Strata: Elise Ashby & Lisa Denyer

Laura Harris

Writer Laura Harris offers an insight into 'Strata' – an exhibition of new work by Edinburgh-based artist Elise Ashby and Manchester-based artist Lisa Denyer, curated by Harris. The exhibition is on display at PAPER Gallery Manchester until 18 September 2021. Read Harris’ previous reflections on each artist here and here.

…the slow affections 

of the sedimentary, the pressure 

on earth out of sight to rise up 

into material, … 

– ‘Geology’ (2005) by Robert King. 

Elise Ashby combs Wardie Bay beach, Edinburgh, on the look out for curious objects washed up on the shore, before rendering them carefully in pencil. Layers accumulate on Lisa Denyer’s artworks, as the artist switches between flurries of gestural mark-making and the slow and contemplative addition of geometric elements. Both artists, whose work carry distinct aesthetics and sit in different genres, nonetheless share many touchstones – an interest in process, in time, and in the evocativeness of material. 

Ashby’s process is almost that of the geologist or archaeologist. The objects she finds on the beach are the offcuts of industry long since lost from this stretch of Scotland’s coastline. Sharp metal nails, rusted to a dark speckled brown, or enamel splints that look for all the world like shards of bone, find their way to this shore. Remnants of past industry, these snippets of material have been subjected to the forces of the sea. Over these years they have accrued stories that we can’t hear, and that we can only guess at through the patina and traces they bear; stories populated with labourers, and with tides both worldly and human. Drawn in by the mystery of these objects, Ashby collects them, before arranging them in such a way as to lend a degree of order – even if only aesthetic – to her gathered assembly. 

Denyer, meanwhile, begins her search for the genesis of her works elsewhere. In DIY stores, or though found objects, she constructs the material basis of her painting – the ground for them. Selected for how their textures disrupt or facilitate the addition of paint, this is the starting point of what will become richly, densely layered paintings. Denyer liberally loads thick, squelchy paint onto the bases, each layer adding contours to the growing landscape of the work. In other pieces, a more refined approach is preferred, with simple but expressive brushstrokes grazing over coarse sandpaper. Entering the next stage of the process, Denyer takes a step back, and takes time to deliberate over the ideal placement of geographic elements which sit – seemingly hovering – over the choppy surfaces of the paint. 

In these processes it is possible to find points of conversation and conversion. Such has been my pleasure over the last 12 months, as I have got to know the artists’ work and been witness to their sharing of interests in the development of the show ‘Strata’ (PAPER Gallery Manchester, 4 Aug –18 Sep). Too often, exhibitions can be weighed down by heavy-handed, over-stretching curatorial themes that force square pegs into round holes. Ashby and Denyer’s work resists this; both artists produce works which emanate charm and intrigue all their own, without asking for the excavation or interpretation. In searching for a way to tease out their synergies in an exhibition space, we together struck on the notion of ‘strata.’ The word conjures up layers, sediment, time, and material in such a way that chimes with the processes both artists engage with, while leaving the artworks to speak for themselves. 

In Ashby’s work, the found objects speak to the ways in which history is written into material over time. As in landscapes, mountains, and coastlines, they wear their story in and on their body. Although Ashby’s final pieces, and those on display in ‘Strata’, are drawings, the arrangement of the objects is a vital part of her process. Placing these objects into certain orders introduces a kind of rhythm, or a kind of score in which each part joins the chorus of the whole. The drawing that follows is a testament to this, and the images are both austere and detailed. What emanates from the drawings is a sense of deep time, methodical yet poetic, which elevates the objects from castoffs to talismans of times past. It is here that we can think of Ashby’s work as layered; layered with time, engaging in a conversation with the churn of the sea, and, finally, offering in the drawings an alternative map of the layering of fate onto these objects. 

Denyer’s works, meanwhile, are more internally consolidated. Previously, Denyer painted landscapes, and this sensibility is present in her more recent work – although taking the concept of landscape and thinking about it vertically. In other words, as each layer of paint is added to the base, Denyer builds a terrain – rugged and tempestuous. In both the more built up works as well as the closer to 2D ones, the layers are built up in a way that corresponds, in both texture and colour, to what has gone before. The concluding geometric shapes are markers on this landscape. The earthliness of this is palpable. 

In Robert King’s poem ‘Geology’ (2005), he writes of ‘the slow affections of the sedimentary’. With this, King gets to something elemental in both Ashby and Denyer’s work. The addition of layer on layer, the building pressure of sediment on sediment, is a kind of tenderness. It’s a tenderness Ashby witnesses and Denyer creates. It is a tenderness that we hope draws together the artworks on display in ‘Strata’, and which gently holds together these two bodies of work.