Sleep-drunk I dance

Ben‘s paintings, A construct (2) and Head Construct (1) frame Kate’s Here Today. With Charlotte’s Weaklings and my Every day we tried to be good they make an interesting little grouping, partially anchored in the real, the every day, partly situated in other realms. These paintings question abstraction and figuration. Built from circles, which conjure openings and eyes of a kind, and sharp angles that form barriers, thresholds, they make things of beauty, of beguiling strangeness. Futuristic elements here too. Is this a form of escapism? Towards a life beyond the fragilities and demands of embodiment, beyond narrow minds and the measuring tools with which we delineate physicalities, countries, identities.

Every day we tried to be good speaks of bodies cut to size, or is it minds? Twin pieces, crocheted in soft pinks and blues, with neatly aligned sides and internal doublings, a multitude of openings for a surfeit of limbs and heads, all the while maintaining an air of ordinariness. Those diagonals as if drawn with rulers, soft edges hardened. A sense of having to fit in, of templates for streamlined bodies, bodies pressed into shape and into use. Deformation defamation. With Charlotte’s Weaklings nearby the vulnerability of these imagined anatomies seems to increase exponentially.

Which leads me straight to Riefenstahl’s children. The little crocheted dress almost all there, at first glance at least, and with each new outfit a progressive severing, resulting in outlines that almost, but never quite, approach abstraction. Embodiment conjured and injured, constrained and contained. In a homely medium shapes mutate, losing limbs and unlocking notions around authenticity and pathos. The link to history in the title, adding layers of meaning.

Moult. A child’s bodice, crocheted heirloom, like one found among delicate garments wrapped in tissue-paper in an old chest or drawer – the only one not eaten by moths. Hair-work, fair work, fairy-tale work. Such a shirt will scratch your skin no matter how many layers you wear under. Any aspiring saint would want one. Little animal pelt, lanugo never shed, blond and with connotations before you even start to think – did that chest hold zigzags sharp as knives, folded in grey cloth? Big leaps: beauty myths, Aryan ideals, Auschwitz… Suddenly I think of Ashiepattle, sorting through ashes. Die guten ins Töpfchen, die schlechten ins Kröpfchen. No spell to be uncast, but a history to be carried.

Next to Moult an old bird-cage, blue and rusty on a plinth, in which a miniature Virgin Mary figure has been placed. She stands on bibles as if on a soap-box, eyes down-cast, hands raised in prayer. Kate Murdoch’s Do Not Touch, this side of light on lashes… Little crosses and religious medals hang behind her, but faith is in question, used to cast judgement, to divide. Prayers become injunctions, an ideal a false idol. On the other side of the light Kate’s She was no Snow White, a little figure tumbling into a cup, legs peaking out, the rest of ‘her’ drowning in the softness of a yellow artificial rose. Sweet and trip-up funny, oh, if the Virgin knew about girls felled by maxims and morals and nowhere to hide. Much of that around today still, in all kinds of new and old ways.

In this show we follow trails of different kinds of sorrow – for the loss of a loved one, a home, work; for limitations and rules applied along arbitrary lines, divisions and demarcations; for those difficult legacies come to us, passed on by us. History is a kind of home too. Acknowledged or not, we live with its inflictions and inflections. Neither solution nor healing on offer here – but the work is engaged and engaging in conversations we don’t have (enough). A self is relational, rubs against other selves, often without recognition that everything is connected, that we are implicated in what happens now, is done now, in our name, everywhere. Art at its best is relational too.

On the way out I find the Big Bopper changed. Those threads obsessively wound around its structure, giving it ‘body’ and painting stripes which now evoke not frocks or deckchairs, but flags, enveloping, covering, casting out. An incongruous construct, vertical, phallic, and empty at the centre.

All of us:
Ben Cove @Ben__Cove
Charlotte Brown @ciebrown
Nick Kaplony @NickKaplony
Marion Michell @marjojo2004
Kate Murdoch @katemurdochart
Shelley Rae @ShelleyRaeArt
Karen Stripp @MissBricabrac

I’m writing about The Beginning of History by mentally moving through the exhibition piece by piece. It’s a bit like praying the rosary, feeling bead after bead between your fingers, only I’m not following the show’s lay-out in the round but finding my own criss-crossing trail, with similar deliberation. I’m on piece six now, out of 23, so this may well become the slowest exhibition review ever. That my body seems to be stuck in permanent pain-review mode and for extended periods puts my brain on the blink doesn’t help.

At the same time I’m preparing to go see my mother, whose 80th birthday is nigh. I decided to make a photo-book, about her and my dad, whose absence she feels most acutely at this time of year, and started by juxtaposing photos of each as babies, children, teenagers. While I was selecting the images I found myself in a quandary. Should I include a photo of my dad as a young soldier? First I thought, yes, of course, that’s part of what shaped him, and tried to ignore the niggling notion that it might upset my mom who not only has her own memories of a childhood affected by war, but of my father waking up screaming every night at the beginning of their life together. (While I was growing in her womb my father went into therapy, not the done thing at the time and something I really admire him for.)

In the end, sidestepping the self-righteous part of me, I decided I could, even should, allow the book to be without the photo in question. After all I wasn’t making it for myself, nor was it an attempt at Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I still feel ambivalent, but also realise I was imposing my own need to work through these aspects of my father’s life.

