“PARKLAND”

by Claire Scully

26 July - 3 October 2021

Artist Statement

Parkland is the soft edges of a hard city structure. A place where system and uniform meets freeform and disorder. Parkland is the space in-between, filling the gaps, perpetually opportunistic and persistent with unwavering determination. The slowness of inanimate presence, overlooked and underfoot.

Parkland looks at the connection and relationship between people and their environment, in terms of the urban landscape. This work explores what impact we have on it and in turn the impact it has on us. We shape our lives around the rules of engagement of ‘everyday’, a cacophony of existence walking carved out lines of behaviour. Parkland shows where those lines get blurry, leaving traces of that which is outside of cultural norms or standards. Our cities are the shell inside which so much life happens, history is written, politics is fought and lost/won, ideology paraded and disenchantment abounds. The natural inclination for collective disobedience evidenced in the worn-out traces of cut-throughs and short-cuts in the well trodden thread bare corners.

For the travellers within this landscape there is a continuous flow of information, a multi sensory experience. Messages are everywhere, written and read, consumed by the viewer both consciously and subconsciously. Scrawled across an old wall, under a bridge, on a bus stop or one of the no longer relevant phone boxes. Messages of hope, of defiance, of protest, of connection, of affiliation and of humour. Communication of a more subtle nature is absorbed in the form of the carefully and intentionally landscaped structure of possession. What little ownership people do have is fiercely protected and for those with very little the options are very few, fitting in what available space there is.

Parkland is also a place where people reconnect and catch up, perhaps with an old friend but maybe more importantly to catch up with themselves and with nature. Parkland isn’t about the wide open, but more about the green veins that run through a city, the arteries of earth and soil. Finding a quiet space in between an old fence and a Hornbeam and being consumed by the land.

Parkland is both familiar and unknown all at once. Familiarity breeds contempt… But does it though? On pondering this proverb with its sentiment as old as the hills it leads me to ask: Where does that leave us? being creatures of habit after all. In essence this relates to the idea that a close connection to or holding extensive knowledge about someone or in this case something, being a place can lead to lack of respect or even resentment. But taking a moment to unpick the ‘contempt’ a little, I’m not entirely sure that for most of us familiarity does breed contempt. It would be fair to say that the modern world is possibly a little more complex than that. Familiarity, in this instance, breeds a multitude of feelings and behaviours often in contradiction to each other; Affection and disdain, complacency and interest, safety and insecurity, monotony and difference, comfort and agitation.

The environment of Parkland is illustrated using an intensely detailed drawing approach, though many scenes are full and at times overwhelming they are carefully structured. Intensity and quality of line is the focus, to be lost in or consumed by the space or indeed the lack there of. There are rarely any people in Parkland mostly the evidence of them. My trips are solitary and introspective in their meanderings much like a ‘dérive’ but as a solitary act, not in defiance or as a means to an end but one of compulsion and habit.

I Spy With My Little Eye

Exhibition Essay by Teri Barnes

In Claire Scully’s exhibition Parkland at Melhop Gallery º7077, there are so many intricate details in her drawings one can be overwhelmed in the best way possible. Finding inspiration along pathways both easily marked as well as hard-to-find throughout her neighborhood, Scully illustrates how man and environment interact and create her urban landscape. She says, “Parkland isn’t about the wide open, but more about the green veins that run through a city, the arteries of earth and soil.” This altered landscape that we see so often in the western U.S. is universal to her London home, as shown in these pen and ink drawings highlighted with graffiti mingling with foliage and traces of rubbish we leave behind.

“Highgate Wood Morning Light” greets the viewer with enticing graphic contrast in the entrance of the gallery–all but two pieces are drawn solely in black and white. The large scale (almost five feet by six and a half feet) makes the piece vibrate off the wall with the intensity of marks. While these are two-dimensional works, the amount of detail gives them depth that doesn’t seem real. You can feel the light and shadow playing together as if it was a photograph.

