Notice Board

Curated by Soraya Smithson Exhibition 59 is by Naomi Frears. Naomi says: “It has been fun wondering what to put or say on a flag. I love making work in new ways and have asked lots of people what kind of flag they would make. It really makes people think.
When I explain that someone lives near the flagpole, the idea of being quite rude about right wing politics – a natural urge – has had to make way for something that won’t encourage eggs to be thrown. I don’t have flag making skills, so talked to a local flag company. All parts of their business are as sustainable and ethical as possible, so I have tried to overlook the fact that the flag is made of some kind of spooky recycled fabric. 
The words on the flag are from one of my text works. They relate to the theme The Lands of the Free in that, in our society we are able ask politely for a person, people, or a state to stop doing things we don’t like or find irritating. It may not transform behaviour, but we can let someone know something we’d like them to think about changing. A conversation might start. Sometimes the request might be impossible, but we can still ask. Here on the noticeboard is a tiny part of a very long list of what those undesirable things might be. What would you ask a person, people, or a state politely not to do?“

Naomi Frears is based in the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall. Her practice includes work with film and video, as well as printmaking, painting, and collaborative curatorial projects. Recent solo shows and film commissions include Men Falling (Artist Moving Image Commission, Exeter Phoenix) and In Other Words, a film commission for RAMM (Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter), Red River, a film commission in collaboration with poet John Wedgwood Clarke shown at COP 26, Looking for Ray, for Kestle Barton, and Somebody Loves Us All, a film commission and collaboration with poet Ella Frears, Bold Tendencies, Peckham. She undertook a large painting commission for Hospital Rooms at Bethlam Royal Hospital, London and her work appears regularly on the cover of the London Review of Books. Frears’ work is held in public and private collections including The Government Art Collection and in 2023 she was nominated for the Film London Jarman Award for artists moving image. Frears teaches art students at Falmouth University and among other projects, she is currently making new work as a guest of Britten Pears Arts in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

hbition 58: Esther Wilson – Quilt flag
Quilts are connected to Women’s work. A quilt speaks of domestic labour, of clothing and comforting and providing and nourishing children. They are a creative output with a practical application. A pieced quilt can be a record of a family’s life and a woman’s emotions. Quilts hold history and track lives. They are a family record held in your hands; a connection passed down through cloth. 
Making this piece I thought of the children wrapped in white shrouds, cradled by their mothers during the genocide in Gaza. I thought of the loss of stitched history, the devastation of domestic textiles. Children’s bedding destroyed, soft toys disfigured and curtains turned ashen grey.
Red is a colour used extensively in Palestinian Tatreez. Red is a colour of danger, bravery and passion. Pink is a colour of sensitivity, of femininty, of childhood. 
The land of the free? Are our mothers free? Are we free within a world that allows genocide? 

Esther is a London based artist and dressmaker. She trained in Embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework (2017) She makes work, both wearable and unwearable, looking at grief, motherhood and domesticity. 

Exhbition 57: Anna Reading. The Lands of the Free?

Anna’s work deals with issues around anthropocentric perspectives and the subsequent impacts upon environments, bodies, and human psyches. Her work looks to more-than-human life forms for lessons in survival within hostile settings.
When invited to create a work for the specificity of a flagpole, I wanted to situate the work within the landscape for which it would be shown. The work is based on a walk along the flood plain of the river Welland, running South of Uffington. The walk was an attempt to explore a landscape where the notion of free-ness(?) could be explored through flow, flux and entropy. During the walk, I encountered multiple examples of entanglements; sheeps wool wrapped around fences, grasses caught in seed heads, creepers entwined around branches, sedges matted in mud clumps. All of this material stuck-ness was activated by sunlight and a healthy breeze. My sculptural intervention explores what it is to be entangled, both as a restriction to movement while also a support system.
I am drawn to the contradictions inherent within the notion of the ‘Free?’ and what that means in terms of a ‘Land’. In an attempt to physically deconstruct the official fixedness of a flag, the work features materials which playfully interact with the weather, a sun-reflective rigid aluminium flag shape, and protective roofing felt tendrils to be activated by the wind. The notice board features a woven roofing felt and metal textile, entwined with loose materials collected along the River Welland’s flood plain.

