Free Form or Doodling with Intent
Jo Ganter
We are delghted to open our 2024 series of exhibitions with a new show by Glasgow based artist, Jo Ganter. Here she speaks for herself in introducing the work :
"Working with musicians who improvise to create graphic scores has been a substantial part of my work for ten years. Improvisation now vies with composition in this body of work, begun during lockdown at my kitchen table and continued there now out of habit.
Doodling is a form of intuitive, improvisation. To doodle, according to every dictionary definition, is an “aimless or meaningless” activity. I think of the small watercolour paintings I began making during lockdown as doodles because I gave myself permission to work freely and without intention. The small scale of the work is an essential part of the doodle, often limited to marginalia or backs of envelopes. I gave myself beautiful watercolour paper to doodle on, but a small scale is maintained, and on this scale, I work as I do in sketchbooks: improvise, revise, and follow ideas in unexpected directions. Images on these pages may be decorative, gestural, bizarre, garish: senseless. They’re ‘just’ doodles.
As images progress however, I am compelled to resolve the doodle, improvising as I go. Inevitably I use tropes of image-making I can't help but retain after forty year's practice. My usual play of symmetry and asymmetry isn't so strictly as in much of my work, but structures appear. I always work in series, and here also, I have followed ideas through several iterations. And, of course, to intend to be aimless is an intention, nevertheless."
We take great pleasure in inviting uyou to celebrate the show with us from 2pm to 4pm on Saturday February 3rd and the show will run until Frbruary 25th.
