Penny McCarthy’s Clouds Fall in Love with Mortal

In 2019 Penny McCarthy – Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University – won the Evelyn Williams Drawing Prize which is awarded as part of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize.

The catalyst for the drawings in the resulting exhibition – Clouds Fall In Love With Mortal – was a newspaper image from 2016 of a ‘Fata Morgana’ mirage in the sky above Hastings that looked like a portal to another world. Each drawing in the series is associatively linked to the enigmatic Fata Morgana mirage, in which the sea appears in the sky and the world is turned upside down. Penny McCarthy uses pencil drawing with an exacting slowness that is a kind of reverie or extended contemplation.

Prevented by the pandemic from making her planned visits to Hastings, the artist found opening up instead a speculative and metaphorical exploration of myths and narratives associated with the sea and sky. The suite of drawings is very much a reflection of an interior world conjured out of paper, clouds, water, dust, and light, with a material frugality that comes, at least in part, from being made during the turbulent time of the global pandemic.

OCA Tutor Bryan Eccleshall had the privilege of being one of Penny’s PhD students between 2010 and 2016 and will be running a Study Visit to the exhibition at Hastings Contemporary on Saturday February 11 2023. This is a wonderful opportunity to see an ambitious set of drawings. He will be at the gallery from about noon and the visit will commence at 1pm or thereabouts.

https://www.hastingscontemporary.org/exhibition/penny-mccarthy/

https://www.hastingscontemporary.org/

Getting There: Hastings Contemporary is about a twenty-minute walk from Hasting Railway Station. More information here: https://www.hastingscontemporary.org/gallery-information/

Image: Penny McCarthy, Cloud falls in love with mortal, pencil on paper. Photo Hugo Glendinning.