TO ALL THE KINGS WHO HAVE NO CROWNS

30 JANUARY – 3 APRIL 2022
CARL FREEDMAN GALLERY, MARGATE
CURATED BY JENNIFER GILBERT

Address: 28 Union Crescent, Margate, Kent, CT9 1NS
Website: carlfreedman.com
Dates: 30 January – 3 April 2022
Opening Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6pm
Otherwise by appointment only. FREE entrance

Access: This venue is wheelchair accessible – follow the signage outside the venue near to the steps, ring the bell for the Gallery, and a staff member will be able to show you around to the accessible entrance | Large print texts are available at reception | BSL interpretation is available below.

Carl Freedman presents Jennifer Lauren Gallery, showcasing seventeen international, distinct contemporary practices, revealing a diverse collection of art forms including drawing, painting, ceramics, embroidery and found object sculptures.

The title To all the Kings who have no Crowns (taken from a Kate Bradbury artwork) represents the seventeen self-taught and disabled artists chosen who, despite being skilled artists, are yet to receive the recognition they rightly deserve within contemporary arts. Jennifer is passionate about creating awareness and gaining respect for these and many other similar artists.

The artwork exhibited, whilst appearing highly individual upon first viewing, has many similarities in the way it is produced. Each artist revels in the creative mark making process and, whilst the finished product is important, it is the act of creation itself and being given a voice, that many of the artists value most. Driven and often compelled to create, each generally unplanned piece gives us insights into the artist’s subconscious, values, or beliefs, with heavy layering, detail, rhythm, and repetition being the signature components.

The exhibiting artists are: Kate Bradbury, Éric Derochette, Robert Fischer, Joe Goldman, Hakunogawa, Nnena Kalu, Norimitsu Kokubo, Pradeep Kumar, Dan Miller, Raymond Morris, Margaret Mousseau, Chris Neate, Masao Obata, Valerie Potter, CJ Pyle, Shinichi Sawada, and Terence Wilde.

Below is a walk-through of the exhibition (press CC for the subtitles), including artist information and panoramic views of each room right at the end.

Overview

Artists

KATE BRADBURY
London based Kate Bradbury (b.1961) is a prolific creator of a diverse range of artworks: from detailed ink scribblings over a metre in length to sculptural twirling dervishes made from found objects. Since 2003, the motivation for her creative endeavours comes from a variety of sources but is particularly drawn from objects she finds. Each piece tells a story plucked from her imagination. Having no formal art training and intuitively working day and night, Bradbury creates her pieces losing all sense of time.

ÉRIC DEROCHETTE
Éric Derochette (b.1967) arrived at la ‘S’ Grand Atelier, Belgium in 2005. He uses pencils until the lead is gone, sometime leaving furrows in the paper. In his latest works, he uses bold colours, freely mixing mediums, and filling the paper with bold, confident lines.

ROBERT FISCHER
Robert Fischer (b.1976) has worked in the Geyso20 art studio in Braunschweig two days a week, since 2004. He does not communicate with others about his works, leaving the viewer to make their own judgments. Fischer works in a combination of pencil, crayon and felt pen. It is said that he begins his drawings with a graphic framework that reminds audiences of houses, building plans or machines, then covering his works with lines, letters, numbers, and symbols.

JOE GOLDMAN
Joe Goldman (b.1995) has worked in the Project Art Works studio in Hastings for four years. His work explores a variety of drawing and painting materials to create dynamic pieces distinguished by his assertive mark-making, which reflects the focussed energy he puts into his work and brings to the studio. Goldman has developed a defined process of layering marks simultaneously on different pieces.

HAKUNOGAWA
Tokyo based Hakunogawa (b.1992), has had a fondness for drawing and doodling since she was a small child. Around the age of 21, she began a serious undertaking with her self-expression. Whenever she has a free moment in a café, on the train or bus, she will be sketching impressions of what she sees or imagines. The majority of her artwork is in black and white as she cannot afford colour materials.

NNENA KALU
Nnena Kalu (b.1966) is a prolific artist working from ActionSpace’s supported studio within Studio Voltaire since 1999. Over two decades Kalu has created a vast body of sculptural and 2D artworks and developed a live, performative element to her art practice. She is driven by an instinctive urge to build repeated marks and forms, creating intensely layered, visually impactful artworks with dense colours and compacted, flowing lines.

NORIMITSU KOKUBO
From primary school, Japan based Norimitsu Kokubo (b.1995) began to draw on notebooks, with the act of drawing providing him with a distraction from the often-chaotic noise at school. Kokubo’s work often contain cities and buildings, cars, aeroplanes, ships and people... all themes from his childhood or from photographs he has taken on trips. His complete disregard for traditional perspectives invites us into an entirely new world and a new sensation. He draws at home and on the move whilst in Japan.

PRADEEP KUMAR
India based Pradeep Kumar (b. 1973), was born Deaf and unable to speak. He struggled at school and his concentration wandered, leading him to carve chalk at the back of the class. One day, on finding a matchstick, he attempted to carve it with a razor blade. From this moment his family encouraged Kumar. He taught himself how to use coloured pencils and oil paint to colour his bird and figurative matchstick and toothpick carved works.

