Ann Churchill: Works on Paper: 1974-78

1 November—31 December 2019

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Ann CHURCHILL, Blue Oval drawing, 1975
Working with drawing, knitting, batik, beading and painting, Ann CHURCHILL is an artist and maker whose work and life are entirely intertwined as she schools herself continually in the depths and possibilities of personal artistic practice.

Inspired as a young woman in the 1960s by the work of outsiders such as Aubrey Beadsley and Scottie Wilson, as well as the potential of automatic drawing, Churchill continues to explore different spiritual paths and crafts through an ongoing commitment to daily creative activity.

Focussing on a group of rare works on paper produced between 1974-78 before the birth of her third child (and the curator of this exhibition) this exhibition marks the first time Churchill’s multifaceted practice has been shown to a wider public.
Drawing no hierarchy between the artworks, be they garments, drawings or beaded body adornments, Ann sees her practice as a meditative endeavour that supports her own inner spiritual journey. Her starting point has always been an attempt to access the unconscious and as such every work emerges with its own content, stemming from a fluid and open relationship to making.

Ann was an active participant in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the committee of 100, and during time at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the 1980s she was involved in the adornment of the fences and worked with other women to create banners and costumes for the peaceful protest outside the RAF base. Churchill notes that: “In previous eras creativity, such as sewing, object-making, singing or storytelling, was a mainstay of normal everyday life.” But it now seems that shopping, and photography have become the creative outputs in a consumer age.
Ann Churchill is a self-taught artist and maker brought up in London and living in Bath. After leaving school at the age of 15, Ann worked in Interior Design, then as a Stylist for Vogue. In 1968, when her first of three children was born, her focus moved from employment to creativity and spirituality. The constant has been her creative output, producing her own work alongside, jewellery, political banners costumes and model making theatre, television and film. This group of work has been brought together with her daughter, Elizabeth Neilson a curator based in London, and Director of the Zabludowicz Collection.

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