Introducing: Eleanor Matthews
Each month as part of DUAS Loop we are introducing a local creative, based in the North East. For our first edition we present Eleanor Matthews, an artist and organiser of Street Gallery, based in Seaham, East Durham. After studying at Durham Johnston School she studied American Studies at the University of Nottingham and then later completed an Art Foundation at Central Saint Martins, while she was working at the art college.
Amana: Eleanor, would you mind starting off by telling me a bit about you?
Eleanor: We [my husband and I] moved to Seaham from London around three years ago because I was pregnant, and we knew we wanted to be somewhere near the coast and near my family. I got an art studio when we moved up here, which is a great thing I could never afford to do in London. I think because I had my son - and now I’ve got a daughter too - it was a big, on my part, conscious thing of “I’ve got to keep going with my work.” So, strangely, I have done more work in the last few years than I have for a while – before it was always fitting it in around work and now I’ve been able to go to a studio. Particularly during a pandemic it’s kept me sane while looking after two small children.
Can you explain to me a bit about your practice as an artist?
I have always been interested in places and spaces, so I draw a lot of buildings or landscape with buildings in, or interiors. I think about the atmosphere and the history, or the imagined histories and stories. I used to do a lot of work around film locations or places which would have imagined films, so atmospheric places. I think when I draw it’s not necessarily exact… it’s quite messy and it’s trying to capture some of that atmosphere. I also find collage a sort of counterpoint to doing direct ink painting and drawing, it helps make it a bit freer. So I’ll start by putting collage layers down and then drawing or painting on top of it, or I’ll introduce an element of something that wouldn’t necessarily fit from a found image and put that in a different context. I might take an image of a person or another space and then draw around it, thinking about how those layers create a new place or environment. During lockdown I’ve worked in a similar way but on a smaller scale. I’ve gone back into the studio recently and it was nice working on a bit of a bigger scale again.
I guess collage is that process of taking images that you find in a magazine or other primary materials and making them into something else. The pictures kind of go on a journey…
It introduces the accidental. I have taken part in a few different postcard art projects. I don’t know if you’ve heard of The Bruton Correspondence school? They send people little boxes of pieces for collage. I opened it yesterday and it had some photographs in it, some old newspaper clippings and pieces of paper. I quite like the way it’s not things I’ve chosen but it’s up to me turn them into something, into another story. I like that in collage there is something pre-existing and you have to make something with it. It brings its own meaning and its own history with it. In that way [collage] is sort of collaborative. During lockdown I started doing a bit of work like that where I’d let the children draw on my paper and then I’d create work from it.
"I like that in collage there is something pre-existing and you have to make something with it. It brings its own meaning and its own history with it. In that way [collage] is sort of collaborative."
A lot of the work I do expresses feelings I wouldn’t be able to describe in words. You never know whether it comes across or not, but it’s trying to express atmospheres, a feeling that you have when you’re somewhere. People who do art are lucky because it’s a way of expressing things that aren’t necessarily rational, or things that language couldn’t quite describe. Somebody who sees it may get a sense of what you feel.
On the High Seas (2020) - collage on postcard (right)
You’ve been involved in quite a few projects during lockdown, could you tell me about some of these?
I’m a member of an artist network in Durham called Interface, and just before the lockdown people were saying “we’re not going to see each other much now, maybe we should share work on WhatsApp?” and then I just thought “what about a postcard art project?”. The idea was I’d get everyone’s addresses who’d signed up and then give each person an address, they would then have to send one postcard to that address and one to another person who needed cheering up. Some people sent them to local hospitals or care homes, or carers, to family or friends they knew were on their own, isolating. When you got a postcard it was your turn to send one on to someone else - it was a sort of chain letter thing. The work I got was amazing! Everyone was working from home but, for example, some of the artists were ceramicists and they had to figure how they could do a postcard; they were using digital things, scanning in old work… it was a nice format which you could do at the kitchen table.
I used to sit down with my son and say “right we’re doing some art now” and give him some postcards to paint on and then I would do some. It was a nice way to keep me creative. I think a lot of people have done that during this time – adapting the way that you work. I used to be very formal about it, going to the studio and that was where I would work, but now I’m more like “I’ve got five minutes, I’m going to do a drawing or a collage.”
It takes the pressure off doesn’t it, it’s much more manageable…
I think with the postcard, you knew you were sending it away so you didn’t spend too long. It’s not like “I’ve got to keep this and archive it, or put it in an exhibition.” It’s “well, somebody’s going to receive this and its main purpose is to give them a piece of art to look at.” It’s quite nice just giving it all away.
So, part of the value is in its travelling, it’s not just the making of it?
Yeah. We are going to do an exhibition of the work in my studio in Seaham, so at the moment I’m getting artists to send me all the cards they’ve received so people will get to see them all together, about 500 cards.
