Kathryn Maple – A Year of Drawings

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Thanks to the Painting Prize, the Walker is the perfect venue to see high-quality painting throughout the year, yet Under a Hot Sun is an absolute highlight in Liverpool’s art calendar. Laith McGregor, Holly Mills, Igor Moritz, Benjamin Murphy, Mark Mullin, Dominic Musa, Dominic Myatt, I’m not sure if I should admit that I have long been a fan of Kathryn Maple’s work at the start of a review of her show, having followed her artistic career for the last four or five years. Then again, art critique is an inherently subjective activity, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves, or our readers, otherwise. It also includes a private collection of Nash’s drawings, paintings, photographs and ephemera that have barely ever been shown in public and which offer a direct insight into the life of Paul Nash and his brother John.

The painting will also be included in the collection of the Walker art gallery, which organises what is Britain’s biggest painting prize. More generally, New Works at the Walkerattempts to demystify the gallery’s acquisition process. ‘A lot of what happens in galleries is hidden’, says Petheram. ‘But the collection doesn’t just appear. There is a process to how and why things get into the gallery. We want to show that we are actively collecting.’ This active process is driven by varied voices. ‘These decisions are made by curators and conservators talking together. We all have biases and interests, but as a rule, we look out for work and have an idea of what we want to collect. And that is driven by the Collecting Policy.’ Winning first prize in 2020 with ‘The Common’, now part of the gallery’s permanent collection, Kathryn is the second John Moores Painting Prize winner to be given the opportunity to present work in a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. This exhibition both in subject matter and in organisation challenges the concept and mechanisms of how museum’s work. It asks the question ‘why if museums are for everyone is it only a select group of people who choose what is collected and displayed?’ Focussing on the extreme environmental situation the world is currently facing, Kathryn’s exhibition Under a Hot Sun is a collection of work created following the artist’s success in the painting prize.

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The Walker Art Gallery has announced Kathryn Maple the winner of the John Moores Painting Prize 2020 with her vibrant work, The Common. This exhibition focuses on the move by French artists in the 1870s to the safely of England. These émigrés fled from insurrection in Paris and the Franco-Prussian war. It includes work by Monet, Tissot, Pissarro, Dalou, Sisley, Derain and Legros. Since winning the prize I have been able to rent a bigger studio and buy a bit more paint and canvas, which has allowed me to find more freedom in my work. My paintings have certainly reached a few more people and I am excited to have the opportunity to show my recently finished paintings in one space together at The Walker Art Gallery.” The auction closes at 9pm, Mon 5th July. However, if a bid is placed in the last two minutes, the auction end time will extend on that lot for an additional two minutes, or until all bidding has ceased. This is called Popcorn Bidding or Bidder Extension and gives all bidders an equal chance of winning. Bid Increments Direct community input into acquisition-making is not part of the process, but it is something ‘interesting and positive’ that Petheram ‘would love to see in the future’. The Walker had input from LGBTQI+ groups as part of the aforementioned Coming Outexhibition, and the Sandbach Research and Display Project – a steering group of seven local young people from marginalised communities – has been reinterpreting the Walker’s sculpture gallery in relation to Liverpool’s colonial history, particularly the Sandbach family’s links to both slavery and art collection. But whether the gallery would incorporate such collaboration in their collecting process remains an open question. ‘That would be great’, Petheram says. ‘The appetite is there, and generally galleries are heading that way.’ She notes that the Walker held a similar exhibition to New Works at the Walker about ten years ago, and they are now considering showing new acquisitions each decade. But in the face of substantial government cuts to the arts, they will have to wait and see. Nonetheless, she remains hopeful: ‘we are an actively collecting institution, and we want to continue.’

Maple’s paintings are based on landscapes, both imagined and travelled through that are reconstructed into paintings. I am interested in exploring the potentials of drawing, mark making and colour. My most recent paintings investigate our relationship to the environment, interrogating the present and revealing something of a changed space. The 2020 jury represent a diverse group of artists and creative influencers: Hurvin Anderson; Michelle Williams Gamaker; Alison Goldfrapp; Jennifer Higgie and Gu Wenda. We are meeting the day after her win. Maple, tall, striking, with a short crop of brown curls, is still “buzzing” and has barely slept since she was told about it. “I went into a cold flurry!” she says. She got so distracted she fell down the steps in her flat, which she shares with her girlfriend, a fellow painter she met while studying at the Royal Drawing School in London.I just keep going and going and going’ … Maple, who is also training to be a tree surgeon. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

A Showcase of Paintings + Design, Albert Bridge Studios, June- July 2019 (Group and Solo Show in 2017) The above image is by Kathryn Maple, who is interested in the possibilities mark making and image making provide. She combines densely detailed areas with sparse space forming work that mimics tapestries without using any thread, instead she relies on paint and line. She graduated from Prince’s Drawing School Postgraduate Programme in 2013 and won the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 2014.However, the exhibition ends up containing an intriguing tension between the French artists who returned after a short time to their homeland and those who welcomed and were welcomed in return by the Victorian art scene. Partly this draws a thematic line between conservative work, which played to the British sensibility, and budding Impressionism, which was beginning to strongly push boundaries on the continent.