Hi All
this seems to have lurked unpublished on my blog – unloved and unvisited so I will just hit the publish button.
The work was extraordinarily powerful and lives with me still.
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Lovely comment to my last post from Gill. Her comments about making scratchy drawings at the moment and the influence of our own moods on the work made me recall chatting to a a sculptor who taught very sick people to carve.
She said that invariably their first works were flat and dreary and then rose and reached upwards as the creators grew in confidence and their mood lightened with it…
Certainly my winter energy levels make a difference to how ambitious I am both in the physicality and the scope of my work in those three dark months.
I have just returned from a trip to Edinburgh during which I visited the Scottish Parliament building- what a dissapointment. No modern building can ever have that presence which comes with age but it can be wonderful. This building which was built by a Spanish architect [ seems odd] is hugely high spec in its materials but bitty and with views onto ugly walls and with no coherence, nothing to enchant or amaze, nothing in the way of glorious art or sculpture or textiles – everything so safe.
Tell you waht I will remeber – the bicyle racks. Metal – they looked like little bikes from a distance and became seperate shapes on approaching. Everyone was photographing them and laughing. Guess thst what they will remember most – the bicyle racks.
I did however come back with a memory of work that will haunt me for a long time and it wasn’t Rodins Kiss although I did pay that a visit for old times sake.
It was the Louise Bourgeoise exhibition at the Fruuitmarket Gallery – I Give Everything Away.
Downstairs 220 small drawings on paper – done at night in 1994 when she couldn’t sleep and collected up by her assisatnat – now called her Insomnia Drawings.
But upstarirs – what a revelation – a great light space hung with two suites of huge soft ground etchings. One done in 2007 and one in 2010 just before her death. The work runs seamlessly around the walls visceral drawings accompanied by text – ‘I distance myself from everyone’
