Installation view, Correspondences, Frestonian Gallery (2021)
Courtesy of Frestonian Gallery
Paul de Monchaux and Tess Jaray first met as students at the Slade School of Art in the 1950s. Their friendship was then rekindled in 1986 when they both took part in the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival where de Monchaux showed sculpture in the Whitechapel Gallery Garden and Jaray presented her first brick floor piece. As each went on to pursue their separate careers they remained in contact, exchanging ideas, thoughts and influences and discussing common interests while also each exploring their very own very particular relationship with abstraction.
Over the ensuing years they also went on to make important public projects—including Jaray’s floor for the concourse of Victoria Station, her forecourt for the British Embassy in Moscow and the Wakefield Cathedral precinct and De Monchaux’s war memorial in Norwich, stone sculpture complex in Birmingham’s Oozells Square and carved granite memorial to Wilfred Owen in Shrewsbury. In addition, they have both been hugely influential teachers. Jaray was the first woman to teach at the Slade, and taught there for more than 30 years, where her former students included Martin Creed and Rana Begum, while De Monchaux taught at Goldsmith's and latterly at Camberwell College of Art, where he was the head of sculpture and fine art.