Richard Nott 'Ecdysis'

R I C H A R D N O T T E C D Y S I S

In recent years much of Richard Nott’s work has 

assumed a status that is as close to that of sculpture 

as it is to painting. The change often appears dramatic 

when compared to the ar tist’s earlier work, for some 

of his paintings now protrude from the wall in much 

deeper relief, their textured surfaces teeming with 

organic incident. This development was first seen 

to powerful effect in his last show at Anima-Mundi, 

2014’s ‘Histolysis’, and continues here in series of new 

works that are equally remarkable. It in fact forms a 

natural progression, given that Nott initially trained 

as a sculptor. He graduated in 1982 at a time when 

what came to be labelled New British Sculpture was 

pre-eminent, its practitioners – amongst them Bill 

Woodrow and Tony Cragg – making work from a 

catholic range of stuff encompassing urban detritus 

and other easily sourced materials. Both as a student 

and in the early stages of his career, Nott’s work 

was influenced by such approaches as much as by 

pragmatic economic necessity. He established an 

aesthetic sensibility based upon the deployment of 

cer tain materials, finding what he needed in what were 

to become constant components of his ar t: amongst 

them emulsion paint, resin, and bitumen. 

Crucially, all of Nott’s work is anchored in a foundational 

geometr y of strict horizontals and ver ticals; a structural 

basis he describes as adhering to the same principles 

as those involved in making a chair or a building. 

He works in series, moving from one piece to the 

other, forming within them interrelationships of mark, 

texture and tone, and always allowing for chance and 

serendipity as he prompts each towards some kind 

of individual and collective resolution. Many of his 

processes are intensely physical: the list of methods 

employed includes pouring, wiping, sponging, blotting, 

dragging, scraping, gouging, sanding, burning and 

peeling. The ar tist describes lots of reaction between 

the oiliness of bitumen and the water-based paints he 

utilises: these chemical reactions are fundamental to 

the work and its effects. He often uses a blowtorch on 

his paintings, scorching or setting light to their surfaces, 

sometimes flooding them with water, occasionally 

putting them out in the open for a time to contend 

with the elements. The work is rooted in oppositional 

forces: Nott describes his studio as the setting of 

‘a small war’, in which he under takes protracted 

battle with the tensions between control and chaos, 

structure and flux, subsumation and exhumation. Much 

of his time is spent in both applying and then removing 

paint, allowing for residual glimpses and traces of what 

lies beneath to come for th. Process and meaning are 

inextricable in Nott’s work. In discussion he often uses 

the word ‘histor y’, in reference to the accretion of time 

within the layers of his paintings. He makes an analogy 

of digging into the ear th; of how as one digs deeper it 

becomes blacker, and of how in his work he aims for 

its converse, a form of archaeological retrieval, or the 

gradual achievement of equipoise in which ‘things go 

from dark to light.’ Central is the idea of experience

and energy accumulated and contained within matter, 

both literally and metaphorically. In all of this the ar tist 

is keen to stress the fundamentally abstract nature of 

his work, and concerned to promote readings that are 

intuitive and allusive rather than literal. 

The title of this show, ‘Ecdysis’ 1 has both personal 

meaning for the ar tist whilst relating also to the 

largest works here, ‘Baetylus 1-3’, three imposing and 

blackly oleaginous square panels, each of them pretty 

much a man’s height. The paintings were worked on 

intermittently over a four-year period, during which 

they remained in constant material flux. One of the 

early stages of development involved laying down 

resin, which was then burnt and subsequently scraped 

off in strips like flayed flesh. Later this debris was 

glued back on, in thick strips and shards pressed 

onto the surface, where they were then subjected to 

fur ther treatment; gouged or burnt away so that their 

edges fused with bituminous residues and the greys 

of the underlying substrate. The resultant paintings 

are immensely tactile, somehow both primeval 

and sensual. 

In contrast to what is often a tor turous and lengthy 

process, working on paper allows Nott to make 

changes at a faster pace, to be less precious and more 

open to chance. A series of these smaller paintings 

usually begins with him stretching around thir ty sheets 

of paper. In common with all of his work, he first 

imposes an underlying structure, by scoring a grid 

into each sheet with a knife or the edge of a metal 

tool, sometimes allowing its spacing to be asymmetric, 

whilst making others as regular as a sheet of graph 

paper. Across this structural armature Nott drags 

swathes of emulsion, forming unpredictable smears and 

blockages as it catches within the grid’s indentations. 

