Virginia Bodman - Customs House, South Shields
We went to see Sunderland University tutor Virginia Bodman’s exhibition or paintings at the Customs House in South Shields where she presented a range of paintings from different series of work even though initially she was worried about arranging all of the different works together in case they would not fit together well as the audience would not be able to know straight away the chronological order in which they were produced.
The series of paintings that Virginia talked about to us in the most depth were the series that incorporated figures into her work, especially one which was based on an old family portrait photograph even though she is not personally a fan of photography because of how it adds limitations to realism and can be too flat. She talked about how she included a horizontal figure shape into the painting that was an link to her late father who had passed before the original photo was taken and how the painting was able to show elements that weren’t there originally, also including elements from the farm where she grew up such as colours and even parts of the dirt/soil which she mixed into her paint before applying it to the canvas.
She also talked to us about a series of paintings that were based on nature and were painted from video stills, photographs and photocopies so she could focus on certain shapes and elements from her primary sources, which were taken herself. She also spoke of realising that she had feminised the landscape as before woman were excluded from nature because of it seeming to be unruly and wild compared to the fragile and pure views and opinions of women, also women were never inheriting land either.
