Woven time

By Dr Rachel Sloan, Associate Curator for Works on Paper, The Courtauld Gallery

First published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition ‘Alexandra Blum, Wayfaring’, Fitzrovia Gallery, London, 18 - 28 October 2023

The flight path of a gull, a scudding bank of cloud, a bag of rubbish tumbling into a skip, the mountain of machinery at work in the Tate & Lyle refinery: the warp and weft of modern life, so ordinary we usually fail to notice it. Part of the magic of Alexandra Blum’s urban panoramas is that they force us to notice how extraordinary all these things are, both in themselves and in how they collide, how they intermingle.

Blum’s soaring vistas and multiple viewpoints, which allow the eye to wander at will, are rooted in the ‘world landscapes’ of early Netherlandish art and the domestic interiors of Robert Campin, but the notions of power and ownership associated with the bird’s eye viewpoint give way to a more democratic way of being. The concept of wayfaring, as set out by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, is central to Blum’s work (see page 5). In these drawings, made in front of two windows – a studio window overlooking the post-industrial cityscape of the Thames Barrier and a sitting room above the patchwork of close-packed houses and gardens of a north London suburb – both artist and viewer become wayfarers. Exploring all the possibilities of the single medium of graphite pencil, Blum’s cityscapes begin not with a preparatory composition, but with the act of noticing – the slant of light on a warehouse roof, the path of a person wending their way between a fence and a lorry, a pigeon bursting into flight – and the rapid capture of a particular moment. Made over the course of weeks or months, a single drawing, regardless of scale, brings together the paths of numerous wayfarers. Each, as organic in its growth as a plant, forces us to reconsider the notion of time as linear. Here, instead, time is a tapestry. Each drawing is composed of myriad observed moments which did not happen simultaneously but could have, allowing us to glimpse how the human and more-than-human worlds weave together.

At the heart of this exhibition are two monumental panoramas composed of four large sheets. The integrity of the compositions means that each sheet can be viewed individually. Taken together, however, they unspool into something greater than the sum of its parts. Studio Panorama – Gull’s Journey (see back flap) gives wings to the notion of wayfaring, allowing us to fly, like the gull at the centre of the composition, over the curve of the earth, watching the world remake itself before our eyes. Home Panorama – Towards Spring (see front flap), on the other hand, was made when the COVID-19 pandemic barred Blum from her studio. Much like Josef Sudek’s Studio Window series, it embraces the challenge of being suddenly immobilised. A windowsill still life frames a view that at first glance feels boxed in but in which the boundary between interior and exterior is less fixed than it initially appears. A seemingly limited vista reveals subtle seasonal changes and a freedom tantalisingly just out of reach. Even in a world brought to a grinding halt, Home Panorama hints at how our imaginations float free of physical constraints – and how time goes on weaving its rich tapestry.

© Rachel Sloan 2023

See images and find out more about the show here

To request a copy of the exhibition catalogue, please email: AlexandraBlumDrawing@gmail.com