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Sabre Art Studio-Gallery© THE GLOUCESTER GALLERY |
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GALLERY-1 DAVID HUGHES |
GALLERY-2 JACKIE JOHN |
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Welcome to Sabre Art online. This site gives a taste of exhibitions in our gallery at Quedgeley, Gloucester. Sabre is a working studio that also provides space for exhibitions by practising local artists; we all welcome enquiries from gallery owners interested in promoting our work. 
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Sabre Art Studio-Gallery© THE GLOUCESTER GALLERY Unit 32, Sabre Close, Quedgeley, Gloucester GL2 4NZ Tel:- 01452 397479 |
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SG: Jackie John and David Hughes are two artists from Gloucestershire and curate the only fine art Gallery in Gloucester to be artist led. Indeed, Sabre Art is one of the few galleries in gloucestershire to be run by working artists and they believe all art should be affordable and accessible.
DH: " We work in most media and although we do concept pieces and installations, we are not afraid to produce work that we describe as domestic. We need to produce such work because we need the income, but we would do it anyway because it's still as much of a challenge as it ever was, especially portrait commission work. As well as installation work, we have life drawing - figurative work from the liferoom (the only place you can't fake it ) in pencil,ink, charcoal,oil pastel, soft pastel and water colour; and paintings in, oil,acrylic, watercolour and mixed media; landscape both naturalistic, realistic, and of course the abstract in a variety of themes and media.We've used rusted metal, gravel and dirt,salt sand and sawdust,all manner of things from skips and dustbins, hair, teeth, skin ,and blood but only because I was not more careful with a scalpel.
SG: What do you mean by 'accessible art'?
JJ: We do not believe that art should always be easy to understand or appreciate, art does have to challenge the eye and brain. Art does have to challenge society's norms, but we don't think it has to do so all the time. In a world that is challenging enough, there must also be a place for art that comforts, for art that can be an opening toward a deeper understanding of aesthetic values. We challenge the notion that art has to be beyond the intellectual and spiritual grasp of most people in order to justify itself. That's what we mean by accessible art. We make no excuses for making art that people are happy to live with and see no contradiction in producing work that reflects all aspects of being and the needs of human beings. Art is art. Whether dealing with themes of destruction or creation, there is ultimately only good art or bad art. Ideas in themselves, are never wrong - it is what one does with those ideas that matter.
DH: Art's not very good at making war on war, it's got a better record at healing or as preventative medicine. Guernica preached to the converted and made the nazi's laugh, even if you could quote ten more, that's a bad record from 20,000 canonised artists. Papillon closed down devils island. Lets leave it to the writers and film. Static visual art in the home and workplace can help as preventative medicine I believe, but I have not seen all the proof I need yet.
SG: You don't think it can be used as weapon ?
DH: For ridicule yes, look at Fluck and Law and the shoulders they stood upon. But if you take the war on war analogy further, then nurses and cooks are as essential in the long term to the logistics of war as the soldiers with the guns. Sometimes they get overrun and pick up the gun , but it's not their primary task.
SG: Does your creative practice primarily centre around 2-D work, whether for the home or not?
DH: We have ceramic work but prefer to show ceramics by people that are better at it than we are. As far as 3d work is concerned we move into it occasionaly.
SG: How large a role does drawing play for you?
DH:
I have a portfolio of figure drawings from the life room, but in exhibition I've never shown more than two or 3 at a time, even in exhibitions in Gloucestershire galleries. There aren't many that pick up on the fact that they are actual life drawings, probably because most drawings seen these days are done from photographs.
SG: do you think drawing is a lost skill?
DH: I notice you didn't say 'lost art', anyway No. That is to say, when people talk about it, the implication is that what I do can only be accomplished by thousands of hours
of practice, whereas the truth is, I've only ever done two or three hundred hours of life drawing in my entire life - I can see you are surprised, but I don't believe the draughtsman aspect of life drawing is some 'beast like instinct' that people are born with or not. Conquering the art of life drawing still requires thought like anything else, particularly if you are up against the clock.
SG: That's rather damming for those that try but can't do it.
DH: I don't believe that either. Defeat will only come
for those that give up through a lack of zeal, and if zeal comes from the love of whatever then I don't think love can be manufactured. I believe everyone can do something well in life because everyone loves something no matter how futile, it took me some time to identify the arts as my thing but it should have been obvious much earlier because I'm so bad at so many other things.
SG: Is drawing relevant ? DH: With both 2d and 3d I can point to any
area of any piece of mine and say "I meant that mark to be exactly the way it is" and further to the point "I meant that mark to be exactly where it is" and everyone believes me. To me, Painting is drawing, sculpture is drawing, cropping a photograph in the right place is drawing. Tearing up a drawing and gluing it back together to make a different form is also drawing, but I also think sticking a piece of bluetack to a wall at just the right height is drawing.
SG: You like his work ? (Martin Creed)
DH: Brilliant. Both Jac and I love such stuff. Jackie has had a tin of sardines in exhibition for ages. I missed breakfast one day and so the tin on exhibition now is not the original. Is the tin art ? or is the anecdote art ? or are they both art ?
For us, process is vital as an end in itself, and is a paradigm, a paradigm shift in fact from our former lives. For myself, a large aspect of my work is about process, and that process involves chance and it’s reflection of life. I switch back and forth over the years from waste materials (rusty panels, old doors), to creating their equivalent as blind grounds usually in paint on canvas or board in an attempt to emulate nature in the studio. After that has gone far enough, only then does the controlled part of the work begin; sometimes I’ll work in 3d; sometimes I just use the traditional. More often than not, the most unlikely grounds yield the best results. If I’m really lucky, I get a worthwhile narrative as well. I recycle what doesn’t work and try again. Occasionally if I need to, I regain control with a heavier balance of the traditional. If you centre that paradigm on regaining a measure of control over any circumstance of chance, or in my case - faith,then any direction I go in is bound, for me, to have unity in meaning, method and purpose as well as making it far easier to achieve unity, balance and strength of line in form and content. In a similar way Jackie's method has always used 'chance' and we recognised it in one another's work when we met.
JJ: I work in a variety of ways, so if I must wear a label let it read, 'Reactive painter'. I react to the diverse possibilities contained within a single idea, or to the opportunities presented by the random application of paint upon a surface. The images that emerge are the starting point for the finished painting. Usually paintings begin as abstracts from which I 'pull' a figurative form, but sometimes the reverse is true. It depends on my reaction to the ideas and images that form in my mind, or on the painted surface as I work. This paradigm that remains the same (focused), allows for something new everyday ( diversity),and diversity means the sales we need to survive and perpetuate the 'art of being an artist' at this level. I dont know if it could work in the top level gallery system because there is pressure to have an (easily) recognisable signature. That may be forgivable for those established who do not want to lose their position or 'branding',but all the way down here a not uncommon criticism equates diversity with lack of focus. But how often have you seen artists doing the same basic work over and over for years, either blind to, or pushed into, what we call tunnel vision but passing it off as focus ? We've worked hard refining our professional practice in order to escape from that. On the one hand we have a 'system' that when it functions at its best we know will stand as high art, or at its least, at least post modern, but occasionaly I'll paint a seascape from a photo, and I don't see anything wrong with that. After all, we are not art snobs; when a gallery visitor said he would buy two of our paintings if only the colours matched their decor, we offered to either paint copies in the required colours, or take on the interior design of the room. We see such things as just another challenge." |
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