Kes Richardson & Hilda Kortei

12 Oct-12 Nov 2022

PV 13 Oct 2022, 6-8pm

Overview

FOLD is pleased to present With Ash, And Stumble (Stumble), a two person show by Hilda Kortei and Kes Richardson.

Hilda Kortei: What is stumble? Do you mean to stumble across something?

Kes Richardson: I was thinking of a word that describes a comedic/tragic movement, a physical failing or something slapstick. I like the sound of stumble and I like the repetition. I like the idea of recreating an involuntary movement, on a loop. The fakery of an actor yawning or sneezing – performed artifice. My paintings are made in that way: they are planned, but the initial drawings and the final applications of paint are performances of sorts. The former an improvisation, the latter well-rehearsed mimicry.

How about ash? A Guston cigarette? Donny’s remains in ‘The Big Lebowski’? Charcoal? Pigment?

HK: I’m not sure why my immediate thought was to stumble across something. I was probably thinking about my own process of stumbling across old works, forgotten mediums, fragments of failed and torn paintings. I kind of thrive working in the chaos of it all and stumbling across surprises. Actually, this is making me think about my scissors. They’ve been missing for a while; I know they’re in the studio somewhere. I can usually remember where I leave my tools, even when they hide under piles of fabric and scraps of paper.

‘Ash’ can’t be separated from ‘With’ in this instance. I’m interested in ash as residue or memory. A flake of ash is so fragile, it can crumble into nothing in our palms or be caught in a breeze and swept into a life elsewhere. Ash is intrinsically linked to the object which is burning. It’s the same matter in a different form and it’s in that form which the object lives on. In a way, I’m seeing ash as an embodiment of faith, one that makes us consider what it means to survive, endure, and transform. So, to be with ash is to be with...

KR: Potential? HK: Perhaps.

KR: I see ash as an embodiment of time, or cycles of time. For me that links to the stumbling over old works. I always work from drawings and more recently these little ‘palettes’ that get made when I’m mixing paint to colour-match the drawings to the paintings. I make drawings in batches, fast, de-focussed, without really looking up. I rarely use them straight away because I know they need time to settle, to be relevant. And so finding them weeks, months, years later gives a sense of removal for me. Like someone else made them. They’re me, but not me. The guy’s wife in Solaris. Ready-mades. But also that they had a life and they’re a record of that moment but when they’re employed again into a new work they’re reanimated, cloned. In this show the cloning of forms is more explicit. The same handful of motifs reused across all the works.

Artists