World Art Collections Exhibition

Mary Webb: Journeys in Colour
at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

The largest ever exhibition of works by the artist Mary Webb opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, on Tuesday 27 September and runs until Sunday 4 December. Writing in the Observer, art critic Tim Hilton described Mary Webb as “a little known but treasurable artist”. Mary Webb has been producing bold abstract work for nearly 50 years as well as teaching painting at art schools in Harrogate and Norwich.

Journeys in Colour celebrates Webb’s work from 1965 to the present day and includes 60 paintings together with screen prints, drawings and collages. A new series of works never seen before, which have been inspired by a trip to Utah, USA, will be on display. The exhibition also includes a number of works by the artist from the UEA Collection of Abstract and Constructivist, Art, Architecture and Design, which is permanently housed at the Centre.

Journeys in Colour runs alongside the continuing exhibition, The Face of the Artist: Photographs by John Hedgecoe. A ‘fantasy coffin’ from Ghana, which was specially created for Griff Rhys Jones as part of the BBC television series Hidden Treasures of Africa, will also be exhibited at the Centre this autumn as part of a display that will explore ideas about the art and culture of the Ghana.

“Colour is my main concern, and the emotional and spatial sensations it can evoke, frequently linked to the memory of place. From quite early on I wanted to see what one could do with colour on its own. I like making two or more colours work very hard together to make a lot of things happen. At the same time there are a great number of things I wish to avoid, one the hardest is avoiding having a centre, or part of the picture that claims attention more than the rest. Rather I want the colour to set up a process of renewal where relationships change with the looking. First assumptions are confounded the longer the painting is contemplated and this is how I like to them of them, as objects of contemplation” – Mary Webb, artist.

Mary Webb’s work is abstract and striking, the designs composed of squares and rectangles using a bold palette of colours. Colour is evenly applied within each section and the shape of her work is always square. Webb has the sensibility of a landscapist, much of her work produced as reflections on her travels, naming her works after the places that inspired them. Her most recent series of works relate to a trip to Utah in USA. Other localities that form the basis and titles for works in the exhibition include Corsica, Crete, Isle of Manhattan, Russia, San Luis, and San Filippo. Other works relate to places closer to where she lives such as Dunwich in Suffolk and Brancaster in Norfolk.

The exhibition reveals Mary Webb’s continued interest in experimenting with colour. The Spring Colour Study series (1993), produced when Webb wasn’t travelling and was working on generating ideas in her studio, is a typical example of her setting herself a challenge and posing herself the question “what would happen if…?”. She explains that the “choice of colour was an attempt to find a red red, a blue blue etc” and that the black lines around the shapes were “the result of curiosity about what would happen if I put them there” commenting that “up to then colours did not have a boundary round them. It made the shapes very distinct but hard to arrange”.

Mary Webb studied in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1958 to 1963. She then took a postgraduate course at Chelsea School of Art from 1963 to 1964 before teaching at Harrogate for two years. From 1966 until 1990, Webb taught painting at Norwich University College of the Arts (then known as Norwich School of Art). Mary Webb met Sonia Delaunay in Paris during the 1960s and cites her as an influence. The exhibition this autumn includes a work by Webb from Centre’s UEA Collection, which explicitly acknowledges the importance of Delaunay, entitled Hommage à Sonia Delaunay (1969).

Journeys in Colour runs alongside The Face of the Artist: Photographs by John Hedgecoe. The exhibition celebrates the Sainsbury Centre’s acquisition of more than 450 portraits by Hedgecoe, one of the most significant photographers in the history of British photography. It includes photographs of artists such as Dame Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney and Sir Stanley Spencer. A central focus of the show is images of artists including Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, who feature in the Centre’s collections, alongside their works.

Also during the autumn, a Ghanaian coffin in the form of television camera will be the unusual focal point of a new display about Ga art and culture at the Sainsbury Centre. The coffin, which is remarkably realistic despite its scale, was specially created last year for Griff Rhys Jones as part of the BBC television series Hidden Treasures of Africa. It is the first time since the television programme was broadcast that the general public will be able to see ‘fantasy coffin’. The display will make links with African objects in the Centre’s Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, and in the spirit of the Collection, show that art can be found in all manner of objects.