Cloud falls in love with mortal is a solo exhibition by American artist Penny McCarthy (born 1960) at the Hastings Contemporary from October 8 to March 12. It consists of an extensive series of graphite drawings made between 2019 and 2022. Penny received the biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2019.
The catalyst for these drawings was a newspaper image from 2016, that looked like a portal to another world had opened in the sky above Hastings. This was a Fata Morgana – a type of mirage that significantly distorts the object on which it is based, so that the object is completely unrecognisable.
Each drawing in the series is linked to the enigmatic Fata Morgana mirage, in which the sea appears in the sky and the world is turned upside down, somehow coalescing the everyday and the sublime.
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 instead made 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 – all represented with a frugality that comes, at least in part, from being made during the turbulent time of the global pandemic.
Works explore the interplay between life and an art project: a drawing of a cat in the studio, a re-working of a rough sketch of a statue seen in Rome years ago that tells of a Greek myth, a drawing of the sea from memory, a re-imagined episode from Star Trek about a shape-shifting cloud. Each work attempts to make the familiar unfamiliar to register their strange particularity.
The exhibition also includes a series of postcards, and a short film made in collaboration with Hugo Glendinning that explores key motifs from the drawing series, linking ideas, contexts, and studio methods, through clouds of graphite pencil dust and speculative discussion.
This exhibition is an outcome of the biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award of £10,000 made in association with the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. Penny McCarthy was the recipient of the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2019, which was awarded on the basis of two drawings included in the exhibition (DNA in Nature and Photo 51) and her proposal for the award and solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary, the presentation of which has been delayed by the impacts of the pandemic. The Evelyn Williams Trust supports the biennial award, which is delivered in a collaboration between Drawing Projects UK, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and Hastings Contemporary.
Hastings Contemporary Director Liz Gilmore says: “Two of our gallery rooms will be transformed by this exquisitely beautiful immersive exhibition by artist Penny McCarthy. The show, with an accompanying film and practical resources, is an inspiring and special celebration of the possibilities of drawing. Penny’s ability to take our visitors into an imaginative space between dreams and reality can be enjoyed by both adults and children.”
David Alston, an Evelyn Williams Trustee, said: “Penny McCarthy’s exhibition Cloud falls in love with mortal is rich in associative ideas, arresting in its concentrated focus on how the individual drawings are done, and in the space for looking so opened out for the viewer, along with the thoughts and reveries she offers about making art and a life in art.”
Image Credits: Hugo Glendinning. .