After a gruesome summer of fires, evacuation, innumerable covid tests, and just a touch of stress.... it is my great pleasure to announce my solo show
Melhop Gallery º7077 from 22 Oct - 2 Nov, 2021
Closing reception is on the 30 Oct 4-6pm
come on by!!!!!!
invisible painting from Harvest, and a cast resin hand from Contact
installation view of Harvest and Contact at Losing Touch exhibition
Losing Touch consists of several bodies of work in various mediums exploring presence and absence in real and virtual spaces. It engages with tensions present in and between communication, self-hood and control. The project originates in recollections of the intensity of childhood sensory perception and the diminishment of that intensity as a result of the augmentation of those perceptions with photography, screens and virtual spaces. The promise and lure of these technologies of the self, attract more and more of our attention, time, and connection, to the detriment paradoxically of physical human interaction and material states such as sleep and self-care.
installation view of Harvest and Contact at Losing Touch exhibition
Detail of the installation view of Losing Touch, invisible paintings from Harvest and resin cast hands from Contact
New bodies of work in other mediums under the same umbrella theme include; whispers across time...(embroidery, monotypes and pen and ink drawings) and Timestable Girl, (video installation), both on view at the gallery.
The Exhibition Page will be updated regularly with more images and video of the show.
Timestable Girl
whispers across time...
Whisper 4, girl + bucket, 2021, cotton thread on British linen, 12.5” x 29”, Whisper 5, girl + bow, 2021, cotton thread on British linen, 12.5” x 29”, Whisper 6, girl + chair, 2021, 2021, cotton thread on British linen, 14” x 29
detail of Whisper 6, girl + chair, 2021, 2021, blind contour drawing in cotton thread on British linen, 14” x 29”
Losing Touch exhibition essay
by Teri Barnes
When is a line more than a line? When it connects us through time and space? When it becomes unrecognizable as a “line”? When it becomes just another blip on a screen? These are all possible answers in Frances Melhop’s exhibition Losing Touch at Melhop Gallery º7077.
Through multiple mediums we see how a line can transform into figures, transcend from social media and touching a screen, and tell time in an ephemeral way. Upon entering the gallery we encounter Harvest and Contact, two bodies of work that combine to tell the story of the screen–both virtually and dimensionally. The work in Harvest is made of multi-sized black paintings that have a texture of fingerprints and symbols, words, and emojis that represent the desired effects of living a social media life. We constantly seek approval from known and unknown people to make us feel important and validated. The black-on-black of these works make the viewer shift their angle to see the “language.” Melhop explains these as “the traces we leave both voluntarily and involuntarily throughout the world.”
Contact utilizes a series of hands in different positions related to how we use our phone screens. Melhop relates these hands as, “the gestures we make while using our phones and devices look more like caresses from our angle but from the point of view of the screen, they are confronting, aggressive types of gestures.” The sterile white of the hands adds to the coldness of this aggressive touch and the height of where the hands are mounted invade the viewer’s space as if they are about to touch us. The hands are all casts of Melhop’s own hand, making visible the literal work of “the artist’s hand” in the artwork. She says she thinks “about the human value of touch, and that working by hand, producing artifacts born of touch as a process, involves time and slow contemplation.” Both of these bodies of work speak to how involved we are in our screen and how we leave both visible and invisible marks behind. Melhop says, “the promise and lure of these technologies of the self, attract more and more of our attention, time, and connection, to the detriment paradoxically of physical human interaction and material states such as sleep and self-care.”
With Times Table Girl, two silk fabric pieces hang in front of a projection of a young girl (she is also printed on the silk) reciting her times tables for the viewer. The video is both sincere and vulnerable, with a stutter here and there as the numbers keep growing and growing. This work also speaks to the passage of time, making us think about learning in school and how the lessons of our past can so easily be forgotten.
Melhop’s newest work involves using blind contour drawings as inspiration and fuel to bring new life to her past use of tintype photographs of Victorian girls. Whispers Across Time… takes the images of the girls from those tintypes and re-envisions them as both embroidered, drawn, and mono printed forms. The embroidered figures have their own room in the gallery – stitched onto British linen, they are both fragile and ethereal. Using the blind contour method of drawing, Melhop abstracts the original figure making the young girl seem “old” yet still young at the same time. She says this effect seems to “unravel age.” By drawing with vanishing ink, Melhop had to work fast to complete the stitching which changes the contours of the drawings again in this intricate process. We can see traces of recognizable features through the abstractions – eyes here, distorted feet there. There is almost a Picasso-like twist to how the bodies form together. On its own is a stitching of Melhop’s own Father, a sweet gesture of family portraiture using this abstracted method.
Similar to these stitched works are another iteration of the blind contour figures in another room of the gallery. These works on paper take the inspiration from tintypes again – this time linking the subtle colors of the surface of the emulsion on metal as you shift the plate, to using muted colors of gouache paint as the backdrop for the figures. Melhop says by using these different methods of re-creating the Victorian girls from the tintypes, she is getting at the “essence” of the tintype girls. They are still related to photography – Melhop’s original art-making method, yet dig deeper into the meaning behind the “portrait” and how it was supposed to capture the soul of a person. In the hallway linking these two bodies of work are monotype prints with bright fuschia-colored dresses and blind contour figures embodying them. Melhop is thinking about the “Empty Dress”– how the style, iconography, and meaning behind this article of clothing can speak volumes. The backgrounds of the dresses and figures are multiple layers of color – mimicking the thin veil of silk from her previous pieces. This newest work comes from Melhop’s recent time spent at the “In Cahoots” Artist Residency. She says she is “loving drawing again, as well as printmaking and photography.” She is finding surprises in the new work she is making and is inspired by both artists represented by the gallery (the fiber works of Stewart Francis Easton and Karen Hampton) as well as local artists (the drawings of Wes Lee and prints by Nolan Preece).
All of these bodies of work create a conversation about the figure – both real and imagined, and how we reveal ourselves to the world. We knowingly and sometimes unknowingly allow ourselves to be framed in a certain light and are transformed by the responses we receive. The through line from self to civilization can be as simple as a fingerprint or as complicated as an abstracted drawing. Melhop brings all these lines together to tell a compelling story of the visual connections of past, present, and future and how we translate them.
Whisper portrait 2, 2021, 1/1 monotype print, ink on BFK Reeves, 18” x 18”
A fleeting visit to the exhibition “Losing Touch” by Frances Melhop
It is all very exciting seeing the exhibition installed with different bodies of work talking to each other !!!
Looking forward to seeing you at the gallery...
Frances
contact frances@melhopgallery.com for visits outside of the reception hours