Anna Moszynska In Conversation with Rachel Howard

Newport Street Gallery in London is currently exhibiting an imposing series of paintings relating to the Stations of the Cross. Rachel Howard's titles often refer directly or obliquely to the Christian religion, but her work here touches particularly on issues of mortality and the 'controlled' brutality within contemporary society.

Rachel Howard graduated from Goldsmith's Art College in 1991 and, since then, has created commanding and technically accomplished paintings which embrace both abstraction and figuration. Her work tackles difficult aspects of the human condition including suicide, madness and violence. She often works in series, one having made reference to the Seven Deadly Sins, another currently on show at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts, entitled Paintings of Violence (Why I am not a mere Christian). At the Newport Street Gallery, a set of 14 large-scale paintings, executed between 2005 and 2008 in household gloss and acrylic paint, are again grouped together under one title: Repetition is Truth--Via Dolorosa.

The Via Dolorosa paintings are preceded by a separate small, square canvas, Study, 2005, previously included in the 'Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11' exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. The source for this small painting is explained in this interview. It unlocks the series as a whole where a transformed version of the image recurs. In the following extract from her catalogue conversation with Anna Moszynska, Rachel Howard talks about her technical approach to this repeated black form, her thinking behind the Stations of the Cross and how her childhood experience of religion relates to the work overall.

Anna Moszynska Let's start with the technique. Could you explain the process of making the paintings in the Repetition is Truth - Via Dolorosa series?

Rachel Howard Well, I wanted to talk to you about the actual gloss, the idea of what gloss paint is used for. Gloss is used as a household paint, and I've always loved the idea of trying to humanise it, to make it do what it's not supposed to do. I wanted to reintroduce it, but it took a long time to find a way to make it look very luscious and for it to do what I wanted. Of course, you pour a vast swathe of colourful gloss paint on a canvas and it's kind of sexy. What I wanted to do was to take it straight from the can, like Frank Stella, but to get it to behave in a way that was the antithesis of its intended function. To give it nuance, I suppose.

AM: You used household gloss in your earlier work and then later moved on to oil and acrylic. Where do the paintings in this series sit?

RH: I started the series in 2005, kind of towards the end of my using household gloss as a medium. I discovered that if I let the paint cans rest, the gloss rises to the top and the pigment sinks to the bottom. So, I ended up with an amber nectar of varnish with the consistency of treacle on top, with the pigment underneath. I'd worked for a long time just pouring the colours from the pots, à la Stella. I also used that here, but now divided it into two separate parts: varnish and pigment - an even truer form of what's in the can. This gave me the scope I was looking for to be able to manipulate the paint. Prior to this stage, a base coat of fluorescent acrylic paint was added, which, although I hate acrylic paint, creates these incredible fluorescents peeping through at the edges. So very little colour was used but when you see it, it really packs a punch, because they're pretty minimal paintings.

RH: With the paintings standing up - using huge ladders and scaffolding - I poured the pigment across the top edge of the canvas. Gravity is incredibly important to my work and has been my invisible partner in crime for many years. The gravitational pull descending down the canvas, visualised through the perfect striations of paint, acts as a perfect plumb line. Because I've been working like this for so many years, I know the way the material behaves and how long I need to leave it before adding the rivers of varnish. I also learnt how much varnish to use, the speed it flows and how to angle the canvas so that it doesn't always hit the sides - so you get these variable effects around the edges. Sometimes a painting is turned around 180 degrees, so the gravitational pull is reversed on the canvas plane. Then there's this wonderful push and pull between the two gravities that can give you the feeling of being suspended. I would let each painting rest for at least a month, until it was dry. As gloss paint dries from the outside in, it gets a skin on it, so you think it's dry but it's not. Patience is essential. I think this whole body of work was an exercise in patience, which fits with the feel of the series. After letting the paintings rest, I made decisions as to how much I wanted to reveal of the layer that went before. So there is this constant flow of decisions, as I never know what I am going to paint beforehand. It's just down to how each one evolves. I also couldn't paint all fourteen at the same time as I could only fit up to three in my studio at once. It wasn't until sometime later that I saw them all together and could see how they resonated with one another.

