Jane Topping
Jane Topping is a Glasgow-based artist with a diverse collection of works spanning genres around post-digital, sci-fi, feminism, celebrity culture and many more. Her interdisciplinary approach to her art encompasses a plethora of themes. Topping incorporates her own experiences, as evidenced by the autobiographical component of her work, into pieces that examine alternative pasts, present, and futures of her own life.
Jane Topping, Drew Barrymore’s Island Hotel from Hell, 2023. Photo Courtesy: Jane Topping.
Topping studied biochemistry before enrolling in art school and pursuing a career as an artist. She joined an artist residency programme in Amsterdam after eight years at the same studio in Glasgow, allowing her to be free of financial constraints and balance studio time with other commitments. After the end of the residency, Topping returned to Carlisle to teach at the University of Cumbria and is now teaching and practicing in Glasgow.
Jane Topping, Bedroom Floor Misty, 2023. Photo Courtesy: Jane Topping.
Jane Topping is currently established as an artist being represented by the Patricia Fleming Gallery, opening her exciting exhibition in Glasgow called Drew Barrymore’s Island Hotel from Hell. As this is Topping's most recent collection of work, the exhibition and the works inside it were the main topics of conversation when talking to Topping. Her art is intensely autobiographical, exploring many notions about adolescence and the development of the body from puberty to menopause. The unexpected effects that menopause has on the female body are expressed throughout her work through collages, videos and the way that Topping has engaged with the space of the show.
Jane Topping, Somewhere on Tour 1986, Collage, Pencil Drawing on Paper. Photo Courtesy: Jane Topping.
Jane Topping, Future Past Tour 2023, Collage, Pencil Drawing on Paper. Photo Courtesy: Jane Topping.
An example of this can be seen in the two complimentary pieces of her ‘jeans works’ that are to-scale drawings of the jeans she wore as a thirteen-year-old, and the other, in 2022. The pencil drawing of Somewhere on Tour, is the exact jeans that she wore in 1986 when she met Iron Maiden (a heavy metal band iconic to the 80s and 90s). The second drawing, Future Past Tour, is a pair that she wore when she saw the band again in 2023. Building this bridge between her prepubescent and menopausal self can be seen in the broadening of the hips and the replacement of a gold leaf hormone patch instead of the signature of the band, showing the obsession that developed in adolescence but is reflected upon in maturity.
However, as Topping has expressed, ‘the work is not about being a woman, but about one lived experience. One way that I think trans issues are also feminist issues is that we have trans folk to thank for foregrounding discussion around all kinds of hormonal and bodily changes and I believe that menopausal women have benefited from this demystifying process.’
Prior to this exhibition and throughout the lockdown Topping predominantly worked in film, prompting her to reconsider her work, particularly in light of the physicality that came with the debut of Drew Barrymore's Island Hotel from Hell at the Patricia Fleming Gallery. Topping saw the potential of the space and drew from its past of being a police station and then a location for illegal raves before it was a gallery. Engaging with the physical space of a gallery was something new to her practice and the outcome can be seen in her recent show. To encapsulate this feeling, Topping had the idea of the space becoming a haunted house experience or reminiscent of a fun fair. This led her to create this dungeon-like room with the stuffed cat in the center as a showroom for one of her films, introducing her audience to the more gothic side to her work. On the other side of the room, there would be a video piece titled The Drew Barrymores, that draws inspiration and references Hiller’s 1999 work, Psi Girls. Both these pieces create this gothic atmosphere that Topping wanted to achieve and is something that she wishes to take forward in her future practice.
Jane Topping, The Drew Barrymore’s, 2023. Still from Digital Video, 4 minutes, Edition of 5, Image Courtesy: Jane Topping.
Adopting Hiller's methodologies of brutal editing, the sudden switches from one scene to another show the young Drew Barrymore and the older Drew Barrymore as opposing threats. “They attack with their telekinetic powers and with their teeth (because they desire human flesh). The youthful exuberance of a prepubescent Drew Barrymore has developed into the ravenous zombie of a menopausal Drew Barrymore. Where one childish anger was projected outwardly and used judiciously, that anger is transformed over time and is now focused on the consumption and satiation of desire. Times Change.”
Both references to Iron Maiden and Drew Barrymore reveal Topping’s interest in fandom and the culture surrounding fame, but also the rebellion that comes with puberty when listening to rock music such as Iron Maiden. Topping expressed that these two iconographic influences acted as the zeitgeist of her childhood, and she felt as if she had grown up with both. Topping is the same age as Drew Barrymore, so growing up with this celebrity was a defining factor when deciding on which ‘crush’ to always reference back to. Barrymore was in the public eye throughout her lifetime and therefore, her audience experienced her becoming a menopausal female as much as Topping was experiencing her own, acting as a ‘stand-in’ for herself.
Returning to the passions of her pubescent self, her work becomes intertwined with ideas from Carson McCullers, a Southern Gothic American novelist who explores spiritual isolation, misfits and outcasts. A particular favourite of Topping was the novel titled; The Member of the Wedding, which is a coming-of-age story. The protagonist, a young girl, becomes fascinated with her brother's wedding, but she is still stuck in her childish ways, questioning her participation at this point of her life and leading her to wonder where she belongs. The inspirations of this book are successfully depicted throughout this thought-provoking exhibition and intend for the audience to question where they are in this cycle of maturing. Topping’s work is unapologetically loud as she regains her practice for future works to come.
To learn more about Jane Topping’s work, visit Patricia Fleming Gallery website.
Ina Benigni
Emerging Artists Co-Editor, MADE IN BED