A clear, bright day, the sky full of lapwings, curlew and skylark. The lapwings ‘peewit’ as they swoop and dive. Along Edge Lane to Reaps Cross, looking over towards Widdop and northwards. Wide open space on the tops, still some snow on the dark heather moorland and pale blonde late winter grass. Bitterly cold.
After the snow, murky, misty, damp day, the air full of flies, the swallows have arrived and are flying low. The curlews calling as they fly over, the legend of the seven whistlers; six unidentified birds were said to call constantly during their search for a seventh.
Jo Gorner works primarily in print and drawing. Her practice starts in notebooks with drawing, writing and observations from walking. The central pivot of the work is emotion and memory held within a language of place, landscape and the mapping of intimate geographical details. In her sparsely abstract works she extends the remains of an encounter with place, hinting at a landscape beyond the physical. With meticulous markings on the surface of the paper her lines are suspended between intention and chance and become a translation of associative thinking, a dialogue between herself and the land.
Jo has undertaken many location based projects in the UK and Ireland. In 2022 she returned to Co.Mayo, Ireland for her fourth residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation where she was awarded a fellowship in 2003. After her initial residency in 2003 she produced Source, a series of 28 prints which were shown in a solo show at the Flowers East Gallery, London in 2006. Work from a second residency at Ballinglen, in 2007, was exhibited at Dublin Graphic Studio, Ireland and the Courthouse Gallery, Ballycastle, Ireland in 2009-10.
In 2020 Jo was commissioned to make three short audio-film works based around Morcambe Bay, for the Future Places Centre, Lancaster University, creating soundscapes as a therapeutic interface for residential care homes.
Field Works in 2014 was a commission to create a land artwork for a 10 acre field in the South Pennines, a selection of the resulting print based works were exhibited in a solo show Familiar Land at Northern Print, Newcastle, in 2016.
Littoral, 2011 – 2013, was an Arts Council funded project to create site responsive work based on west coast landscapes in the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Mull and Cumbria. The culmination of this project was a residency at An Tobar on Mull and a series of solo exhibitions at Flowers Gallery, London; An Tobar, Tobermory; Strand Gallery, Aldeburgh and the Piece Hall, Halifax.
Through 2024 – 25 Jo is working in a former Baptist Chapel nestled into the moorland around her home. Her residency at Wainsgate Chapel is an opportunity to create a specific body of work reflecting the intimate story and geography of place against the framework of a creative community.
Jo received her BA from The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford and MA from Manchester Metropolitan University. In recent years she has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2013 – 2021; Abstraction, Landscapes and Otherscapes, Ballinglen Museum of Art, 2023; Remote Lands, Zuleika Gallery, 2020; Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair; New Light Touring 2018-19, Bowes Museum, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Bankside Gallery, London, Tullie House Museum, Carlisle; The Original Print Show, Zillah Bell Gallery, 2017 & 18. Her work is in many private and public collections including the British Museum, The Ballinglen Museum, Trinity Hall Cambridge, Bury City Gallery, Bankfield Museum, Halifax.
Alongside her practice Jo worked as an arts officer and public art manager, has taught in schools and higher education and delivered a wide range of arts projects in community and health settings. Jo was the co-ordinator of the Oxford Printmakers open access workshop, the West Yorkshire Printmaking Workshop and technical assistant to Helen Chadwick 1988-89 to produce 2 print series.
Jo lives and works in West Yorkshire, she self publishes her work from her print studio at Dean Clough, Halifax.