AM: How did the black form come about in some of the paintings in this series?

RH I look at these paintings and still feel confused about how I did that. I vaguely think I masked the edges of the box out. Each layer is a complete coat, so it's not like I could just work on a small area. I have to work on every layer as a veil, so each painting might have five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten or more 'veils', or covers of paint.

I wanted the box to look like it would sort of dissolve, or that you couldn't stand on it. I hate the word 'ethereal', but it has that sort of quality, you know, intangible. Once there were no more drips at the bottom of the canvas--the canvases were propped up over long pig troughs in order to catch the excess paint--I would quickly lie them down and work on them with a brush to delineate the box. If you can imagine them being worked upright, using gravity to pull the paint, and then lying down, you can see where I have carved in the paint to further define the box.

AM: And what determines the distinction of scale between the panels themselves?

RH: They are based on the Stations of the Cross in the sense that there are fourteen, but each canvas isn't meant to represent each of the Stations, that's where I depart from the religiosity. But I still wanted that overwhelming physical presence as you are standing in front of them, something bigger than you, as if you're 'entering' each painting. Each one is a place, a step, a pause, a contemplation--the slight variation of scale is to keep the eye moving and not to be able to make predictions.

AM: What about the art historical side? The Stations of the Cross as subject matter offers quite a challenge in terms of painting, doesn't it?

RH: As any painter knows, you are crippled by the history of art as soon as you approach a canvas. Even just facing a bare canvas, you already have the weight of what came before on your shoulders. I've purposefully always painted on canvas for that very reason; to feel the bounce of the canvas is to be reminded of the history that went before.

AM: And the vertical lines?

RH: The lines--or, in some cases, lesions --were my polite nod to Barnett Newman's 'zips', of course.

AM: Your title is very interesting here: Repetition is Truth--Via Dolorosa. Via Dolorosa is very poetic and distances itself from Newman's more explicit Stations of the Cross, which he subtitles Lema Sabachthani, or 'Why have you forsaken me?'

RH: When I was a kid I used to chant those words, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani', 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' So powerful, such thrilling words to a small child, overwhelmed by this idea of A GOD, this looming presence. In Newman's title, there is a voice which takes it right back to the thing, whereas the rhythm of 'Via Dolorosa' is just beautiful. In fact, the whole title, Repetition is Truth--Via Dolorosa, the pace of it, the sound of it, everything about it has a very lyrical feeling. 'Via Dolorosa' also comes from my pacing around and thinking about it.

Yes, because the title is also referencing an actual walk. The physical route in Jerusalem, marked with the Stations of the Cross and followed by pilgrims to commemorate Christ's painful journey to the Crucifixion.

We, as people, have been here before --not literally, but there's the same damage, the same pain, just a different event, war, country, continent. And the idea was to have the fourteen paintings spaced so that you can walk around them, but in no particular order. Actually, my original idea, if such a place exists, was to have them hanging in a square room with four entrances; so you could enter at any point, as a loop, a merry-go-round. My Stations have no beginning, middle or end, but are an endless circle. Repetition is truth.

AM: The word 'dolorosa' sounds like 'dolorous', and 'Via Dolorosa' is often translated as 'The Way of Sorrow'. But if you take the literal transcription from the Latin, 'dolorosa' means 'pain'. And, in the case of your series, pain could be said to relate to torture and contemporary human rights abuses?

RH: Yes. That's definitely why I chose the title. Because my translation is 'way of grief' or 'the way of pain'.

AM: You provide an important visual clue to this aspect in your use of the infamous photograph of the hooded figure standing in a cruciform posture on a box in the Abu Ghraib prison. This man, Ali Shallal al-Qaisi, was one of the prisoners subjected to torture and abuse by US guards in the detention centre in Baghdad Province, following the invasion of Iraq. You've said that you hung this image of him in your studio in four differently sized formats, cut out from various newspapers, and it then became the basis for your small figurative painting, Study, 2005.