Anna Reading is a Newcastle-born artist, now living and working in London. She holds an MfA in Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art (2017) and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Central St Martins (2010). Reading is the winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2018-19. www.annareading.co.uk

For 6 months Soraya Smithson will curate the Notice Board using the quizzical ‘The Lands of the Free?’ theme. Soraya says: This is a provocation to react, condemn and fight against injustices, corruption, oppression, traitorous words and deeds. Many gender equalities and freedoms have been won, however not universally. Many are still promised, compromised or reneged upon. All too often Women and those Othered are the first to suffer violence, marginalisation and the indignity of powerlessness. For this reason, my choice of artists are all women.  
February = Kate Buckley & Joana Cifre-Cerda
March = Soraya Smithson
April = Anna Reading
May = Esther Wilson
June – Naomi Frears & Ella Frears
July – Elspeth Owen Potter  

A Rock From An Island
Maritime Distress flag (with sleeves): Embroidered shirt, rope, wooden toggle.
A Rock From An Island: Folded giclee print on paper.

Andy says: A rock sits behind a glass panel embedded in the wall of a museum in Turku, Finland.  It has been moved 17,000km from the Island of Pourewa on the east coast of New Zealand. It’s surface looks sea washed, smooth and white, and it sits on a bed of light pink and grey pebbles (their origin is not recorded).  This rock commemorates Herman Spöring Junior, a watchmaker from Turku in Finland. He sailed on Captain Cook’s first voyage, during which Cook re-named Pourewa ‘Spöring Island’. Herman was the first person from Turku recorded in this part of the world but he died on the way home and was buried at sea. 
On Eastney seafront in Portsmouth, not far from where I was born, fortifications of concrete and steel, angled to repel hostile military forces, jut into the rising water, sliding, fissured, smashed smoothed and sinking.  The tide races between this point and Hayling Island opposite, the water heaping up as it rushes to fill Langstone Harbour and the salt flats which cut Portsea Island from the mainland beyond. I lift a smooth lump of concrete from the water’s edge into my arms. Rounded pebbles of unknown origin are exposed on its surface.  The rock is moved 127km to my friend Sam’s studio in London, where he helps me photograph it to make a poster as a reminder of the rock behind the glass panel embedded in the wall of a museum in Turku, Finland.
I printed this work for The Notice Board as I was thinking about time, territory and the sea.  Studying the Flood Map website I could see that, left unchecked, rising sea levels would leave the flag and noticeboard on a promontory reaching into the North Sea at the wide mouth of the River Welland.  By this time Portsmouth would be inundated, the rock in Turku would be under water and the Island of Pourewa would be divided into two, smaller, islands.  Herman Spöring would still be buried at sea, but it would be a different shape sea and there would be different stories.
The Maritime Distress flag (with sleeves). Onboard ship, flags are a source of useful coloured material, and I have seen examples with shaped holes cut out to fashion other items at sea.  One man I know used to cut all the white material from enormous naval flags to use as dust sheets.  This work, a maritime distress flag which is 30 miles from the sea, takes this repurposing in a new direction. Its form as a shirt alludes to a missing body, its empty, flapping arms a frantic wave for help.  The absent vessel suggests a wider context; a flag flown from the deck of a vast floundering vessel floating in space…

Andy Parker is an artist based in Somerset. He grew up in Portsmouth; his dad was a sailor in the Royal Navy and his mum is from the tiny South Atlantic Island of St Helena. With a nautical backdrop and a passion for unpicking and re-tangling history, his practice often turns toward the coast for its inspiration. He has been selected to exhibit at galleries including Arnolfini in Bristol, Outpost in Norwich and Studio Voltaire in London.  His work is held in public and private collections including the V&A, the British Museum, and Deutsche Bank in London, and the Frangenberg Collection in Cambridge. andyp.co.uk