Artist Collaboration / 11
For our 11th Peer/Peer Collaboration, Thompson Hall collaborated with Simone Kennedy MRSS. Thompson works with the supported studio ActionSpace, London. This in-person collaboration was part of Art et al.’s partnership with the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Thompson Hall
Thompson Hall’s practice is comprised primarily of large-scale graphic paintings on textiles. He explores his everyday experiences and situations, using his observations to create flat and patterned compositions. His recent work is inspired by the inequalities of society and what is happening in the world around him, in regard to politics, social change, marginalisation and the ongoing impacts of Covid on our society.
ActionSpace is an exceptional visual arts development agency for learning disabled artists. They seek out and unlock talent, create opportunities and realise the potential and have big ambitions for all the artists they work with.
Simone Kennedy
Much of Simone Kennedy’s art practice re-imagines the realm of being human. With an increasing desire to connect universally the breadth and depth of her ideas, she is at a point in her practice where Simone understands and feels deeply the relevance of contextualising the themes she works with, extending a creative maturity in opening up difficult stories, giving evidence to the human condition in all of its complexity.
Recent achievements include being a finalist for the Mosman Art Prize NSW 2022, visiting a.i.r. at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), London, and presentation of A Primordial Mother at The Art of Management and Organization (AoMO) ART AS ACTIVISM Liverpool Conference 2022.
Simone (left) and Thompson (right) look at Thompson’s drawings at ActionSpace during their first in-person meet-up.
Connecting IRL!
With both artists based in London, ActionSpace artist, Thompson Hall and Simone Kennedy MRSS were able to meet up locally and work together in person for this Peer/Peer Collaboration!
In addition, to working collaboratively at the ActionSpace studio in Holborn, Thompson and Simone visited galleries and Simone’s studio for inspiration. They went to Chris Ofili’s The Seven Deadly Sins at Victoria Miro, the Tate and Headway East London’s differently various exhibition at the Barbican’s Curve Gallery.
Together with curator and Art et al. co-founder Lisa Slominski and ActionSpace Associate Artist Lisa Brown, they visited the Royal Society of Sculptors to see the exhibition space for the outcome of their collaboration.
Artwork before the collaboration.
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Absence/Presence
Inspired by inequalities in society, Thompson Hall’s practice often implements brightly designed symbols and graphic icons to express his observations of the world around him. His concerns around social change and marginalisation created immediate synergy with collaborating artist, Simone Kennedy, whose multi-media practice centres around the human condition, re-imagining the realms of being human. They connected deeply over the meanings of ‘absence’ and ‘presence’ in personal and political ways.
For their collaborative project titled Absence/Presence, they explore personal identity, in particular the experience of growing up without a father figure, then it broadens to consider the relationship between identity and the home. Each artist explored father figures with a shared departure point of men’s suits, and The Sanctuary (2023), a large tent-like sculpture, made collaboratively, brings to the forefront the societal issue of homelessness.
Thompson Hall and Simone Kennedy working together at the ActionSpace studio in Holborn. (2023) Courtesy Art et al.
Thompson Hall and Simone Kennedy working together at the ActionSpace studio in Holborn. (2023) Courtesy Art et al.
Making
Sketching + Painting for Ideas.
Over the four months, Simone and Thompson concurrently worked on a series of works exploring the concepts discussed during their Peer/Peer sessions. Simone’s paintings expanded on her ongoing metaphor of the fly and its development from larvae to pupa to fly. Thompson’s sketches took on the specific topics and objects of Absence/Presence including tents, brains, single mothers and isolation.
Click on each image below for a larger view.
The Sanctuary
Over several sessions working together at the ActionSpace studio in Holborn, the centrepiece of Simone and Thompson’s collaboration is The Sanctuary. They painted symbols and gestures on both sides of a large canvas to make the shape of a tent. This tent represents their idea to create a shelter for those experiencing homelessness.
Following a visit to the Royal Society of Sculptors, Simone and Thompson were also inspired by the architecture and history of Dora House. In 1919, sculptor Cecil Thomas inhabited the (then) abandoned house during a time when was experiencing homelessness. Making it his home and studio over many years, he donated it to the Royal Society of Sculptors, now its permanent home. The studio gallery was Thomas’ art studio and features an angled ceiling reflected in The Sanctuary.
So it was kind of like when we started making the tent it was like what color should we use? And it's like come on, just use any color and see what comes, like an experimental piece. It was the way we went about using the colors in a way that related to the subject what we were talking about.
The Sanctuary was to talk about homelessness and thinking about Cecil Thomas and how the gallery space relates to the subject of homelessness.
Thompson Hall
Our ideas on The Sanctuary grew from concerns on the plight of homeless people without support and wanting to create a form of portable housing – something effective against the elements - this work utilised our first ideas of the tent as a safe home base but we felt we could easily take this further and possibly create a portable suit. Our conversation around suits may have fed into other discussions on the suit generally during the 1950s/60s, with ideas framed around masculinity and our own personal histories with our fathers.
