Two women from different times connected through a shared sense of playfulness – that was my first impression on arriving at Barnsley Civic for Memories of Drawings/Ulterior Motifs. Both artists offer up flirtations with flatness – landscapes like scenes dropping in and out at the back of a stage. We fill in the blanks, enjoying the deceit. The first artist is Georgia O’Keeffe, the ‘Mother of American modernism’: furtive, contemplative. The second, Ailish Treanor, is an archivist of bewitching talent, extravagant and opulent. But what unifies both O’Keeffe and Treanor is a commitment to expression – articulating feeling through marks on paper.
Georgia O’Keeffe was born exactly 100 years before myself. A fact I only came to know when arriving at this exhibition. I have always known of her work, clean and minimalist yet fizzing with subtext, but I learnt much that was new to me here. Drawing was a fundamental part of her life, with few moments going un-scribbled. Before entering the exhibition, a small anteroom dedicated to sketching acts as a break-out space and place for contemplation. Animal skulls, petrified wood and books on the artist are arranged to act as prompts welcoming you into O’Keeffe’s world.
Moving into the space proper, the soft, dusky pink horizon of the walls stretches out to frame the drawings. The setting is expansive and calming and helps enhance the meditative qualities of O’Keeffe’s work. That being said, sometimes more negative feelings do creep in, and these too can prove inspirational. Accompanying a number of the pieces in the gallery are excerpts from O’Keeffe’s diary, such as for ‘Drawing No. 9’ (1915): ‘It was a very bad headache at the time that I was busy drawing every night, sitting on the floor in front of the closet door’. The transition between the undulating rivulets at the bottom right of the piece and the cumulus forms above are reminiscent of clouds laden with raindrops fit to burst into a coursing stream – a tension of natural forces expressing personal pain.
And so from pain to pleasure. For ‘Drawing No. 12’ (1917), the diary entry selected here simply notes ‘Maybe a kiss…’. The form, reminiscent of two figures embracing, with one resting their head on the other’s, speaks to me of tenderness rather than passion, though one cannot deny the phallic nature of the darker, more dominant form. This flirtation with graphic imagery abstracted through the natural contours of flowers, shells and bones would become a recurring theme in O’Keeffe’s work.
A rare departure from abstracted natural forms comes in the shape of a tender, arresting portrait of Beauford Delaney (c.1940s). O’Keeffe studies the face in such detail, drawing focus to the eyes through soft, almost buttery suggestions of light, the fullness of the lips glistening in a half smile.
In ‘The Winter Road’ (1963), O’Keeffe’s clarity and severity of framing reaches a zenith. The ochre sweep across the page suggests the road leading away from her home in Abiquiu. At this time, her eyesight was beginning to deteriorate due to the effects of macular degeneration. Shape and colour began to become unclear, the world O’Keeffe saw became duller and less defined. Perhaps this defiant line across a blank page hints at a desire for clarity in a world that felt increasingly hazy.
A piece depicting endings and beginnings, ‘Blue Lines’ (1916), shows confidence in mark-making. The selected diary entry here reads: ‘I believe it was June before I needed blue.’ This yearning, visceral compulsion for colour is evidenced in a slashing of the page, a pool of pigment resting as blood beneath. It was to be the beginning of her use of a more vibrant palette within her work and a departure from her use of charcoal alone. The language of her expression was expanding.
Another connection linking O’Keeffe and Treanor is their shared fascination with jewellery. Ornamentation and display often mask deep tumults of emotion held within: brooches as body armour, bracelets as battlements. In ‘Eagle Claw and Bean Necklace’ (1934), O’Keeffe offers up talons and seed pods as prized possessions. This dance between seemingly simple subject matter and subtexts of death, life and survival are all refracted through O’Keeffe’s eyes to create jewels on the page.
As I have found in my own practice, mindfulness is not only found through inactivity. Clarity of thought can take the form of frenzied rapidity, peaks and troughs, push and pull, tension and relaxation. For me, mindfulness comes through journaling; for O’Keeffe and Treanor, it seems to manifest through sketching. The oddities of line and form they each create come from taking the time to articulate abstract thoughts in this way. It is a certain playfulness with opposing forces that connects the work of O’Keeffe and Treanor.
