Hondartza Fraga: Archive Blues
As part of the Shelter From The Storm John Sell Cotman exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery
Exhibition dates: 13th October 2017 – 21st January 2018
Preview night Thursday October 12th
Archive Blues is a new body of work created by artist Hondartza Fraga in response to Leeds Art Gallery’s new exhibition of John Sell Cotman’s works and Sydney Decimus Kitson’s archive.
The British artist John Sell Cotman (1782–1842) was one of the most original and important watercolour painters of the 19th century. Today, he is recognised for his remarkable series of watercolours depicting Yorkshire – his Greta series – as well as for his sensitivity to the societal changes and growing brutality that he witnessed during his lifetime. The prominent architect Sydney Decimus Kitson devoted his retirement to collecting drawings by Cotman and researching the artist’s life and work.
Artist-in-residence Hondartza Fraga has created a series of new works in response to the Cotman collection and Kitson archive. Fascinated by the relationship between the original objects and the tools used to care for them, Fraga has sought to reveal and make visible the hidden workings of both an archive and a collection. In her own words Fraga has sought to create ‘a visual eulogy to the archival process itself, its instruments and also its melancholy’.
(Above)
Archive Blues: Covers, watercolour on paper, 42 x 59 cm, 2017