Seeing Being Seen

Dates: Oct 12, 2023 - January, 2024

Works by Nicola Hicks and Jamie Routley

Seeing Being Seen examines what it means to peer into the artists’ world, to be immersed in one’s present being and to truly see someone in their full physicality and humanity. Similarly, it demonstrates the potential for vulnerability and power that can be found in the act of allowing oneself to be truly seen and received without judgement. The AGBI is an artist-led organisation and upholds these values with every artist who approaches us for assistance. To not just look, but to see an artist in their entirety is at the core of what we do. Showing works by AGBI President, Nicola Hicks, and Artist Council Member, Jamie Routley, Seeing Being Seen is an assemblage of the artists’ lens, their “seeing” exposed, and their “being” collected in objects and artworks that can be viewed by wider audiences. Beneath the layers of meaning within Nicola Hicks’ work is an enquiry that begins with a deep curiosity and empathy. She questions what it looks like to feel a specific way or to be in a particular situation or setting. For Hicks, the act of making is deeply empathetic, placing her body and her very being into proximity with her subject. The works are powerfully emotive, objects imbued with the artist’s own channelled emotion. The vase at the centre of our exhibition is a vessel of its own, much like the body we each occupy. The heron and the frog act as a fabled tale and give us insight into the values and private thoughts of the artist herself. Hicks’ work is an homage to the act of creation as a method of being entirely present, she states that everything falls away in the studio - as her hands enter the plaster, or her fingers grasp the brush, she is fully present in her own being. Jamie Routley’s triptych of Hicks depicts her physical appearance and metaphysical reality as an artist through the abstraction of shape and form. Routley simplifies and exaggerates shapes within the painting to mimic the material Hicks uses in her practice; blobs of plaster that have fallen to the ground represented within the shapes that Routley uses to express tone and form of Hicks as she stands looking out, at her painter and her work. Routley’s portraits examine the honest moments of seeing someone in their physicality and he captures their essence within the details. Self-portraits can sometimes be a means of sharing how we want to be seen and in Routley’s self-portrait he is both the serious artist and the dedicated father – two definitions contained and expressed through the depiction of the flesh of one man.

The sensitivity with which both artists approach their practice and their subject, is also present in the way they approach their roles at the AGBI. The integral nature of an artist - of seeking meaning within and beyond material and looking for details and broader perspectives to inform decisions - are the same unique methods that our Artists Council employ to understand our grant applicants. At the AGBI we look to see a human, a practice, and the complex relationships between events and fragments of life that build to the moment the applicant reaches out for support. Everyone who steps through the door of the AGBI is a witness to the process through which all artists are truly seen. Our team at the AGBI understand the complexities of the life of the artist that exists beyond the canvas, or beneath the patina.

Curated by Abbie Griffiths