Aleph Contemporary for AccessArt

Slip Fault No. 1 is from a larger series of Slip Fault works created in response to the geological strata and old mining maps of Leigh, Lancashire, home to some of the deepest coal mines in the UK. The deeper the coal mine, the hotter the working environment, influencing the choices of colour for this work. What also interested me was where the fault lines and unique geology of Leigh had created seams of coal. Forms as imagined mine shafts were laid onto the paper as three bands of watercolour. I was mindful that the process of ‘engineering’ and controlling the watercolour with increasing amounts of water, could cause flooding of these separate ‘mine shafts’ and therefore flood areas of the watercolour. The drying process of the painting, over many days influenced the watercolour pigment to form geological strata. The painting was created horizontally on the studio floor, out of physical alignment and replaced back into rectangular alignment at the final stage thus causing the painting to undergo its own form of tremor and consequential geological fault or slippage. 

Slip Fault No. 1 was exhibited in the following exhibitions:
Turps Gallery (solo exhibtion) 2018
The Turnpike, Leigh 2019
JGM Gallery, London 2019

https://alephcontemporary.com/artists/176-barbara-nicholls/biography/

Barbara Nicholls' monumental watercolour works emerge by manipulating the behaviour of pigment in ever-increasing quantities of water. As such, their production remains consistent with that of Nicholls’ wider body of work, where she has stitched, drawn, cut, built and extracted her media from archaelogical/ architectural/geological and other sites of significance.

 “Nicholls has followed the idiosyncrasies in the behaviour of her materials and has orchestrated them into resonant shapes that, while never declaring themselves in any specific identity, nonetheless touch collective memories of the experience of natural spaces, of the landscape. In that way, she formulates a new reality.”—Martin Holman 

Barbara Nicholls says ‘When I create my watercolours on paper I recall places I have experienced and others I imagine as the work forms. Some seen and others sensed. I remember ancient meandering pathways; natural and man-made dams and bridges across rivers; the controlled carrying of water in aqueducts and canals; flooded fields with lines of debris left behind after the water has retreated; tide marks on beaches; cumulus clouds over hills reflected in ponds; coloured mineral and sediments forming lines on the banks of rivers; varying depths and shapes of geological layers in cliffs and quarries revealing past events and movements of the earth.

Robert Smithson wrote ‘The mind, one’s mind, and the Earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers water away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought. Ideas decompose into stones of unknowing…’ Barbara Nicholls.

She lives and works in London and Bollington, Cheshire.  Her work is held in the collection of Museum Kurhaus Kleve Germany, The New Art Gallery Walsall UK, Willhelm Kaiser Museum Germany and private collections in UK, France, USA and Iran. Nicholls has held several residencies including Stiftung zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Kunst Germany (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016) The Turnpike Leigh (2019) Mungo National Park NSW, Australia (2016) Telpost, Millingen ann Rijn, Netherlands (2016 and 2013) Winsor & Newton, UK (2012) ArToll ,Bedburg-Hau Germany(2010, 2012 and 2014), Ateliergemeinschaft, Milchhof e.V. Berlin 2009 and the British Council, Brazil 1994.

She has had her work widely and internationally exhibited, including Morley Gallery (2021), Patrick Heide (2021), JGM Gallery London (2020 & 2019), The Turnpike, Leigh, (2019) Städtisches Museum- Galerie im Centrum-Wesel, Germany (2019) The New Art Gallery Walsall, (2017), Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery NSW Australia (2017), Museum Kurhaus Kleve Germany (2019 & 2015), Griffin Gallery London (2013), Tourhaus Romberg Park Dortmund Germany (2013), Emerson Gallery Berlin (2013), Dok25a Düsseldorf Germany (2012), Projektraum-bahnhof25 Kleve, Germany (2012), KARST Plymouth UK (2012) Pavillon am Milchhof Berlin (2011), APT Gallery London (2008), Imperial War Museum London (2002). 

https://www.barbaranicholls.co.uk/cv-exhibions-residencies-biliograph

www.barbaranicholls.co.uk Instagram @barbara_nicholls