PAT THORNTON

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 Catalogue Articles

3D 89

Blind Machines

SWEET HOME

PIE IN THE SKY

 I would like my life to make sense and I behave as if it does although everything tells me that all is arbitary and chaotic. My paintings refer to the rawness of this chance -ridden existence . I put together unrelated objects to make a new reality which feels more comfortable to me. So much of life is the 'fated' connection of people and events. Someone would not have been born if their parents had not met in a cinema queue. Someone would not have been murdered if they had not broken down on a motorway. There are no people in my paintings, I find their presence in domestic objects whose existence is neither absurd nor tragic.

PAT THORNTON

From the Catalogue of 3D 89, National Open Sculpture Exhibition at Watermans Art Centre and The Small mansion Arts Centre, West London, 1989 PAT THORNTON

Expresso

Snap

I have always been strongly attracted to certain kinds of machines - the type you find in old garages under layers of cobwebs and dust. Electric fans, D.D.T. pumps, paint burners, paraffin stoves and coffee percolators have recently been finding their way into my sculpture. I work in sheet steel, using it very much as if it were paper. I transfer the drawing directly onto the metal and cut it out, then it is bent into shape, held in position and riveted or spot welded. I have chosen the strongest material which can still be manipulated by hand, curving it round a form to make cones and cylinders or bending it using clamps and leverage. Sometimes I paint the metal with oil paint which can look disconcertingly like paper again. It is not only the shape of the machines which attracts me but their economy of design, minimal and functional like hieroglyphs of the lost language. Sometimes I think my sculptures look sad like the perfectly preserved cast off skins of animals which have gone to live somewhere else.

From 'AND' magazine the journal of art and education:

by PAT THORNTON

The Sculpture exhibition 3D 89 held jointly at Watermans Art Centre, Brentford and at Gunnersbury Park has now finished It represented an ambitious effort by Alison McLeod and Fred Lightfoot to present to the public new ideas in contemporary sculpture The work was drawn from all over great Britain by open submissior.

There were few 'names' and many of the exhibitors were women, which meant that a whole generation of sculptors were being presented.

As I had been away for the whole exhibition, I was wondering how it had gone down with the public and critics. There was not as much critical coverage considering the scale of the exhibition as I had expected but then the two sites were not in the heart of the West End!

When I had collected my sculpture on the last day of the Watermans 3D89. I heard an elderly male visitor chuckle: "l don't know what it's supposed to be but its reminiscent of what l was wearing a few weeks ago." He was standing in front of Darrell Viner's 'Tide of Emotions', an exfraordinary sculpture which consisted of a metal frame holding a bladder of latex which contained a fluid which was made to fill up and empty repeatedly as a motor turned the mechanism.

Here was an exhibition which l felt provided a rich experience of exciting new ideas in contemporary sculpture and yet here was this yawning gap between the artist's intention and the perception of the viewer.

The question seemed to be - Should the artist be making work which was more accessible to the public, or should the public be more visually educated to be more receptive to new visual ideas? Is there something wrong with a school system which forces children to choose at an early age to give up art if they want to take another subject which clashes with it on the timetable?

Art does not just hold up a mirror to our emotions - it also transforms our experiences, even difficult and painful ones, so that we can re-assimilate them, own them.

When artists were controlled by the church or court and their subject matter narrowly defined, they were regarded as magicians. Now the artist has freedom of subject matter and independence of patronage, he is free to attend to the depiction of many other things including his own mental states, and can develop private languages to depict them. The irony is that Art is now regarded by the 'consumer' as goods, namely decor - something like a rug to create a soothing, agreeable bland backdrop to his life... Confronted by an exhibition like this. the consumer is confused -the work is not cosy like a familiar pair of slippers, but seems harsh, provoking, challenging. Perhaps greater exposure, like advertising will spring open a whole new world for the viewer.

The artists' statements brilliantly elucidated their work. Many addressed themselves to questions around our present quality of life. Leroy Peacock had many pieces which transformed the environment around Gunnersbury Park, wallpapering and furnishing with fabrics corners of ruined buildings. He was asking some serious questions, rather wittily about our attempts to get a feeling of security from our environment. 'We seem to spend our whole lives creating the illusion of permanence that Its ALL RIGHT REALLY whereas 'We race time until we (individually) fall off the end.' He describes our cosy living spaces as a thin skin of decor which is "changed, sloughed like a snake."

