London Grilling: Kimberley Gundle, Artist In Residence, Earls Court

Welcome, Kimberly, It’s wonderful to connect with you, your work is incredible! Can you tell us a little bit about your background and when you first realised you wanted to be an artist?

I have always wanted to be an artist- I have been making and creating ever since I was a little girl and I wanted to be a famous artist known far and wide for my art practice! All my friends from art school still joke about my saying that when I started at Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town in 1982. In 1988 I came to London to study a masters in painting at the Slade School of Art in London.

What works of art/artists influenced you growing up?

It is my interest in painters of people, not essentially portrait painters, but artists who capture the essence of the sitter. Artists whose main focus was on people are the artists who influenced me most from Egon Schiele, Chaim Soutine, Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso to the expressionist artists such as Francis Bacon.

Tell our readers about your time in East Africa.

In 2009 I followed in the footsteps of the Maasai across the floor of the Great Rift Valley. Between 2009 and 2017 I stayed in many remote settlements, making drawings and taking photographs of Maasai communities in both Kenya and Tanzania. Absorbing the culture photographing and drawing women, swathed in brightly coloured cloths and adorned in ornate beadwork. Young girls bedeck themselves in their best necklaces to greet the warriors. Young men, in full regalia: ornate headdresses, colourful beads, buttons and ochre make-up, all which seem to convey magical powers. So different from the etched faces of the Elders, which echo their daily confrontation with the arid landscape. The Maasai are under threat from the harsh physical elements and the changing world around them. I was invited to exhibit at the Venice Biennale 2013 in an exhibition at Palazzo Bembo entitled: PERSONAL STRUCTURES TIME SPACE EXISTENCE, where I exhibited five large drawings and a ceramic head. In 2015, I exhibited a large installation of Oval mixed media portraits of Maasai framed in domed cameos to encapsulate Maasai culture and heritage. In my approach to the individual portraits, I liken myself to an anthropologist studying and protecting a people an environment and an atmosphere. By placing each oval portrait in a golden frame enclosed in domed capsule, I shelter a culture and tradition from the encroaching modernisation. In 2017 I made an installation of hand built clay cameos the clay echoing the soil of the Great Rift Valley. I gave a percentage of the sales from my work back to the communities with whom I had developed a relationship, and who had inspired my work, this went towards community projects such as schools, medical care, and a water project bringing fresh water to 5000 people in the Ololosokwan community.

Prior to lockdown, you often sketched people in the London Underground, tell us why you found this so captivating?

When I arrived in London in September 1988 I needed an anchor, in order to anchor myself I began sketching on the London underground in order to immerse myself in this new world. I have been sketching the warp and weft of society on the London underground for 34 years so far these fleeting encounters continue to inform my work.

During 2020 you spent your time making hand built ceramic “Companion Cups”, informed from your daily sketches, can you describe the process and thoughts behind this unique concept?

I thought at a time of isolation people needed companions. Sharing ideas over tea with someone is so vital to human connection, and as nobody could share tea with people I thought to make cups informed by my sketches on the underground so whoever drank from these cups would always be in the company of others and therefore no longer isolated. That was the beginning of the series of my hand built Companion cups. During Open House London in September 2020, I invited guests to reconnect post full lockdown and share in conversation, drinking tea from my Companion cups enjoying English tea and scones in the garden in gazebos - as remember nobody was allowed inside as we were still navigating social distance! All the hand built ceramic cups were informed by my sketches on the Underground, I was creating communities on ceramic during a time of isolation!

We absolutely love your visual diary where you share daily photos on your Instagram (@kimberlygundle), what inspired you and can you tell us some of the feedback you have received from this idea?

We all have our memories of those first few weeks of lockdown. When the shops closed, schools shut, and we became atomised, isolated behind our front doors. I have always channelled my feelings through my art practice. People have and continue to be central to my world. As I could no longer sketch on the London underground and I was once again seeking to keep myself grounded, I began a visual diary, sketching a thought a day, a response to the world around me. Sometimes these thoughts would be triggered by a conversation with a friend on the phone, a joke from a family member, the news. The drawings were usually figurative. I posted my daily sketches on Instagram, and what surprised me was how people from across the world connected to these drawings. Friends and strangers from America, from the Caribbean, from South Africa, messaging me and drawing threads of connection. These daily sketches were at once individual and collective. They offered a way to process the present and offer hope for the future. Tomorrow would bring something new, something different, or at the very least a new drawing and thought.