A grouping of long panel drawings in the show reveal the dichotomy of man-made versus nature. In “Ally Pally Edgelands 02” we see a spare fence barricading us from nature and yet you want to see what lurks behind the trees. In “Parkland Railway Traces” and “Nature’s Boundary Grows” we see what Scully calls “Messages of hope, of defiance, of protest, of connection, of affiliation and of humour,” graffiti that has become part of the landscape and incorporated into the visual language. And in “Archway Road Boundary” we see how that spare fence can turn into a brick wall–blocking us out yet still the shadow of the tree leaves its mark on the hard surface. With each of these drawings you are pulled in close to examine the fine details. The stunning amount of care and time is easily recognized with each mark, sometimes light and sometimes repeated into blackness.

Opposite these scenes of urban landscape are drawings of crunched soda cans–more simple in their subject matter, but still as detailed as their wall counterparts. One can imagine that these cans might have been picked up along the trail in one of these Parkland settings. Each fold and wrinkle in the can are so crisp and clear you can almost hear the aluminum bending. Scully finds interest in the mundane and overlooked slices of humanity, finding that it all adds up to a conversation about what we see and what holds importance to us in our daily lives–what we throw away can deserve a second look. She speaks of “The slowness of inanimate presence, overlooked and underfoot.”

“Queens Wood” seems like the pies de resistance in the show, a landscape that you can get lost in and spend hours dreaming of stepping into and exploring. The depth of detail is astounding and the way the trees and grass settle into the background extend the page past the wall. This piece shows the skill of Scully’s hand in her art practice–each mark laid down with intention, honoring her home and neighborhood with the vision she shares with us. She says, “To find beauty where you are is an important part of living in the moment.”

We are invited to watch Scully in action as she creates her detailed drawings, a chance to be mesmerized by the time it takes to make a full piece. We get to see “Queens Wood” in progress and watch the paper fill with leaves and branches, changing from white to black in an instant. Hearing nature sounds from speakers resonates throughout the gallery, adding to the adventure of strolling through Scully’s settings.

In the one of the pieces containing color, “Undergrowth 2”, the hint of blue peeking out from a shroud of leaves makes us zoom in on the hidden things we leave behind. These afterthoughts show how we treat our environment and how they have become accepted as reality. Scully states, “We shape our lives around the rules of engagement of ‘everyday’, a cacophony of existence walking carved out lines of behaviour. Parkland shows where those lines get blurry, leaving traces of that which is outside of cultural norms or standards.”

What I find most interesting in Scully’s work for this exhibition is how she speaks to a place she has known all her life and how by taking time to really look at all the nooks and crannies she has been presented with a myriad of visual nuggets. She says, “I am interested in how memory and personal experience of a place connects thought to emotion. How we take apart and rebuild worlds both in reality and internally, and I explore this through the act of drawing.” Scully shows us that whether we have lived in the same place all our lives or have called many places home, if we explore our surroundings we see so much more than just “a place”–we can see how inhabitants (both man and nature) impact the world around us and create a dialogue of home.

 Claire Scully

Short bio

Claire Scully is a multi-disciplinary professional Illustrator / author / educator specialising in drawing. With a focus on pattern and line and how images are constructed through details and the importance of the minutia within visual language. In her own personal research and drawing practice she strives to answer the questions of ‘what lies beyond the horizon’ by looking at the notion of landscape, memory [individual and collective] and projections of the unknown.

Claire's work explores a variety of themes including the relationship between ‘humans’ and the environment, the ‘silent struggle’ between Nature and Humanity. Her work explores ideas of personal / collective identity through visual language.She has a keen interest in traditional drawing methods and classical techniques and its place within modern contemporary illustration / image generation. Her multidisciplinary nature of drawing / image generation, also explores the importance of inspiration, in as much as what you draw from as draw with, crossing the boundaries into collage, moving image and sound. Her work plays with narratives and scale and moves through strange utopian [dystopian] worlds and parallel universes with juxtapositions of the unexpected.