The Photograph
1. What we see
Our gaze scans across a square, flat, modernist concrete building, the windows obscured by foliage. Above the house a bright blue sky shines in the spring sunshine. Our eye travels down to the wooden-fenced roof garden, and stops briefly on what appears to be a blue and silver camera. [The inspiration for a drawing called Mass Observation.] The left-hand-side of the picture is dominated by the hair and head, red and white cap and sun-glassed profile of an Austrian state policeman. Bottom right a fence-post disappears while above the top half of a spiky fur tree can be seen. [The inspiration for the Spiky-Pop drawings.] However, the centre-piece is another conifer, a more elegant and wholesome-looking example, and one which obscures a window on the second floor. This tree is, in fact, The second tallest tree in Josef Fritzl’s garden. [The subject and title of another drawing].
2. Inspiration
I have been making work for over a year now inspired by a single newspaper image. The series entitled: The Fritzl Drawings explores and deconstructs a photograph, taken by the Austrian photographer Heinz-Peter Bader, that appeared in The Times on Monday 28 April, 2008. The photograph shows 40 Ybbs Strasse, the family home in Amstetten, Austria where Josef Fritzl, secretly imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth for twenty-four years, 1984-2008.
3. Image
At first I drew the house, verbatim, as it appeared in the photograph. Then I began to include a ‘stinkhorn’, a common phallic-shaped fungus, as a symbol of Josef Fritzl. In turn this inspired a number of drawings entitled: Josef Fritzl’s Garden. Here the foliage developed a character of it’s own, becoming sharp and jagged. I made paper models of the house, and repeat drawings that concentrated on specific elements, like the trees.
Repetition conveys the idea of time, and the habitual nature of seeing. I wanted to understand what the passer-by might have seen, so innocently but would not have known, so tragically: a normal-looking concrete house, a garden, trees, a blue sky and sunshine.
Eventually, my thoughts turned to Elisabeth Fritzl, and what she did not see for those twenty-four years. This spurned a sub-series entitled: The world outside (what Elisabeth Fritzl could not see 1984-2008). These pen and ink drawings concentrate on single objects like a fence-post or the distant view of a roof and chimney. They are sparse and grim.
4. How to continue?
Like someone standing up high, looking down, and feeling momentarily compelled to jump – I continually return to that original newspaper image.
Might the artist be considered obsessive, or freakish, or the exploiter of a disturbing and tragic tale?
When people ask about being drawn to such a subject?
I think.
Twenty-four years is a long time, perhaps a third of a total lifetime to be trapped in the same place, imprisoned.
While we were free.
What did we do with our 24 years? (apart from ‘collectively’ walking past, unknowing and unseeing)
How did she survive?
40 Ybbs Strasse, and it’s shocking secret narrative is an unseen, unknowable world.
Apparently distant yet personal, as we, the viewer, unfailingly ask ourselves the same questions: how could it have happened? And, if it had happened to me, how would I have coped?
In part, after a year of drawing, it is this tension – how the subject creates questions in the viewer – that most interests me.
6. How to emerge?
Since 2009 I am glad to say The Fritzl Drawings have been emerging into the world, one by one:
1. Josef Fritzl’s Garden, The Ing Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, Nov 2010
2. 64 almost identical drawings of Josef Fritzl, blindfolded. Relay, Core Gallery, London, Nov-Dec 2010
3. Mass Observation. BHVU Winter Open, London, Nov-Dec 2010
4. The second tallest tree in Josef Fritzl’s garden. Oriel Davies Open 2010, Wales, August.
5. Miniature paper model of an Austrian townhouse (belonging to Josef Fritzl), Agency at agency, London, April 2010
6. Three views of an Austrian townhouse (belonging to Josef Fritzl), Police & Thieves, The Old Police Station, Deptford, London, March 2010
7. Paper model of an Austrian townhouse (belonging to Josef Fritzl), C4RD, London, November 2009
8. Stinkhorn stands guard, Austrian townhouse. Brina Thurston’s Open Call 09, Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London, 2009
9. Proto-type paper model of an Austrian townhouse (belonging to Josef Fritzl). Art, Value, Currency, A three-part project curated by Isobel Shirley, The Pigeon Wing, London, New York, London, 2009-10
10. Stinkhorn, FringeMK 09, Milton Keynes, September 2009
11. Austrian townhouse, Travelling Light, WW Gallery, London & Collateral Event at 53rd Venice Biennale, June 2009
For more images see:
www.annabeltilley.moonfruit.com
www.axisweb.org/artist/annabeltilley