The symbols on The Sanctuary represent our own layers of meaning. For me, the ‘pupa’ insect as a metaphor is an unsettling motif, insects are always around us and as organisms they open up ideas and questions on degrees of sentience and hint at the curiousness of our own existence in the world.
With the unconscious at play, symbolic circles as ‘targets’ bear resemblance to the WWl RAF roundels.
*Cecil Thomas had been a soldier and later worked in intelligence in the First World War.
Simone Kennedy
The Sanctuary (2023) in progress at ActionSpace studio in Holborn.
Click on this image for a larger view and click on each image below for details of The Sanctuary.
Thompson Hall and Simone Kennedy, The Sanctuary (2023) installed for Making Together, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. Photograph by Mike Glide Photography.
The Suits.
Early on in their conversations, Thompson and Simone discussed their shared experience of growing up without a father. Simone’s father was a tailor and Thompson recalled his grandfather trading in his Ghanian robe for the European suit to fit in with English society. These discussions evolved into looking at the men’s suit as a language for the absent father figure. Each artist worked independently on making “suits” in response to their absent fathers.
I suppose the suit came about through me looking at my own personal history and having that father figure not in my life. It's like where any child that's grown up like that, they get constantly asked questions about their families and there might be certain elements that they may find uncomfortable to explain to other people. Some people might be persistent that saying: what about your dad ? That could be very awkward and very hard for that person to explain why that happened in their lives, so we need to learn to be a bit more bit more compassionate and understanding. It's a tricky subject for that person to talk about; maybe we shouldn't really keep questioning them you know?
Thompson Hall
My father had a love for fine fabrics. Plaid is another metaphor for transformation, interweaving ideas on order, integration and intensity through colour. These elements are specific to the meaning of the idea. The ‘fly suits’ work as units of twinning mother/daughter and father/daughter and bring in a form of shadow play inferring a psychological space which represents a fluctuating selfhood, through pattern (entanglement) and order.
I utilise the brain as a primary motif in my work and re-imagine states of being through forming personalities influenced by characters. I also think about ideas on a pre-linguistic realm and use the brain as a platform for fragmentation, splitting, separation and absence/presence.
Simone Kennedy
A work-in-progress image of Simone’s ‘suits’ (2023). Courtesy of the artist.
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A work-in-progress image of Thompson’s ‘suits’ and ‘brains’ (2023). Courtesy of ActionSpace.
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Thompson Hall, Suits of Absence and Cerebral Memories (2023) installed for Making Together, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. Photograph by Mike Glide Photography.
Simone Kennedy, Brain I (Orange Plaid), (2023) installed for Making Together, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. Photograph by Mike Glide Photography.
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Simone Kennedy, Brain II (Blue Plaid), (2023) installed for Making Together, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. Photograph by Mike Glide Photography.
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Figures and Hearts.
Working independently on the themes of Absence/Presence during the collaboration, Thompson created a series of scroll-like paintings titled Anonymous Figures and Simone created several intricate sculptures from found objects. Thompson painted an eerie shadow-like figure on various materials that included plastics, fabrics and even a repurposed scarf given to him by Simone! He wanted these looming figures to be installed in the gallery like an ‘anonymous crowd.’
The shadowy figures is more or less on that same theme you know having someone missing in your life. How does it feel to grow up with something missing in your life? The Anonymous Figures it's being absent and the shadowy figures sort of like kind of represent the same as the suits, but in a different kind of form.
Thompson Hall
Simone series continued her practice of transforming found materials through intricate intervention including wrapping objects in thread material. She titled one Heart Attack and another one Heart Broken. A small doll wrapped in shiny silver thread looks in motion with hands for feet, is titled The Escapologist and the final sculpture is a small adorned rabbit foot.
This work focuses on an imagined moment in time where my father experienced a fatal heart attack. I thought about the intense impact inside the body, and replicated visually what I thought it might feel like with ‘pressure points’, ‘worms’ and sensory threads encased in a structured framework.
The relative of Heart Attack is Heart Broken, a work focused on emotion perhaps through loss of the mother, father or broadly mothering. Grieving sits inside a circle representing the cycle of life and infinite loss.
A rabbit’s foot as a talisman for good luck, links to childhood memories of holding onto something safe. The raw emotions of a child pick up on ideas and feelings of magic and hope which become embodied in the charm of the object.
Simone Kennedy
Thompson Hall, Anonymous Figures (2023) installed for Making Together, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. Photograph by Mike Glide Photography.
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Thompson’s painting about the collaboration
Absence/Presence at the Royal Society of Sculptors
Installation photographs from the exhibition Making Together at the Royal Society of Sculptors 2023, where one room was dedicated to this particular collaboration.
Thanks to Mike Glide Photography for the installation photographs.
With thanks to the Royal Society of Sculptors for support for this collaboration, as well as Hallett Independent and Sadie Sherman Gallery for the funding. Thanks to ActionSpace, the studio that supports Thompson as well as Associate Artist Lisa Brown for working alongside Thompson for this collaboration.