MADE ON THE TABLE
Saturday 21 May 2.30pm
Domestic Bliss | Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) | Royal Exchange Square | Glasgow| G1 3AH

Join us for the launch of MADE ON THE TABLE, an artist book marking the culmination of Rhona Warwick Paterson’s tenure as Associate Artist at GoMA.

Doors open: 2.20 pm
Launch starts: 2.30 pm
Launch ends: 4.15 pm

Made in collaboration with Tessa Lynch, MADE ON THE TABLE includes collagraph prints, prose and documentation of work made collaboratively with others as part of her ongoing installation in the exhibition Domestic Bliss – a working artist studio table in the exhibition exploring the blurred boundaries of home, work and studio spaces, particularly for women artists.

In September 2019 Rhona Warwick Paterson began her Associate Artist tenure at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). The role of the Associate Artist is to provide a challenge to the building and to use the opportunity to research areas of ‘mutual curiosity’ on agreed themes with the curatorial team. In this case the artist was excited about responding to the exhibition Domestic Bliss and GoMA’s history as a home and Royal Exchange.

We were equally excited about the potential of this response and her initial proposal to install a working artist studio table in the exhibition to explore the blurred boundaries of home, work and studio spaces, particularly for women artists. This began to unfold as she took residence each Friday at her table working in a public space for what is often the private act of a studio practice. She met with artists, writers and curators to experiment in making work and this work would be interrupted by staff or gallery visitors asking her what she was doing. Her works began to inhabit the exhibition and the works in the exhibition began to influence her thinking.

Then in March 2020 we went into lockdown and that reality of blurred boundaries of practice, life, making and care became a reality for all of us. Those practicalities of home working with home schooling, being isolated within our homes for caring duties disrupting our approaches to collaboration and the labour, the repetitive labour involved in cleaning shared kitchen tables of work, schoolwork and meals shared together. The context of Domestic Bliss for this tenure became more acute and how it was playing out across a pandemic.

MADE ON THE TABLE

This artist book marks a significant point in Rhona Warwick Paterson’s consideration of public and private space. What it means for an artist to occupy civic space and work in the sight of a visiting public. In a continuation of the collaboration with Tessa Lynch and the Exquisite Corpse methods used in her table work, the artists made NIKI/Niki builds a body – a filmed performance in response to the works of Niki de Saint Phalle and Nicola L in Domestic Bliss. Recently premiered at NADA, New York, this film will be screened at the launch alongside other works made during Rhona Warwick Paterson’s tenure as Associate Artist.

MADE ON THE TABLE was commissioned from Rhona Warwick Paterson by Glasgow Museums with support from a Glasgow City Heritage Trust Sharing Heritage grant and designed by Maeve Redmond.

NIKI/Niki builds a body was commissioned from Tessa Lynch and Rhona Warwick Paterson by Glasgow Museums with support from the Art Fund Response and Reimagine Award. It was filmed and edited by Helena Ohman.

Rhona Warwick Paterson, lives and works in Glasgow
Rhona Warwick Paterson is a visual artist, poet and research practitioner whose principle research interests have focused on the contexts and processes of creativity in response to urban space. In 2018 she was awarded the Scottish Book Trust Prize for Poetry and recent commissions include a series of choreopoems for Scottish Ballet’s 50th anniversary, a trio of film-poems (After Orta, Cunei Form and Lean To) for The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in collaboration with the dancer Eve Mutso (premiered 26 February 2022), The Will of an Age in Wormersley, Zembla Gallery (2021) and recent publication of two chapbooks Putty and Armatures (Slo-Mo Books).

Previous research work has included projects with The Pier Art Centre Orkney, The V&A London, Henry Moore Foundation, The University of Glasgow and Creative Scotland. In 2006 her involvement in the Percent for Art regeneration of Gorbals in Glasgow was developed to the book Arcade: Artists and Place-making (Black Dog, 2006.). Published essays on artists include; Edmund de Waal, Clare Woods, Margaret Mellis, Haley Tomkins, Garth Evans and a catalogue for a survey show of female sculptors Modern Scottish Women at The National Galleries of Scotland.

Tessa Lynch, lives and works in Glasgow
Tessa Lynch works predominantly with sculpture, print and performance. Her work is designed to offer feminist readings of the city, highlighting issues of social reproduction that are at odds with contemporary art. She describes her practice as work and life held in one place, intermingling and blurred. Lynch is interested in the politics that shape the world and how they’re reflected in what we see and experience on a day-to-day basis. She is fascinated by the emotional impact of the environment, specifically the built environment, urban settings, how they’re shaped and controlled and, in turn, how they shape us. Recent exhibitions include Stoop, Stoop, Stooping is Stoopid! – a collaborative exhibition with Rachel Adams at Studio Pavilion, House For an Art Lover, Glasgow and Gardener, Patricia Fleming Projects, Glasgow (2019) and All About You, performance with Rhubaba choir, Collective, Edinburgh (2018).