Investigating the life of things across space and time
Gallery of Quarry details, exhibition installation and studio documentation
Paolo di Dono, called Uccello (1397–1475):
The Hunt in the Forest (c.1465-1470)
tempera and oil, with traces of gold, on panel; 177cm x 73.3cm
The Hunt in the Forest is held in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Like Uccello, I painted a black ground over white gesso to create a rich, infinite space. Uccello’s foliage was painted in from dark colours to light whereas he worked the figures, animals and tree trunks from white silhouettes, resulting in a vibrant tableau.
The covered complexity of his forest reminds me of the fan-canopied ceilings of mosques and cathedrals so I site my strange protagonists in an immense echoing chamber, interrupted by ‘void’ forms created through the process of cutting and making other shapes. The bird-like creature is the artist of The Hunt in the Forest, Paolo di Dono himself (known by his nickname, Uccello, which means ‘bird’, given to him because of his unique depictions of the natural world).
The river in Uccello’s forest appears in Quarry on the right, suggesting that we are are still somewhere dripping wet, but now we are underground, beneath the roots of Uccello’s verdant, fertile dream. Whether the sightless creatures hopping, slinking and darting back into the shadows are the hunters or their prey, I leave to your own interpretation.
Quarry was first shown in the exhibition Quarry at the Brocket Gallery, London in 2016.
As if peering through a gap in the trees this art work focuses on the relationship between light and dark, quarry and hunter. The colour and form of the red figure references Uccello’s practice within the late Gothic tradition and reminds us that red is the colour of fairytales, representing blood (virginity, violence, death).
As if standing in front of a green screen this mysterious figure invites us to imagine a space in which anything is possible.
In Paolo Uccello’s preparation of his wood panels for Hunt in the Forest (1470), he glued canvas over knots and scored lines into a black underlayer of paint to mark tree branches and vanishing points.
Salt is mined, extracted and evaporated. Stitching mends holes, fills in blank space. This artwork began life as the back of an unfinished needlepoint and grew into an exploration of geology and archeology.
This work started as an old needlepoint completed by an unknown sewer, that I unpicked, leaving only these trees intact. It was a way for me to look at the stage without the players.
Falling is an uncontrollable action. When we fall (over, apart, in love, asleep) we become vulnerable; quarry. Caught between spaces this figure falls headfirst and downwards.
I wanted to create a work that used just a few very strong elements to show the power of a repeated shape. I drew this grid over Uccello’s painting to reveal his mastery of perspective and as the starting point for Trace.
The relics and ghosts of long ago are brought together here as if in a wild dream of nature. Starting from the verticals of Uccello’s trees and dotted lines he cut into the wood I wanted to present a landscape of fragments that offers a framework for a narrative.
This conversation between Sarah Gillett and the writer Amy Lay-Pettifer digs deeper into the artist’s relationship with Paolo Uccello’s painting The Hunt in the Forest (1470) and her wider art practice.
The dogs in south London are running. One of the big ones slows down as it passes me and I step back as its nose swerves into my crotch, waving my arms as though that would make any difference. If it were really hungry it would just eat me but I get a face full of hot meaty air and it’s a lucky day.
The story of a spontaneous polaroid film collaboration with the artist Luke Harby
Joseph reaches down and picks up a shell. He hands it to the boy, who is dragging a red plastic bucket across the sand. “Here. What about this one?”
Bill assesses the offering intently. “No Daddy,” he says firmly, “It’s broken here, see.”
It is late when I see you moving into the flat above the pub opposite. Must be past 11, because I hear the doors swinging open, hot blue noise gulping for air.
