Kate Moore: Senior Portfolio: Francis Cape Lecture: 11/18/09

Francis Cape, visiting artist from the Sculpture department, received a BFA in 1982 from the City and Guilds of London Art School and received his MFA in 1991 from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. Also along his education path, he apprenticed to a wood carver in York, England between 1974-1979 and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1989. Currently he is represented by Murray Guy Gallery in New York and Chelsea Gallery. He is about to open his “Home Front” show, which has previously been shown at Murray Guy, at the Anderson Gallery on Friday, November 20, 2009. His other solo exhibitions include “It Happened Here” at the Suraci Gallery in Scranton PA, and “Waterline” at Murry Guy in 2006 amongst many others. He currently lives with his wife 100 miles outside of Manhattan in Narrowsburg, New York.

Cape’s lecture began with a brief explanation about what he thought the artist does. He explained the artist sees and then shares what he/she sees with the viewer. He defined seeing as the act of looking and sharing as an innocent structured convention. Because he mostly works in the sculpture medium he keeps in mind the word transience and relates it to the way things are built and how long they are intended to last. He works a good bit with furniture design and was heavily bringing up the topic of the “Utility Furniture Scheme” in regards to how if affected the United Kingdom during WWII. I found it difficult to follow him as he was discussing this concept because it seemed as though there was a lot of historical background that accompanied this idea. However, he said his work was heavily based on this idea so I felt it was essential for the viewer to understand why the scheme was important in order for the audience to grasp the where he was taking the collection.

He went off on a somewhat long and haphazard tangent about Hurrican Katrina and the relief efforts and only touched on how his experiences with FEMA encouraged him to make-work on that specific crisis. He explained and heavily emphasized that after the 2004 election he felt inclined and expected to make work outside of the studio about what was going on in the world and how he felt our government was not responding to it. At this point, he brought back up the “Utility Furniture Scheme” and explained it by saying when times are tough and materials are short in supply, the designs were specified and price controlled in order to help out the nation that was going through a crisis. He said that the US did not react this way after Katrina and did not reach out to New Orleans and help them boot their economy.
I was thrown off when he was speaking so much about his politics and his socialist ideology and then bringing in other artists that I forgot I was actually at a lecture that was supposed to be based on him and his new work that is going to installed at the Anderson this week.

What I feel is working with his sculpture installations is his inclusion of photographs. I enjoyed his series titled “Waterline” and how is examined and revealed what truth we could get about Katrina just from lines on the interiors of homes in New Orleans. I found it interesting that when he had these installed in a gallery, the viewer could get an idea of how high the water level got in these spaces according to how high he placed the images on the wall. It helped the viewer feel a part of the work and also give the viewer some tangible evidence as well.

Overall, I felt that he could have done a better job talking about his work if he had not skipped around as much and focused more on his work rather than other artists work and politics.

Part of the "Waterline Series"
Interior Sunset 2006 C-Print 11 1/4x 16 1/2inches