One of Britain’s most intriguing contemporary artists, Rebecca Scott, is heading to home territory for a new 2024 exhibition of her work in Grasmere, at the Heaton Cooper Studio archive gallery.
Scott, a Cumbrian, has exhibited all over the world, and recently featured in the prestigious British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery. She divides her time between London and Kendal, where she was co-founder (in a former Kendal Mint Cake factory) of the pioneering Cross Lane Projects. That’s a gallery that aims to bring new and contemporary art to Cumbria and has been presenting a curated programme of exhibitions by local, international and British artists with accompanying talks and events.
Startling paintings
Scott’s own work is startling, with an immense sense of physicality in her painting. The new show in Grasmere, Machinations, is being curated by Julian Cooper, Britain’s foremost living mountain painter and a member of the Heaton Cooper family dynasty of artists. He says he has been intrigued by this series of paintings since he first saw them a few years ago.
“They seem to stretch the definition of what’s natural by including images of internal combustion engines in juxtaposition with plants and flowers, making one realise that because an engine is the product of the human mind, it means that it’s also part of nature too.”
He adds: “My own view of the paintings might be surplus to Rebecca’s intention of them as statements about gender stereotypes, but the one doesn’t rule out the other. Of course, the ideas behind these paintings wouldn’t be of interest if the paintings themselves couldn’t carry them and they weren’t so powerful, but there’s such physical delight shown in her handling of the paint, and such vividness of both colour and of imagery, that these paintings are very exciting to look at.”
Flowers and car engines combined
This mini retrospective show covers 1994–2024, including works from the 1990s as well as more recent paintings of natural plants and foliage disrupted by an overlaid scribble. The earlier works blend imagery of car engines with cut flower arrangements. These explore the stereotypical ideology that associates engines with masculinity and flowers with femininity. The painted flowers are cultivated arrangements rather than natural, to represent society’s rejection of the natural, wilder side of the female form in favour of artificial perfection.
Scott, says Julian Cooper, creates a luscious image: “The seductive handling of the paint allows the viewer to see both themes in the same beautiful way, symbolizing the juxtaposition of the contrived female and the powerful American Muscle Car, but creating an equality between the two.”
Born in 1960 in Cumbria, Scott gained a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from Chelsea School of Art, and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London. She has worked in private and public collections nationally and internationally, and has exhibited in London, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. In 2019, she was a finalist for Cumbria Life’s Visual Artist of the Year award (when the winner was Julian Cooper himself).
Subjects and representations of the work
Working from photographs, calendars, catalogues, and magazines, Scott is drawn to aspects of private manifestations and public representations of female desire. Her work is representational and takes inspiration from Andy Warhol, Malcolm Morley, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Winifred Nicholson, and Georgia O’Keefe.
She says: “I tend to work in series, and retrospectively can see a biographical aspect to my oeuvre; the topics I chose to respond to have often been meaningful in a personal sense, playing out in reaction to the situations I have found myself in.”
Scott uses genres of paintings as a metaphor, saying: “The language of choice is painting.” She has previously worked through areas as diverse as nudes, flowers, still life, and figurative genres. Her extensive oeuvre also diverts into knitted works. As an antithesis to painting, these are an acknowledgement of the feminist dialogue which is an important aspect to her thought process.
Human rights
Among Scott’s fascinating and eclectic back catalogue is The Tent of Human Rights (2016), a small bell tent stencilled with the text of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. The text begins at the apex of the tent and spirals down in the colours of the rainbow. Inside the tent is the Blanket of Human Rights and several cushions knitted with the text from the various articles of the document. Scott says: “The initial inspiration for this work was the Arab Spring of 2011, when I first discovered the Declaration for myself and was inspired and moved by the sentiments in the document.”
The Grasmere exhibition has now finished.
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