Bo Lee and Workman Gallery:
Kim Booker
Interview Laasya Gadiyaram
Jemma Hickman and Alice Workman’s Bruton gallery, Bo Lee and Workman, currently features Kim Booker’s I Want to Live Twice. The former church-turned-gallery provides a space for innovative art and genuine discussion, allowing artists, curators, and viewers to critically engage with some of the world’s most thought-provoking art in a constructive and deliberate manner. Combined, Hickman and Workman hold thirty years of experience in the art world, having curated numerous exhibitions and dealt with many innovative works firsthand. Their skills and talent expand upon the established cultural scene of Bruton, elevating the town as a renowned art destination itself. Hickman and Workman discuss their gallery and Bruton and Booker expand upon her exhibition.
What inspired you about Bruton?
Bruton has a strong sense of community and is a great cultural hub with many interesting writers, photographers, artists, and other creative practitioners carving out their own businesses and creative paths. The people here really enjoy and appreciate the visual arts and sharing their own work and experiences.
What do you envision for the future of the Bruton art market? How do you see your skills helping Bruton evolve into an art destination for the UK and the rest of the world?
Over the past few years, Bruton has become a destination for contemporary art as well as for food and gardens as many people come to the area to visit Hauser & Wirth Somerset, The Newt in Somerset, and the many wonderful restaurants we have here. Our gallery is in an iconic building in the center of town, and we hope our program of innovative exhibitions by early to mid-career artists will encourage more visitors interested in contemporary art to explore our gallery and all the other activities across the venues in Bruton.
What do you both look for in artists when deciding on displaying their exhibition?
We look for artists who are inventive within their practice and create work with great skill, but also an aesthetic we admire as well as hard work and passion.
Kim Booker:
Congratulations on your exhibition! I Want to Live Twice features drawn and erased imagery. How does this interact with the religious and feminine themes of your work?
There’s this theme of erasure or concealment that runs through my work. For me this covers quite personal issues as well as commenting more broadly about the ways in which women are perceived or represented in society, and the experience of women more generally.
How do you find the religious notes of your exhibition enhanced by the space within which it is displayed?
I don’t think of my work as having any religious connection, but it was interesting for me to see how the paintings would respond to the gallery building, being a former church. I think galleries and religious buildings share some of the same qualities in terms of being places for reflection, introspection, and quiet engagement with space and the objects within that space. The influence for me came in the form of this quite brutal engagement with themes of life and death in the paintings.
How do you think the issues you explore in your work, commonly dismissed as women’s issues, are impacted by religion?
I think religion can be an incredibly nurturing thing for people. Unfortunately, the maxim usually holds true that ‘abuse of power comes as no surprise.