RH: I see a direct thread from the Stations back to Ali Shallal al-Qaisi. Definitely. So, you go from an image of today, a snapshot of a moment, to the most infamous human rights atrocity there is ...

AM: ... the Crucifixion?

RH: Yes, 2,000 years previous. To jump forward to 2,000 years on ... to me it completely made sense.

AM: Was that image the starting point for the entire series?

RH: ell, I was thinking about this incredibly shocking image of Ali Shallal al-Qaisi on the box, standing with his arms spread. Looking at this photo in my studio, my artistic eye set in which made me feel so guilty, to look at the picture in a removed sense--and I painted this small painting, Study. But I felt very uncomfortable with the fact that someone is under there--under the hood, the robe. So what I wanted to do, and what I do a lot with my work, is to physically and metaphorically move or displace the imagery from the actual topic. Physically, these paintings are poured. There's this flurry of paint and my hand plays a very limited part. I push the paint around, but gravity always takes the hand away. The high varnish also pushes you away, and gives reference to the glossiness of 21st-century imagery.

The most important thing though, that I just couldn't get out of my head when looking at the photographs, was the box. He's standing on a box. This is an iconic image--the square is almost like a plinth--and I kept thinking, what kind of box is it that can hold his weight? I was thinking about the cross, the Crucifixion, and how it related to this box used in a 21st-century place of horror and human rights atrocities, and I couldn't help but allow this interplay between the two. It wasn't that I wanted to do something abstract, but I became obsessed with this box. Who made it? Who found it? Banal decisions for a terrifying act. [...]

AM: What about religion? Other titles of yours include the Sin Paintings series (2003), and the later Paintings of Violence (2011-2016), which are subtitled, 'Why I am not a mere Christian'. Religion keeps coming up in your work--where do you stand on it?

RH: I'm obsessed with religion. When I was tiny I used to go to church with my aunt in Sunderland, and I was just affected by the whole experience of it deeply--being in the space, the sound, the smell, the fear, everything.

AM: As an Anglican, not a Catholic?

RH: Church of England. But then I went to Quaker school for two years. Quakerism is one of the most beautiful religions. It's all based on contemplation and the Light Within, and, if you think about it, the Meeting House is Malevich's square [Black Square, 1913]. It's called a 'Meeting House'. It's about equality, there's no hierarchy; we would sit facing each other, you're not preached at, you stand up when you feel moved to speak--not that I ever did--and there's this beautiful practice of silence and contemplation, which is pretty rich coming from me because I could talk the hind legs off a donkey, but I loved it! It's based on trust and sharing, and all these things that completely made sense.

AM: It relates to a strong moral code too, doesn't it? Especially as Quakers don't have a written creed and can follow quite diverse theological routes.

RH: Well, there are many different branches within Quakerism with differing understandings of Christianity. It's religion, it's confusing! Quakers believe that God is in every person. There was so much about Quakerism that was attractive: some of the earliest pioneers of the movement were women, and the community are called 'Friends'. Brilliant, way ahead of Facebook!

AM: So why did you repudiate ...?

RH: Because I realised it was just about being a human.

AM: But you like the Meeting House model?

RH: Yes, imagine going somewhere and sitting in a room in silence and having that hour to contemplate. To me it's an absolute no-brainer; they should just have spaces, you know, atheist spaces, non-denominational spaces.

AM: A bit like Rothko's chapel in Houston?

RH: Exactly!

AM: So, you want people to make up their own minds?

RH: Yes, I don't want to be cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. This work is actually about religion, not politics, and about just being human and knowing that I feel so ashamed and angry when I look at those pictures. Nothing is changing! In that sense, repetition is truth.

Anna Moszynska is a lecturer in contemporary art and one of the founding trustees of Art and Christianity

Caption: Rachel Howard Repetition is Truth--Via Dolorosa, 2005-8 Courtesy: Newport Street Gallery