Here are some responses: “Seeing your post every day has become like a daily 5 second news and reminds me to take a moment in all the chaos. “I love your daily posts! A valuable memoir of an extraordinary time raw honest reflections.” “I love reading your post every night before I drift to sleep, it sums up the day in a nutshell. They make me feel less alone like someone understands my fears hopes and aspirations like we are all in this together.” “Just stopping by to say you really inspire me so much for your commitment your daily artworks that you post I really look forward to seeing them thank you so much for sharing them stay strong.

Your book, Navigating the Maze, was published last year and, true to form, it’s very unique. Can you tell us a little bit of background to it/how it came about?

Many people asked me to please publish a book of my sketches to document/record our collective experience. I collected all my daily sketches together to put them into the format of a book, to create

something that was an exciting - a navigation: an expression of a time where the whole world went through the same Covid storm but in different boats – and some of us had to bail harder in order to survive the storm. The assembling of the book was a hand-crafted process, from thinking how the book should feel to scanning each drawing – and embellishing the sketches digitally, ensuring each page is unique. From scattered daily thoughts, the sketches became a journey, as the book has a beginning and an end. Each book is accompanied by a hand-made ceramic talisman a companion, to the book and to the reader to combat isolation and to reflect on this collective experience. It is published as a limited edition of 300 copies each one is signed and numbered. 2023 also saw you launch your solo exhibition, How is the Weather in Your Head? At 67 York Street Gallery.

Can you describe the meaning behind this exhibition and how it was received by the public?

Since moving from South Africa to London in 1988 to take up my place on the Master’s degree program at The Slade School of Art, I have carried a sketchbook with me on every journey on the London Underground. In these sketchbooks, I draw fellow commuters, archiving the fleeting encounters that form the warp and weft of society making up the fabric of London life. My exhibition

How is the Weather in Your Head? was an exhibition about paying attention to our external and internal worlds, about presence, participation, and connection. It was also an exhibition for anyone who has ever wondered about the life of a stranger they glimpsed on the tube or the bus, traversing this busy city, as each ceramic portrait is informed by one of my sketches on the London Underground and then the visual thoughts – my inner world is on the rear of each portrait thus combining my sketches and my visual thoughts into 3D, ceramic portraits.

You were recently the Artist in Residence at Earls Court (ECDC), how have visitors been enjoying your work?

I immersed myself in the community of Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, armed with my sketchbook and pens. Dressed in my usual vibrant clothing, I entered shops, cafes and pubs, chatted to people and asked permission to make a quick sketch. I told people I was the new artist in residence at ECDC, working to record the local communities through portrait sketches. I so enjoyed engaging with this new community and loved the conversations and connections. The sketches I made, I then used as reference to adorn a series of 24 hand built ceramic Companion Cups made to celebrate these communities. The series is called Building Communities. I then took each cup to show to the people who are depicted on the cups and invited the community to the exhibition at The Gallery at 26 Lillie road Fulham. People came and enjoyed finding and recognising themselves on the Companion Cups. I would love to become artist in residence in other communities and work on similar projects documenting the communities as it brings people together and makes for more bonded communities. The cups are left with ECDC and it is my hope that they will be used for tea and conversation.

Where do you go in London to get inspired?

I travel on the underground make sketches and I have conversations with strangers, people nourish my soul.

Tell us, what’s next for you?

I have just exhibited with Long and Ryle Gallery at Collect Art Fair at Somerset House.Currently I am working on a Conversation chair and actual chair that can be used in the garden which

I will be making out of fibre glass for a garden exhibition.

Where can our readers find you online?

My website is www.kimberleygundle.com

Instagram @kimberleygundle

@kimberley_gundle_studio