Later the grid might be re-established, redrawn or 

par tially revealed by lightly sanding back the surface, 

and perhaps then existing only as a faint shadow, as 

though ghosted. As with his larger works, the ar tist 

often sets fire to the works on paper, the flame of 

the blowtorch ‘pitting the surface’ and ‘releasing what 

lies beneath’. He tends to keep them in the studio for 

some time, a kind of incubation period during which 

they might be subjected to accidental scuffs and stray 

spatters, before then finally being reassessed and 

resuscitated, ‘brought back to preciousness’. The linear 

structuring of Nott’s paintings on paper suggests pages 

of fragmentar y eroded text. They invoke something 

of the transience of memor y and time, and the 

fundamental role of language; retained, remembered, 

hidden or forgotten. They seem also about a yet more 

abstract language, one that is related to the spiritual in 

man and nature. There is a small white-on-white work 

on paper here, ‘Codex 1’, its delicate relief akin to 

Braille awaiting human touch. Others contain hundreds 

of tiny spore-like marks, some of them par tially 

washed away, whilst others appear as though rusted 

or corroded. All of the smaller paintings act in subtle 

1

counterpoint to the ostensibly greater drama of 

the ar tist’s more substantial panel paintings. Of the 

latter, shown here are a series of eight white reliefs 

entitled ‘Ecdysis 1-8’, along with three substantially 

larger ones in grey, ‘Eolith 1-3’, and ‘Ecdysial 1 and 

2’ that are larger still, all of their surfaces claggy and 

deeply encrusted. Like ever ything Nott produces, they 

result from what he describes as a ‘transformation’ of 

material, a brand of alchemical ar tifice here involving 

repetitive excavation and accumulation. The greys 

appear volcanic; coagulated and pockmarked, they are 

inflected here and there with a carboniferous sheen, 

whilst the whites are matt and bone-like, the delicacy 

of their edges frangible in appearance. A subtle play 

of light across these paintings gently activates their 

intricacies and emphasises their powerfully sensor y 

nature: touch is fundamental in all of Nott’s work. 

Nott utilises a limited palette, of what might be 

defined ‘non-colour’, formed from whites and greys 

mixed from emulsion paints, with blacks, browns and 

ochres from various consistencies of bitumen thinned 

with white spirit. Within these limits, the ar tist carefully 

mediates hue and tone, summoning a multiplicity of 

effects of mood and atmosphere from pale yellow 

infusions and ear th tones, his whites, greys and blacks 

suggesting the impalpability of light, smoke or mist. 

He is fully conversant with the power of restraint. 

Amongst his pantheon of greatly admired painters 

are the minimalists Agnes Mar tin and Rober t Ryman, 

and he has also cited Giorgio Morandi as an ar tist 

who achieved poetic resonance within the steadfast 

limitations of his still life subjects and restrained 

tonal palette. 

Restraint extends also to Nott’s titles, each painting 

and drawing identified with just one carefully selected 

word, words that often evoke metamorphosis and 

transformation of the physical or spiritual in land and 

body. Questioned about the metaphorical aspect of his 

work Nott refers to the inherent vulnerability of its 

materials and its immersive qualities, through which it 

derives its contemplative and meditative nature. Out 

of the highly physical processes he enacts through 

often-intense struggle, gradually and by stealth he 

achieves a form of agreement with the work, a point 

at which he recognises something of himself in it, and 

in which stasis and quietude prevail. 

Dr Ian Massey, 2017 

Dr Ian Massey is an ar t historian, writer and curator. 

His publications include major monographs on the 

ar tists Patrick Procktor and Keith Vaughan. He is 

currently writing a book about the St. Ives sculptor 

John Milne. 

1 From Collins dictionar y : ‘Ecdysis’ is the process of 

shedding the old skin in reptiles or the outer cuticle in 

insects and other ar thropods. 

2

4

EOLITH 1 

mixed media on panel . 90 x 90 x 12 cm 

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EOLITH 2 


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7

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EOLITH 3 


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ECDYSIS 1 


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ECDYSIS 2 


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ECDYSIS 3 


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ECDYSIS 4 


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ECDYSIS 5 


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ECDYSIS 6 


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ECDYSIS 7 


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ECDYSIS 8 


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ECDYSISAL 1 


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ECDYSISAL 2 


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CODEX 1 

mixed media on paper . 67 x 67 cm 

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CODEX 2 


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CODEX 3 


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CODEX 4 


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CODEX 5 


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BAETYLUS 1 

mixed media on panel . 184 x 184 cm 

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BAETYLUS 2 


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BAETYLUS 3 


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STRIGOSE 1 


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STRIGOSE 2 


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STRIGOSE 3 


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STRIGOSE 4 


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STRIGOSE 5 


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Published by Anima-Mundi to coincide with the exhibition ‘Ecdysis’ by Richard Nott 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or 

by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers 

Artwork photography by Graham Gaunt 

Portrait photograph by Joseph Clarke 

Introductory essay © Dr Ian Massey 2017 

Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . Tel: 01736 793121 . Email: mail@anima-mundi.co.uk . www.anima-mundi.co.uk

Richard Nott 'Ecdysis'

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