In Treanor’s work, paper is celebrated for its versatility and its restrictions. I had the opportunity to meet Ailish before the exhibition in the intimate setting of a makeshift preparatory studio space at Barnsley Civic. She spoke to me of paper being a necessity for her as a material, its shape and geometry easily manipulated to influence the viewer. What started as a means to achieving an end as inexpensively as possible has become her strength. Her current aim is to distort and delight by drawing comparison between consumerist advertising and ancient ritual. A zine to accompany her show entitled What did the Ancient Egyptians think about 80s fashion trends? sums up the collisions occurring in Treanor’s world. Paper’s severe edges add to the drama everywhere, in trompe l’oeil treats for the senses: bejewelled, absurd in parts, always coquettish in their sense of display.
On entering the adjoining deep blue space, what strikes me first is the flood of colour. The space feels rich but in a new money kind of way. It speaks of our obsession with affordable luxury, micropayments for maximalism, luxe on tick. Treanor uses a kaleidoscope of references, melded together to create a catalogue of chicness. ‘Faux Marble Column’ (2024) is the first thing to catch my eye – a vast ream of paper lovingly decorated with deep viridian shades, veins of white and black. Viewed from the doorway it reads as ancient and immovable, yet as you approach, the delicacy of the surface is revealed.
Strewn about the gallery space are tubes of paper rolled up to form juxtapositions and precariously temporary structures. ‘Ciggies’ (2024) happened as a joyous mistake. Whilst in the early stages of making another work, ‘New Veau’ (2024), Treanor ended up with some offcuts and bits that were not quite right. Undeterred and hoping to utilise these inspirational faux pas she kept them to one side. ‘New Veau’ (2024) itself is a timeless hedonistic frieze dedicated to commercialism. It is both Egyptian tomb decoration and ode to a long-gone New Look logo and the plastic bags that bore it. The off-cuts and mistakes during its creation were recycled to form tubes of comically enlarged cigarette shapes. These act as placeholders, display tables and interruptions on the landscape. The things you are seeing aren’t what they seem. To fully comprehend their meaning one has to be an archaeologist devoted to a time that never existed. The past, present and future forms of glamour all coalesce here. You need only dig a little deeper to find them.
In ‘Sketch 29 (brooches)’ (2024), we see the artist’s hand experimenting with form and line with an almost draughtsperson-like precision. In contrast to the fluidity of the forms of O’Keeffe, Treanor’s works are more studied, a confirmation of a thought as much as a fervent compulsion of feeling. Though the sketches may offer up rigidity and strength of voice, there is plenty of whimsy to be had too. Grey-blue velvet drapery is pleated to look like the front window of a jewellers’ display window, or stage curtains. Here Treanor seeks to protect her treasures. The part-opera-glasses, part-bra, part-brooch form ‘Deco’ (2024) is suspended magically above a grey-blue velvet plinth. The copper hues of the paper sculpture exude refinement and sophistication. This is the final act of the theatrical performance Treanor has led us through. My eyes are transfixed by the beauty of the form and I do not wish to know the secret of its hovering in mid-air.
In this same treasure chamber sits ‘Nose Rings’ (2024), the humble made magnificent. Designs for nose rings are arranged as if ancient and ethereal designs hewn into rock or fired into tiled floors. Like a displaced relic of a bygone age, the work plays with our sense of value. Is worth attributed merely as a result of time or by expense? Can the cheap be made manifestly priceless through the application and manipulation of materials?
When curators seek to create a conversation between two artists (especially when one is so celebrated as O’Keeffe) there can be friction where differences in approach, medium and sensibility rub up against each other. One voice shouts louder than the other. Here, Barnsley Civic have worked to foster a sense of trust. Neither artist is diminished by the other’s presence, due to Treanor having been able to rest comfortably into the space and have agency over the choices made. The affection artist and curator Elizabeth Dickinson have for one another is palpable. There is power in the gentleness of their approaches – serenity and fervour, monochrome and technicolour, restfulness and cacophony.
Even Allen (aka That Looks Queer!) is a writer based in Sheffield.
Georgia O’Keeffe: Memories of Drawings and Ailish Treanor: Ulterior Motifs are on at Barnsley Civic from 15 September 2024 to 18 January 2025.
This review is supported by Barnsley Civic.
Published 01.11.2024 by Benjamin Barra in Reviews
1,664 words
