Old bag.

 

The 12” square canvas has sat menacingly under the table for the last three months, with time ticking inexorably by. A cool white blank. With some trepidation, as there is no going back, the canvas is stripped from the stretcher, for it is no good I cannot face it as it is. Why this trepidation, this fear of failure? After all it is not a matter of life and death. As the hard edged voice of a teacher from long ago drips disappointment and disapproval in my ear the sound of ripping brings immense satisfaction…it is done! Now there is only one way to go and that is forward as something must be done for the charity auction ‘Magic of the Ordinary’ and the deadline is now! http://whitehousearts.co.uk/

There is of course the humiliating prospect that the work will go unsold, my rather odd little work not attaining the status of ‘magic’, for nothing could be quite as ordinary and mundane as a bag, especially an old bag!!

 

bag

 

 

Give it a stir!

 A quick trip up to London yesterday found me winding my way through the throngs of the Southbank to see the Ana Mendieta exhibition Traces at The Hayward Gallery London. This comprehensive show of Mendieta’s work includes film, documentary photographs, drawings and sculptures. Her early works are fascinating, experimental, brave and varied using her own body to explore the boundaries between absence and presence, a common thread of many of the women artists that I admire.

 Sadly she fell out of a New York apartment window when only 37 years old…another early death. By this time she had begun to gain some recognition for her work developing her Siluetos, imprints of her body in nature. The show leaves one feeling that for a short time before her death her work had got rather stuck in a groove. Perhaps the exhibition gives too much space to not much, not quite enough culling and cutting which is a shame. Had she lived would she have succumbed to the wiles and charms of success or pushed her work to break further boundaries? We will never know of course but at least we have the privilege of her legacy.

As my intervention at the local museum draws to a close I am pleased (after some initial reeling from the punches) that it has been causing some controversy. Ruffling feathers and stirring up some strong(ish) feelings from the dusty depths, my wrapped cups and saucers apparently causing offense! I amuse myself by wondering what they would have thought of one of Mendieta’s Siluetos hanging in ‘their’ window!

 

absent or present?

 

 

 

 

Mirror mirror on the wall Arken Copenhagen.

Another of the wonderful Galleries that I visited in Copenhagen was Arken.

One of their exhibition spaces presented a selection of works about gender, questioning and challenging what shapes our attitudes to male/female and the stereotypical views that can and do entrap us.

 http://www.arken.dk/content/us/art/exhibitions/love_me_gender

Mona Hatoum’s ‘Sous tension’ is an installation of sieves, molies, colanders and graters intermittently lit and trailing wires ominously buzzing. Set in a darkened recess it particularly caught my attention. The text suggested that the kitchen with all its memories of cosiness and warmth was also place of disaster and threat. Gathered up with that thought was also the idea that the role of the woman, safely in the home, may not always be one of comfort…mmm…something ominous prickling beneath the surface…things are not quite what they seem…’mirror mirror on the wall’.

Yet again such a simple, mundane group of objects but communicating so much!

 

who is the fairest of them all?

 

A surprise in Copenhagen!

I have been in Copenhagen for the last week, a city of waterways, bicycles, cobbled streets and of course the delicious Danish pastry!!! Amongst the many highlights was a trip north of the city to ‘Louisiana’ http://www.louisiana.dk/dk a modern art museum in its own rural landscape overlooking the Oresund.

Apart from special exhibitions they have their own collection of artworks and it was odd to encounter here, of all unexpected places some of the works of photographer Francesca Woodman. I had only previously seen her work in books and the first thing that struck me was the smallness of the photos each set in a contrastingly large mount. Using her body as the main subject of her work she creates disturbing interior scenes. Her figure is frequently merged with and overwhelmed by the background. There is an odd uneasy contradiction between her concealment (a sort of self-effacement) and the apparent violence and ‘look at me’ tone of the image. This was underlined by the way the photo was framed, dominated by the large mount, pulling you in to peer closely and then be caught in her troubling world.

Sadly Woodman died when she was only 22 years old, what would she have gone on to produce in her later years, I can only surmise but am grateful for the haunting images that I encountered and inspired by her rawness.

 

 

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