You are now at the start of the third section of the exhibition, which is called ‘Drawings and Paintings from the 1960s’, named after an exhibition Amiss put on in 1989.
Here we have reassembled 24 of the 30 artworks she exhibited in that show, most of which depict objects from Amiss’s domestic space, as well as views from the window.
The first work in the section is exhibited on a small partition wall about 75 cm wide. In the centre of the wall – inset like a window into it – is a page from a sketchbook, displayed in portrait format inside a pale wooden frame.
According to the typed price list that Amiss made for this exhibition in 1989, it is called ‘Front: View from Front Window’. The frame measures 46 x 38 cm, taller than it is wide. The sketchbook page itself is much smaller and is mounted inside the frame so that the row of punched holes from the spiral binding of the sketchbook are still showing across the top of the page.
A watercolour painting fills the paper. There are three roughly horizontal washes of colour: bluey-purple at the top, dark yellow in the middle, and grassy green at the base. To the left of the page, sandwiched between the yellow and green layers, is a small patch of vivid blue, perhaps representing water.
Drawn in pencil over these patches of colour is a grid of wavy lines. They suggest the bare trunks and branches of three trees that have lost their leaves, backlit by a colourful sky. The artist has written her initials, A J A, in pencil in the bottom right-hand corner.
Like half of the sketchbook pages Amiss exhibited in ‘Drawings and Watercolours from the 1960s’, there are artworks on both sides of the paper. This is reflected on the price list, where each of their titles is prefixed either with the word ‘front’ or ‘back’. To ensure both sides were visible, Amiss adapted a conventional picture frame by removing the backboard and using white tape to give the impression of a mount.
On first seeing these two-sided works in the archive, it was unclear how Amiss could have exhibited them to show both sides. However, during the research process we reached out to the venue of the exhibition – Dance Attic Studios – who kindly shared a photograph of another exhibition they hosted around the same time by a different artist.
The photo shows that artworks were hung on long cord from a high picture rail, suggesting that for these double-sided works, the frame could be hung to show one side of the work, but then the long cord would allow for Amiss or a visitor to turn the frame around, making the other side visible instead.
Here we’ve built a slim temporary wall with the artworks set into it like windows so that both sides of the works can be displayed – this side of the wall shows the fronts of each work, and on the other side of this wall is where you’ll find the backs of those same works.
This is the end of track four. The tactile path continues to your right slightly and then straight ahead of you, along the perimeter of the wall displaying these two-sided works and around to the other side, where the next track focuses on the back of one of these works.