Exhibitions / Solo
The Black Pen Project
Bloc Projects, 71 Eyre Lane, Sheffield
23 December – 30 December 2021
The Black Pen Project brought together a body of paintings developed through Richard Bartle’s long engagement with the work of the 14th-century painter and storyteller Mehmet Siyah Kalem.
Siyah Kalem’s images depict demons, nomads, travellers and everyday encounters along the cultural routes linking Central Asia, Persia and Anatolia. Rather than illustrating or reproducing these historical paintings, Bartle used their figures as vessels through which to examine contemporary Istanbul.
The surfaces of the figures were built from visual material encountered across the city, including graffiti, architectural fragments, street markings, stencils and decorative details. These accumulated textures connected the imagined world of Siyah Kalem with the changing fabric of 21st-century Istanbul.
The edges of the figures remained carefully controlled and distinct from the layered surfaces within them. This contrast allowed each demon to operate simultaneously as an image, a container and a record of direct encounters with the city.
Presented at Bloc Projects shortly before Bartle returned permanently to Sheffield after living and working in Istanbul, the exhibition brought the project into a new geographical and personal context.
Installation Views
Selected Artworks
Selected works associated with The Black Pen Project.
İçki içen, çalgı çalan demonlar (Demons drink and make music)
2021 · mixed media on canvas · 64 × 97 cm
Demonların dansı (Dance of Demons)
2021 · mixed media on canvas · 75 × 162 cm
İplik büken demonlar (Demons twisting thread)
2019 · mixed media on canvas · 85 × 92 cm
View the complete Black Pen Project
Exhibition Handout
Exhibition handout, Bloc Projects, Sheffield, 2021.
Continuing the Project
The Bloc Projects exhibition marked an important point within a project that had developed across several years and between Istanbul and Sheffield.
The paintings continued Bartle’s investigation into how historical imagery can become a vehicle for recording contemporary experience. Rather than treating Siyah Kalem’s figures as fixed objects from the past, the project allowed them to carry new places, surfaces and encounters.
This approach established a bridge between Bartle’s work in Istanbul and his later investigations into archaeology, excavated objects and the material traces left by earlier cultures.