Pallant House Gallery: ‘Song for the Last Act’, Kaye Donachie
15.7.23
On this visit to Pallant House Gallery, a collection of modern art housed in a 1712 Queen Anne townhouse in Chichester, Sussex, there were many prints to observe, presented in a variety of contexts. This post will mention a few highlights.
‘Song for the Last Act’, is a temporary exhibition at Pallant House, showing works by Scottish contemporary painter Kaye Donachie. Creaking floorboards enrich the atmosphere in this domestic interior turned exhibition space. A series of portraits of historic female figures are presented; other-wordly, as though summoned to the present by Donachie to reveal their secrets. A single cyanotype print off-sets the series and serves to pose further questions: ‘Untitled VIII’, 2016, shows the form of a right hand upon a loosely described landscape, evoking the hand of Prospero raised in spell-casting on his remote island.
Deeper in the gallery, beyond the Gwen John exhibition, is ‘Song for the Last Act: Chorus’, a selection of prints and drawings from Pallant House’s collection curated by Kaye Donachie. From these, a mezzotint stands out: ‘Girl Sitting at Table’, 1909, by Peter Ilsted. The subject has her back to us, head down in activity, and we are reminded of the elusive gazes of Donachie’s portraits, and the potential of a portrait to enshroud its subject in mystery.
