About Isabella

Catalogue ATTITUDE

ISABELLA KOCUM

When Picasso and Braque started roughly nailing bits of broken furniture together with other random odds and ends, or tearing up pages from newspapers and gluing them down with scraps of fabric or wallpaper, art changed forever. At the same time Duchamp was exhibiting his bicycle wheel, his urinal and his other famous ‘Readymades’ as the great pioneers of the early 20th century were opening up huge new possibilities for artists. 

However, there was a downside. The idea of craft as an essential part of artistic practice suffered an assault that it never really recovered from. Once upon a time it had been unthinkable for an artist not to be trained in the understanding and use of materials but as the century unfolded it became less and less important, even mistrusted. And the digital revolution of our own generation has led to the idea of the handmade often being thought of as less and less relevant.

But pendulums always swing. Isabella Kocum has been working for many years in the framing department of the National Gallery, honing her skills as a woodcarver and gilder. She has been handling the finest examples of antique craft, restoring them, making them ready for display as accompaniments to the masterpieces of western painting. Those skills that would have been recognized by a medieval craftsman have become second-nature to her. 

At the same time, her own creativity has been driving her to use that expertise in the production of her own work. 

The three most startling works she has made for this exhibition share the generic title Attitude. Three female nudes (or should we call them naked women?) flaunt themselves, hilariously, comically, alarmingly. One struts in a pose that parodies childlike innocence. Her face is half hidden behind one hand and she hides the other behind her back. Her toes start to curl awkwardly inward. Another wrenches her hair upwards and seems to give out a threatening squawk while the final figure raises her shoulders and thrusts out her breasts. She glares angrily towards us, as if daring us to look. 

Since the time of the ancient Greeks the female nude has been typecast as passive and pretty, represented in images made by male artists for male clients and collectors. It has only been in more recent times that she has hit back, as it were, and chastised her male voyeurs. Isabella’s nudes do just that, mocking the old conventions and simply not caring what the neighbours might think. These three women have no intention of being seen as passive and pretty. They are not there to be looked at. Instead, they force us to look, whether we like it or not.

In a less aggressive mode, Isabella’s relief sculptures tell different kinds of stories. The two characters in Perpetua and Felicity are early Christian saints from ancient Rome. Having just given birth they were, according to tradition, still lactating when they were martyred in the arena after being trampled by wild cattle. A strange story, packed with meanings that we are forced to confront as the two fragile figures huddle in front of a sold bovine wall and await their fate. The golden horns of the cattle shine out as if made of solid gold. They are not though, what we are seeing is merely the thinnest layer of gold-leaf, perfectly applied and burnished on top of finely sanded wood. The horns shine out and dazzle, reflecting the equally dazzling skills of their maker. 

Betrayal, a title with Biblical connotations, asks us to respond with our own thoughts to a group of figures who twist and gesture in a confusing huddle, as someone snaps the scene on a mobile phone. We don’t know what is going on but we do know that it is not good. In contrast, The Power of Wealth/The Yellow Slave is free from ambiguity, as masked harpy-like figures swoop greedily onto a pile of glistening gold. And Isabella’s assured and confident use of gold leaf comes to a climax in the free-standing Poetry, where ribbons of it seem to flow like water around a woman whose expression could mean either joy or despair. Or maybe even both.

Here we must note that Isabella had a previous life as a dancer. She trained in classical ballet and other dance forms New York and in 1988 she was awarded a dance scholarship at the Cité des Arts in Paris. Her long experience of communicating ideas, thoughts and emotions through the body in motion has been joined together with her meticulous craft skills to produce a body of work that celebrates creativity and, specifically, female creativity.

Isabella’s women seem to flit between power and passivity. Those in the relief entitled Private View are definitely in charge of their grovelling male attendant whereas, allowing ourselves to be guided by the title of the small sculpture called Bosnia, we see the twisted woman as a victim. Isabella’s craft skills combine with a strong female vision that confronts gender politics, both historical and contemporary, with confidence and belief.

In her ceramics too, Isabella exploits her technical skills to the limit, especially with her brilliant use of gold that animates the objects, where the light dances around their surfaces. Indeed, it is as if the artist is actually using light as a medium with which to work, harnessing its properties with magical ease. It looks as if melted gold has been poured over the little figures and allowed to slowly trickle and flow over them, encasing them in a precious liquid as it slowly cools.

Isabella’s other chosen medium is the linocut. She prints her linocuts without a press, placing the paper down on the inked blocks of lino and rubbing it firmly yet carefully from behind, so that the paper takes up the colour. This is a laborious but rewarding process, where she uses a vivid range of coloured printing inks to produce simple yet striking compositions that continue with a range of female characters who shine out from the images with boldness and confidence, even in the print that revisits the Perpetua and Felicity story. We have already seen this theme in the relief sculpture where the two martyrs seem timid and tentative as they await their impending agonies. But in the linocut, we are given a different option. The two women are unperturbed. They know that despite their apparent roles as victims they are the ones who will really triumph and, armed with that knowledge, they have the same self-confident assurance of their artistic sisters in the works we began with, the three women of Attitude.

And one senses that this also exists in the heart of their creator, who uses her remarkable skills, energy and creativity to make work that reflects her own ‘attitude’, that both challenges and delights. 

Collin Wiggins