Rosie Leventon's work is on a related theme asking questions about the supposedly solid ground under our feet. 'In reality it seems there is an infrastructure of subterranean lakes, rivers, mines, sewers.., we are suspended above the earth on a man made false floor" In her two pieces the floor was literally raised up, one floating on water, a strangely disorienting effect and the other a section of grass raised out of the lawn into the shape of a shallow bowl. Both pieces were large enough to contain several people, and the strangest conversations were heard...

The enormous variety of ideas in this exhibition made it an important landmark for sculpture and the organisers hope it will become a regular event - there is no sculptural equivalent of the 'John Moores'. If it does, it will surely bring us up to a higher level of awareness of sculpture as an important part of our everyday life.

From the catalogue of Blind Machines, Personal Myths at the Clevelans Gallery Middlesbrough 1991

Sokari Douglas Camp, Peter Ellis, Oliver Langham, Tim Lewis, Pat Thornton

Patricia Thornton's machines are not really machines in that they have np operating mechanism, but they are made of steel, a material which has been used for making much art throughout this century, but which until recently was restricted in its use to the making of abstract art. Her machines are everyday in what they represent, but larger than life in scale. They are like a microscope's eye view of a machine. this gives them a new kind of meaning. They have become a rediscovery of those things which we take for granted, and as objects they also seem to take on a life of their own.

Perhaps their potency grows when we discover that many of them are items which Thornton was forbidden to touch when she was a small child. Her father was a model maker in his spare time, and as a small girl she loved the beautiful hand-made tools he used which all model makes acquire. her own practice of making things began in childhood with objects made from paper and stuck together with spit, which soon fell apart. Now Pat uses one of the toughest materials: steel which can still be manipolated by hand. Thornton investigates the appearance of the hidden workings of those things forbidden or remembered from childhood in an exploration of her personal and femiine history.While doing this she exposes something fresh about them to the viewer. She says: "Sometimes I think my sculptures look sad, like the pefectly preserved cast off skins of animals which have gone to live somewhere else.

SWEET HOME

Exhibition organised by Oriel Mostyn North Wales'Premier Centre for the Visual Arts, an exhibition of sculpture and installations by:

Anya Gallacio,

Pat Kaufman

Cornelia Parker

Pat Thornton

Introduction by Susan Beardsmore, gallery director

Commonplace household objects rooted in everyday activities-not monumental, their value emphasised through the historical narrativee of use-these are the subjects of Pat Thornton's attention. A coffee pot, electric fan, lawnmower or oil-can are a few of the many prosaic items which have been stripped, taken apart, analysed for their anatomical detail, turned inside out, their scale and perspective exaggerated. Then as if to elaborate the process of labour, the polish of craft, Thornton reincarnates them with sheet steel.

The new objects have a materiality and life of their own-still industrial rather than spiritual-their aura is without transcendence, they embrace ordinariness. This is reinforced by Thornton's insistence on the materiality of the object, on the special way it is made, (she works in sheet steel, welding and riveting as if it were paper), she invests the ubiquitous with the fascination of the singular.

It is taken one stage further in the more recent bronze works, in this case scale remains true to llife, but the corporeality of the object has been transformed. Thornton has elevated their status in the world through the choice of bronze, a material of permanence most often used by sculptors to celebrate and commemorate. The unlikely couplings, now and then become whimsical object-poems and offer a prolonged experience of a world we wouldn't ordinarily give a second glance. these artefacts stretch beyond the matter-of-fact and seem diametrically opposed to a world which is dominated by standardisation and mass consumption.

In Pat Thornton's sculpture, surreal juxtapositions of unassuming implements instigate a narrative. This correspondance is futher envouraged and enlarged by the nature and scale of the materials used. Steel-coated aluminium suggests domestic functionalism, but these objects have no possible use. The commemorative use of bronze seens an unlikely choice for such prosaic objects as scissors, cutleru and a tobacco pipe-case. Taken out of an everyday context, the status of these objects is elevated, connotations expanded.