Rebecca’s Scott’s exhibition, Small Boats and Family Matters, takes Géricault’s renowned painting, ‘The Raft of Medusa’ (1819), as a point of critical departure. The Romantic work caused uproar when first exhibited in the early nineteenth century with its portrayal of events that were prevalent in the media of the day: the French frigate Méduse, through the incompetence of the Captain, had run aground off the coast of West Africa and a group of the survivors were forced to construct a makeshift raft to reach the mainland. The painting depicts the moment when, after thirteen days at sea, with many of the crew already dead, the survivors see a ship in the distance. The work was divisive due to its realist portrayal of death and starvation, in a period when classical notions of ideal beauty were still dominant.
Scott’s paintings draw a parallel with the Géricault work, depicting the plight of migrants today crossing various expanses of water as a direct result of the effects of global capitalist modernity. The chaos of these journeys is at the centre of the exhibition, with the works interpolated by paintings from another series, ‘Family Portraits’, which offer a completely different perspective and, as the accompanying statement suggests, ‘a dialogue between different lives, lived in radically different circumstances, posing questions of empathy and emotional connection with family and strangers alike.’ The first room in the exhibition presents a series of experimental works, which play with colour and texture at a far smaller scale than the finished paintings in the main space. They offer a loose model for the structure of the show, through the coming together of the migrant works and the personal paintings. On the left are a series of family portraits, relatives of the artist painted with detail, personality and with playful disruptions of the image, via a large brush stroke dragged across the painted surface: opposite are the experimental paintings of, what I learn from the gallery invigilator, Lavinia Haslam, are migrants, faceless and difficult to decipher. Unlike the paintings in the main gallery which are predominantly figurative, the people here are depicted through forms which are somewhere between the figurative and the abstract, utilising a warm but subdued colour palette.
On entering the main space, the first of the three key triptych works is presented, ‘Migrants, Emojis & The Smiley’ (2021). It’s a large piece, the image carrying across all three canvasses, depicting a boat crammed with people journeying to a new life. On the far-right canvas, there appear to be people jumping off the bow of the boat to swim in calm waters, offering a more optimistic note than many of the other paintings present. It is of interest that Scott paints these images directly from photos found online. The works seem like a critique of this digital media, these images being a part of the mediation of these lives that we see almost daily on social media and the evening news, but somehow become desensitised to, due to their repetition and politicisation.
Daubed over ‘Migrants, Emojis & The Smiley’ are the anchor and smiley graphic emojis. My initial impression of the use of emojis was that they represented a further critique of mediation, of these ubiquitous modes of communication, contrasted with the representations of people living in such dangerous circumstances. However, on researching, I discover that the emojis are employed by the artist to represent notions of universal communication and connection, whilst acting as a disruption of the image or ‘interruption of the gaze’. The emojis are also utilised on the ‘Family Portraits’ series and, hence, act as a connecting device across the two sets of work. As Scott states, ‘a way to connect the migrant paintings with the family portraits, the emojis connected the two different worlds.’ It is an unusual use of the symbols and, with the emojis being so loaded with meanings, the artist’s aims may not always communicate to the viewer. My own initial understanding of this element of the paintings was quite different to the aims outlined by Scott, but I still admired the unique approach, even if the meaning didn’t always come across directly through the imaging.
There are other graphic elements employed to disrupt the paintings, such as the large scribbles that can also be seen in earlier works, as featured in the 2023 exhibition, Landscape of the Gods. The scribbles are a single thick line, meandering over the surface of the painting. The boldness of these marks is a key gesture of the work, in disrupting the connection between the viewer and the main image. It seems a divisive element of the practice: of course, it would be easier to present the paintings without these marks, Scott being a painter with strong formal technique, but the paintings would lose meaning. The disruption, in effect, jolts the perception of the viewer, demanding that they reflect further on the central image presented and, also, on the act of viewing contemporary art itself.
