
Sunday 28 September 2008
It's quite an historic moment the Watts Gallery closing for 2 years,
the first time in 100 years. The weekend was a last minute rush with
people wanting tours and trying to capture in their memory what it is
like now before restoration. The Gallery has managed to give the
illusion that she is a grand old lady who hasn't moved from her seat in
over a hundred years. A poor sad jilted Miss Haversham with cobwebs on
the wedding cake. A last glimpse into a forgotten world. But it has
changed quite radically and Mary Seton Watts was no Haversham, she was a
dynamic supporter of her husband's work and vision and creator of her
own vision throughout Compton. I can't image there being any cobwebs in
the gallery when she was around! Restoration is far more 'The Utmost for
the Highest' rather than 'Miss Haversham has left the building.'
On a personal note it will be strange to be leaving our home of the last two and a half years and we will miss visitors to the Gallery who keep it alive even if they occasionally peer in through our window.