Eleanor talks about the British Museum touring exhibition, Pushing Paper at the Oriental museum, which featured renowned artists from Yinka Shonibare, to Richard Hamilton, to Tracey Emin. It was unable to continue in person, which inspired her to launch another project, Pushing Paper: Post Art, in response.
I went and looked round Pushing Paper but then during lockdown all museums and galleries were closed, so I thought about how I could respond to the exhibition. I spoke to the curator, Alix Collingwood-Swinburn, who gave me a catalogue of the exhibition which I could then post to artists who said they were interested. I thought it was important that they have something physical to respond to, so I cut up the exhibition catalogue and sent them each, at random, an image from it. I used to be a publisher, so it felt really naughty cutting up books, but it was all we had! The artists then had to respond with a postcard. It isn’t too big a format, and it wasn’t too formal, but it was nice seeing people reacting to the exhibition and to the piece they’d been given. It was quite personal.
Another project you led recently was Street Gallery. What was it and how did it come about?
Street Gallery came out of thinking “Where are artists exhibiting?”. With museums and galleries being closed, there’s not much chance for people to show and see work where they normally would. Also, walking round where I live and seeing all the rainbows, I thought “could that be a place to show work?”.
We chose Dawdon because it’s got terraced streets and it’s quite a close-knit community; there were three mines in Seaham and Dawdon Colliery was one of them. I went round and posted invitations through letterboxes, asking “would you like to be part of this and show work?” and then on the other side I contacted artists. We got about 25 artists to make work and then we got houses to put that work in their windows. It was quite personal, meeting people and giving them work, and they then put it up for a month and we published a map with a walking trail.
"Street Gallery came out of thinking “Where are artists exhibiting?”. With museums and galleries being closed, there’s not much chance for people to show and see work where they normally would. Also, walking round where I live and seeing all the rainbows, I thought “could that be a place to show work?”."
We also worked with the Dawdon community centre, who ran some workshops with children and teenagers, thinking about what they would want people to see if they did a piece of work for their window. We gave art materials to the houses involved and encouraged them to do work to go in the windows next to the artwork that we’d given them. People loved that bit. One family spoke about how they were getting competitive between each other! I think that was another angle that developed during the project: encouraging people and giving them the excuse to make work as well.
It sounds like, as well as being an art project and a way of sharing art it was a way of investing in community…
Yeah, it was interesting that when we went round to take portraits of some of the people who took part, a lot said they did it to help the community, or that it got them involved in the community. They liked the idea of connecting with other people; when you’re walking around and you see art in other people’s windows you think “I’m part of that project” and also to cheer people up, it’s something nice to do. I think a lot of people are feeling more community-minded. Being locked down you spend more time in your community. I know for me I took the children out every day for a walk and you start to notice things, it makes you look at what’s close by more.
Accepting something into your house, and the artist thinking “I’m giving my work to someone, they’ll look after it for me”, and then the people putting it in their windows so that it faces outwards… it’s quite a sort of generous process. I felt like it made me feel more connected.
Street Gallery is funded by East Durham Creates, does that mean it wasn’t a completely voluntary project? Were they funding you and other artists or did people donate stuff for free?
So they gave me a small budget to manage coordinating and then we paid the photographer as well and then the artists donated their work for that period and then they all got their work back. It was also part of the University’s Summer In The City 2020 programme.
We used some of the money to buy the art materials to go to the families. If we hadn’t had that funding we I don’t know what form it would have taken. I think East Durham Creates really are interested in taking art to people so that it’s easy for them to see and it’s on their doorstep. That was another bit of feedback one of the participants gave – you can walk down the street and see art and almost by accident you start to get opinions about it. You might see another one and think “I prefer the other one”. When it’s there it’s easy to see, and everyone does have an opinion.
Street Gallery was a great way in which people could engage with art in a safe way in the current situation with coronavirus. Looking forward, how do you see the future of your practice?
Art communities and local communities have become really important to the way I work, so I think whatever it is will be related to that somehow. I think ways for people to see work outside is probably what I’m interested in – putting stuff in windows, putting stuff outside in some form. Art Hunt is on at the Riverwalk, and I worked on that – taking work from the archives, Alix Collingwood-Swinburn (Curator, Contemporary Art, Durham University) curated it and I formatted it so it was printed onto boards that worked outside and then they’re dotted around the Riverwalk so you can go and see all of them. Things like that, things like Street Gallery: I’m thinking about how I can work in ways that it’s easy for people to see. And I’m also thinking, because we are all online, it may be just as easy to do things internationally as it is locally, so could we do some of these projects abroad, in different cities, around the world, and thinking about how that could work
And finally, who is your favourite artist?
Edward Hopper - I've always loved his work, and still do - its the atmosphere that he captures, the way he uses light and creates places that you feel have layers of story in them.
Check out Eleanor’s work on her website, https://www.eleanormatthews.com/aboutme
Interview led and edited by Amana Moore
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