The exhibition’s central themes are distilled in the triptych, ‘Capsized’ (2024), that covers the back wall of the main space. Here, a large boat carrying around fifty people is depicted as it begins to turn and capsize in the water. Chaos has ensued, with people clambering up onto the boat’s side, or panicking and jumping into the water. The image feels like a nodal point of the various states of crisis that besiege the world. The piece is of formal interest: as the viewer reads the images from left to right, the paintings gradually move from abstracted representations of the people to more figurative representations, as if tracing a passage from the dehumanising effects of these images to a more sympathetic representation. Furthermore, the types of symbols that are used to disrupt the picture plane also changes from left to right, in progression, from a cherry emoji on the left, to Scott’s trademark squiggle in the middle, to a strange modernist style red rectangle on the final image, which seems the most jarring of these disruptions. A criticism of the work is that it is difficult to decipher the artist’s intention in this type of symbolic progression, in the use of disruptions, and it is often left to speculation. This openness has its benefits but it can also be frustrating.
On the final wall, next to ‘Capsized’, are two paintings from the ‘Family Portraits’ series: ‘Memorial Portraits’ (2021) and ‘Three Sisters & Son’ (2021). The positioning of the works is notable, being in such stark contrast to ‘Capsized’. These works exude love, warmth, and humour; Scott has painted them with great affection. The use of an emoji teddy bear symbol across the surfaces, whilst still acting as a disruption of the viewer’s gaze and as a connecting device to the migrant paintings, reinforces this perception of warmth. As a point of contrast with the migrant works, through the personal interjections of the ‘Family Portrait’ series, these works expand the critical framework of the exhibition, from the micro scale of the artist’s life, through to the macro scale of the global movement of people. They lead into the final work on display, ‘Raft of the Medusa’ (2021), which returns to the subject of migrant journeys. Here, the tone shifts again, the painting depicting a boat so full it tips upwards, the stern dipping into in the water, on the brink of being submerged by the waves. In the background, a dark cloaked figure hovers over the people on board.
One of the powerful elements of Scott’s work is in the details of the paintings. Standing close to them, a few inches from the large canvases, the use of materials comes to the fore, and I can’t help but be drawn in by the texture of Scott’s work. Talking to Mark Woods, the gallery co-founder, I learn that Scott paints with the canvas turned upside-down. This unusual approach, which would seem to foreground the basic practice of mark-making, certainly comes across through the formal qualities of the marks when close to the paintings. Scott’s rich use and mixing of colour only reveals itself in such close-up viewing, where the figurative aspects of the paintings fall away into the abstract: the meaning of the works also fall away, briefly, only to reappear in the rendering of a shocked and frightened passenger face when you step backwards. These rich detail views could be interpreted as another disruption of the image, a further distancing technique employed by the artist that, ironically, only works in close-up.
An exhibition with this subject matter does, inevitably, pose critical questions. Are these gallery spaces the right place to show people’s lives unfolding in such precarious circumstances? Is there an inherent contradiction between the smooth modernity of the white cube space and the events depicted in the works? Is this a critique of the mediation of the migrants’ lives, or a further mediation of them, from the safety of a gallery? It’s a complex discussion, and Scott does acknowledge these questions in the accompanying exhibition notes, through a discussion with assistant curator Rebecca Larkin, where she talks of her own ‘very secure life’ and the paintings as a ‘reflection of the images I see, the struggles of others in a situation so different from ours.’ The inclusion of the ‘Family Portraits’ series is central. Contrasting the depiction her own family and the precarious family lives of the people journeying, Scott offers a point of reflexivity, via the personal. This self-awareness is important, especially in a discussion that can’t be easily resolved, only engaged with by the artist.
The exhibition is a place to think about these various political, social and economic trajectories, along with the broader role of contemporary art in addressing these questions. It offers points for a nuanced discussion around the global movement of people, to counter the wider demonisation and stigmatisation of these lives, particularly in the crisis-ridden political context of the UK. The paintings point towards these discussions through the glimpses of the lives they show, and towards a wider conversation about the structural changes needed in the wake of the gradual unravelling of this iteration of global capitalist modernity.
Rebecca Scott: Small Boats & Family Matters, Cross Lane Projects 15 May – 12 July 2024.
Anthony Ellis is a researcher and writer based in Manchester.
This review is supported by Cross Lane Projects.
Published 22.06.2024 by Jazmine Linklater in Reviews
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