Johanna Bolton: Traces of Trauma (Art in the shadow of two World Wars)

Contemporary artist Johanna Bolton is currently doing a residency at the Borough Road Gallery archive and art store. This is her second blog exploring the collection and working with the LSBU archives.

Last Friday, archivist Ruth MacLeod showed me the records from the Arts Department of Borough Polytechnic (as London South Bank University was then known) at the time David Bomberg was teaching (1946-53). There was little mentioned about him specifically, but some records that help get a feeling for life in the art department at the time.

As a Polytechnic the department’s focus was on commercial art, creating a freedom from the traditions followed in the Fine Arts departments elsewhere. Bomberg taught a few daytime life drawing classes, but mainly evening classes in life drawing, painting and composition. Records show a large uptake of art evening classes, and one year there was a course tantalizingly named ‘Drawing and painting from memory and knowledge’. There is a line in the student magazine about the people who come in the evening and ‘splash more paint on the walls than on the canvases’, and an entertaining article about the humiliation of being corrected by an unnamed life drawing teacher (there were two life drawing teachers at the time, one of them Bomberg): “...try to remember he is an Aesthete and therefore cannot be expected to know any better.”

But what the visit to the archive really brought home more than anything was how recent this was after WW2, the second war that Bomberg had lived through. His suffering in the trenches of the Great War had affected his practice dramatically, from radical abstractions in the style of Futurism and Vorticism to a more figurative, expressionistic style. 

Of course WW2 also had a major impact on the art works of all the artists in the Borough Road group. 

The archive did have a large folder with records on Bomberg’s contemporary teacher collegue Mr Thomas Liverton. In a hand written note from 20th October 1945 he writes that he has been discharged from the RAF, and was much looking forward to returning to Borough Polytechnic in November, but felt ‘rather in need of a rest.’ It is strange to think how quietly that generation went through their traumatic experiences.

Traces of Trauma? Works by David Bomberg from before, between and after the two world wars, in the Borough Road collection archive. (There is only one work from before the Great War in the collection).

David Bomberg, 1913-14. Before WW1

David Bomberg, 1925. Interwar period

David Bomberg, 1956. After WW2

At the crossroads

Artist Johanna Bolton has started her residencey at the Borough Road Gallery archive and art store. She will be writing blogs as her research progresses concluding with a exhibition and workshop in October.

A special kind of silence seems to rest over all archives. We must come prepared with our own narratives to make sense of their baffling complexity. Mostly, we see what we look for and hear what we are listening for. Once we finish they fall back into silence, like a brain full of memories at rest, maybe dreaming.

I came to the A David Bomberg Legacy – The Sarah Rose Collection with a fascination for archives; labels, series and categorisation. An underlying narrative of trying to grapple with the unseen. Questions about choice and chance, and complexity.

Art collections have an interesting tension where the uniqueness demanded by an art work is subsumed by the context of the archive. There are many narratives clashing; the artists, Bomberg’s teachings, the collector’s intentions and chance encounters as well as what I bring, encountering it for the first time. I am looking forward to see what comes out of the cross-roads. 

The Working Artist

Many of the artists in the Borough Group had to supplement their income by having various jobs alongside their artistic work. Cliff Holden worked as a designer and silkscreen printer,  Edna Mann, Miles Richmond, and Dorothy Mead all taught at various points throughout their lives. Mead also worked as an animator. 

Throughout the 1960's and 70's Dorothy Mead held teaching positions at Morley College and Goldsmiths College. 

At Morley College, she taught from 1963-65 and again from 1973-75. Under the title "Painting", her classes encouraged the use of different media but the focus was still on oil painting from life. 

She also worked on animation projects such as "Polygamous Polonius", directed by Bob Godfrey. The film is available to watch on the BFI platform. 

Godfrey's career as an animator spanned more than fifty years and counts several popular children's cartoons. 

He was nominated for the Academy Awards multiple times and won for the short animation film "Great" from 1975. 

Dorothy Mead, photograph by Bryan Long, courtesy of Val and Bryan Long

Research: Borough Group and Art in Public Spaces

In 1948, members of the Borough Road group exhibited paintings and drawings at an open air exhibition at the Victoria Embankment Gardens. This was covered by the South London Press.

The Open Air Exhibition of Paintings was organised by the London County Council and the intention was for amateur and student painters to exhibit and sell their works. Alongside the painting exhibition, an Open Air Sculpture Exhibition was organised in Battersea Park with commissioned artists.

The idea of having works of art was a part of a Labour policy to make art accessible and to move art into easily accessed spaces, such as public parks. The focus was on the sculpture exhibitions.

Today, the practice of exhibiting paintings outside might bring associations with paintings sold to tourists on holiday.

To have paintings exhibited in a park in London would be uncommon. Using public spaces for art is an interesting idea beyond cultural regeneration and sculptures put up by developers to ‘brighten up’ areas in need of regeneration.

In today’s London, many public spaces and parks are privately owned, potentially restricting the public’s access to and use of the space. These semi-public spaces are known as privately owned public spaces (POPS) and are usually monitored by security firms.

Could an outdoor painting exhibition work in today’s London? Would it be relevant? 

https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/lcc_open_air_sculpture/

Eyres, Patrick; Russell, Fiona. (2006) Sculpture and the Garden; Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.; pp. 139

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/10/urban-public-art-developers-decoy-strategy-draped-seated-woman

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-pops-london-investigation-map