“Notes towards Caput Mortuum."  

5 - 25 September 2021

ZEMBLA

Hawick.

Delayed over a year by the global pandemic, Glen's specially-made show for Zembla finally arrives.  Glen was born in Edinburgh and studied at ECA where he retired as Professor.  He has had a distinguished career and his many highly individual works are not easily pigeonholed (thank goodness), moving between land and environmental art, extensive installations and interventions to 'paintings', large and small, made with a variety of chemicals.  I often describe him as working in an area between alchemy and conceptual art, but this too is insufficient.

"Alchemy has been a concern in [Onwin's] installations and paintings .... seeing the late Renaissance period during which alchemical thought reached its zenith as crucial to the understanding of the present, whether in terms of the transformative nature of the earth and its ecology or in terms of the history of ideas" (Murdo Macdonald, 2021)

Notes Towards Caput Mortuum

Zembla.  Hawick. September 2021

The name caput mortuum is given to a reddish brown maroon/violet pigment derived from the iron ore mineral haematite. Caput mortuum has been associated with mummy brown, a pigment made in the 16th through 19th centuries and last manufactured by the artists’ colourmen  C. Roberson in 1964; it was discontinued mainly due to the difficulties in procuring the raw ingredients. Mummy brown or Egyptian brown was made and processed from pulverised mummified human and animal remains sourced in Egypt. 

In his remarkable book ‘What Painting Is’ the art historian James Elkins made a study of painting juxtaposed with alchemy, midway through chapter five he examines the idea of caput mortuum he writes:

Very rarely, even the alchemists had to admit they had burned every scrap of life from their samples, and then they called their refuse scoria, recrement, or caput mortuum, Death’s Head. But he goes on to say:  As usual there is more here than meets the eye, because the alchemists did not keep clear of the Death’s Head, but sought it out whenever they could. The object was to achieve as thorough a death as possible and still be able to resurrect the ashes, because the result would be sometimes even stronger.

He also describes the hieroglyph or symbol these chemical philosophers would use to indicate this caput mortuum state, it was a circle containing three dots a simple graphic representation of a human skull.

I have given this exhibition of works which are specifically made for Zembla the overarching title Notes Towards Caput Mortuum. My intention was to give myself freedom to experiment and explore, allowing, even encouraging failure and hopefully at times resurrection. Each work has an individual title but all come under the title Notes Towards Caput Mortuum; they are notes because they reference observations and explorations into related and unrelated themes; the titles are possibly clues to meaning but the meanings are not specific and even to me are obscure.  Perhaps from these notes future works will develop or perhaps they are dead ends.

Glen Onwin

August 2021

Please contact brianrobertson7011@gmail.com or call Brian on 07843625232 for further information.

Images and further news about this show can also be seen on our Instagram site @zemblagallery in the coming weeks. 

  

Zembla - a gallery for contemporary art.

Little Lindisfarne

Stirches Road

Hawick TD9 7HF

Scottish Borders.