DAN MILLER
California based Dan Miller (b.1961) has been working out of the Creative Growth Art Center in California since 1992. Miller’s artwork is composed of obsessive overlays of words and imagery that often build to the point of abstraction. Each work contains a written record of Miller’s interests in things like hardware stores, lightbulbs, electrical sockets, and familiar people. Largely non-verbal, Miller transforms text into graphic elements, and employs an abstracted visual language as a tool of inquiry and expression.

RAYMOND MORRIS
Raymond Morris (b.1951) works out of his council flat in London. He started painting in his early thirties, and since then every space in the flat has been covered. Since witnessing a spirit emerge from one of his paintings, he has used his art to express the spiritual forces that he feels exert a great influence on his daily life. Morris sees art as something miraculous and as a form of meditation, whereby the mind disengages and allows the spirit to take over.

MARGARET MOUSSEAU
Margaret Mousseau (b.1955) resides in Vermont, only taking up drawing in 2016, when in her early sixties. The physical and mental hardships she suffered in childhood and throughout adulthood often manifest as subjects in her work. Drawing has become a way to work though some of this hardship and the profound affect it has had on her life. Many of the works are comical and whimsically address current events and her daily routine.

CHRIS NEATE
Chris Neate (b.1954) has been developing his style of drawing since his late teens. Whilst creating, Neate has no idea or plan of what will appear on the page, with his work being described as ‘automatic drawing.’ Working from intuition, his drawings flow freely and Neate can lose himself in his pieces for hours. Upon finishing pieces, Neate spends time studying them to try and work out the meaning of what he has produced.

MASAO OBATA
Masao Obata (b.1943) only began drawing in his sixties, in his residential care facility in Japan. His strong urge to create led him to source pieces of large cardboard from the kitchens to draw on. Often creating in red pencil, Obata stated that for him this was the colour of happiness and fulfilment. The major themes in Obata’s work include family and marriage, both of which eluded Obata during his lifetime.

VALERIE POTTER
Although always creative, Valerie Potter (b.1954), did not consider herself an art-maker. At 19, Potter enrolled at a UK art school, but found it restrictive and left, continuing her drawing at home. Her cross-stitch work often ties together symbols of birth, death, and love with non-religious iconography. The line drawings on cloth (as she describes them) use graphic text and image to describe the dense inner monologues and dialogues of her analytic mind.

C.J. PYLE
C.J. Pyle (b.1956) grew up in Indiana. His artistic endeavours began when he was at school, where Pyle learnt about colour and artistic techniques from library books. Around 2000, Pyle tired of what he was doing, and decided to explore new artistic territory, feeling something had hitherto been missing in his art. He started developing his now well-known portraits on the back of LP covers.

SHINICHI SAWADA
Born in 1982, Shinichi Sawada has attended a Japanese social welfare organisation since 2000. He divides his time working in the sculpture hut up in the mountains, and in the institution’s bakery. When Sawada works, he demonstrates such confidence and assuredness that it seems he has already envisioned how his final pieces will look, even though there are no drawings. With his delicate hands and fingers, he builds up each sculpture in clay, working silently and confidently. Sawada takes around four days to complete each piece.

TERENCE WILDE
London based Terence Wilde (b.1963) gained a degree in textiles but retrained through Croydon’s voluntary mental health services. Wilde draws on his own mental health journey, from the perspective of an adult survivor, in all his black and white works. Working mainly in pen drawing or ceramic, Wilde describes his works as responses to different periods in his life, showing struggles, fears, and dreams.

Resources

Deaf artist Rebecca Vaughan explains in BSL about this new exhibition ‘To all the Kings who have no Crowns.’

Deaf artist Rebecca Vaughan gives short artist biographies in BSL of all 17 artists in the 'To all the Kings who have no Crowns' exhibition.

Events

Studio support for artists talk (part one), online over zoom, with Sarah Galander Meyer talking about Dan Miller, Michiel de Jaeger talking about Éric Derochette, and Mark Daniels will be talking about Joe Goldman / Wednesday 9 February / 6–7pm GMT
Nnena Kalu will be showcasing her practice through live drawing in the space. This will be filmed for those that miss out, with the new drawings becoming part of the exhibition. The date of her live drawing is Saturday 26 February 2022 / 12–4pm GMT (break 1:30-2:30pm)
Curators Tour live in the space with Jennifer Gilbert / Saturday 26 February 2022 / 2–3pm GMT
Artists Talk (part two) online over zoom, with Chris Neate, CJ Pyle (via zoom) and Terence Wilde / Sunday 27 February 2022 / 6–7pm GMT
BSL (British Sign Language) Tour live in the space with Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura / Saturday 12 March 2022 / 2–3pm GMT

Talks associated with the exhibition will be uploaded here. To see full screen, please click on the four white arrows. BSL interpretation is embedded from the day into the recording.

PDF transcript here // WORD transcript here

PDF transcript here // WORD transcript here

Timelapse of Nnena Kalu live drawing in the gallery space in January 2022 – this is day one of two drawing days

Press