In the summer, when we looked through old photo-albums together and I listened to her stories, even recorded them, I had to reign myself in too. She talked about fleeing from East Prussia with her mother and four younger siblings just before the Russian army arrived, at the age of 11, something it’s taken me a decade or two to even acknowledge as trauma. When she described dead horses lying frozen at the side of the trail where a long line of sledges and horse-carts made slow progress, my impulse again was to press her. I thought: why no mention of dead people, and caught myself moments later, appalled at how judgemental I was. What right have I to dictate how she should remember, and what to share? Shouldn’t I respect her way of dealing with what she lived through? On one hand there’s the abstract as well as concrete need of challenging silences and suppressions with regard to German history, on the other is the personal engagement with someone who was a child then and made sense of what she saw and experienced on her own terms. As one of the post-war generation (lucky) I need to find my own relationship to German history, a conscious affect-laden process which challenges me on all kinds of levels…

You could say Verkehrtes Mädchen grew out of our conversations. I actually started crocheting while I was lying on her sofa, listening – I get fidgety if I can’t occupy my hands. Also on my mind was Hannah Höch‘s collage Deutsches Mädchen/German Girl, made 1930, to which this is a kind of reply in crochet. Verkehrt can be translated as wrong, inverted, amiss, and verkehren (verb) as ‘put something the wrong way around’; ‘consort with someone’, ‘keep company or do business with’. I think it is partly about her, and partly about me. Verkehrt in different ways, at different times.

Verkehrtes Mädchen (2012/13)
Materials: crocheted from wool/polyester mixture and cotton yarn
Dimensions: 57.5 cm x 36 cm

And before I forget, a small ode to joy: Last week I was able to follow from afar a very interesting talk by @annabeltilley @ZeitgeistAP about the development of her practice since art-college – tweetwise! As ever I would have loved to be there in person, but as I was laid up this was the next best and much enjoyed opportunity, thanks to the nimble fingers and supple mind of legendary @rosalinddavis who tweeted quotes&photographs and even took questions. Thinking back to last year I can say we’ve come far, and I’m really grateful for the continuation of efforts and experiments. Having pix made all the difference. Blogger-friend @sophiecullan was there too and will carry the baton to @Fermynwoods

The start of a new era!

The Beginning of History is over. On the penultimate day of the show we had an ‘artists and curator in conversation’ session which I’d long been looking forward to. I’m not a lover of private views, tend to feel a bit lost in the cloud of chatter above head-level. To tell you the truth I wasn’t overly fond of them when still able to stand six foot tall. I like my conversations one-to-one, or in small groups, and want the work to take centre-stage.

Hearing from some of the other artists in the exhibition, Kate Murdoch, Shelley Rae, Ben Cove and Nick Kaplony, was illuminating. Stories, thought-lines, memories, were shared; reflections on media and materiality, all against a backdrop of history/art-history (yeah, we’re quite ambitious, aren’t we). I was a bit nervous but found myself talking with such purpose and pleasure I almost didn’t want to stop: for an instant at one with my wants and wishes, willing my work, my words, myself, deeper into the world. A brief and intense outing then; exhilarating. Not long after the talk I ran out of sitting, didn’t quite have the courage to lie on the gallery floor when the exhibition was still open, and went home with head buzzing. Sorry to miss a little after-party, and more of the tipple of the day – ginger wine distributed by the thimbleful. Every show should have a divan!

Because it was beautifully curated (by Nick Kaplony) the exhibition became a marvel to us,
I think. Thoughtful, considerate, open, and deeply engaged with the work, with each of the artists, he coaxed out of our varied practices a coherent, meaningful show in a space that is hard to inhabit. Our art shone because so much happened between the individual pieces, slowly revealing ever more depths and complexities to anyone who spent time there. Not many people came to see, alas, the gallery far off any beaten track, but the feedback was very good. One person even said he found a renewed sense of well-being every time he stepped inside (his studio is in the same building so he kept coming back), another one thought it felt like a home – quite something considering the subjects we address – mourning, loss, inherited memory, touching on issues like slavery, fascism…

This is a good place to say something about best practice. Working with the curator Nick Kaplony has been a pleasure. The art was beautifully presented, in my case closely following the instructions I’d written, as textiles aren’t straight forward, unless framed. When the work came home to me, brought by lovely co-exhibitor Kate Murdoch, I was touched by the care taken by Alex, the technician (I’d written instructions for packing too): every single piece tenderly handled and wrapped! I don’t think I’ve ever received my work back in such a conscientiously delicate & considered state – exemplary! And, being unable to do any of the physical stuff I was glad that Nick involved me in the editing of various exhibition texts. A relief to be useful, and much aware of my failings as a photographer.

I’m still writing up my thoughts about the exhibition, keep adding to my notes – so watch this space. The Beginning of History may be over but I the conversation has only just begun.

Those heavily fatigued days when tiredness suffuses my whole being, not only stop my limbs from functioning, but, and this is worse, make me feel as if my intelligence had sunk away. When I start improving a bit I have to dive deep to drag it back up again, for brief periods. In process now, but not out of the waters yet, and I’m rather uselessly railing against being in the state of un-. What I meant to do – write about The Beginning of History, which has taken on a complicated life in my head (and in a big bundle of notes, as well it should, it’s really quite an extra-ordinary show), has to be set aside for now, and I revisit, as I tend to when exhausted, old haunts. Only to find that this in many ways illuminates present pursuits.

Yesterday morning I was too tired to speak to a friend who’d rung me for more than a few minutes, frustrating for both of us. Today I sent her print-outs of my latest posts as if to remind her that I am not stupid, which I’m sure she never thought. I seem to, though, when I can’t command my body and brain into even small-scale action. In those moments my artwork, my writing here, are the proof
I need that I can still hack it. For similar reasons I crept to my computer earlier to look up my thesis, which was, amongst other things, about the memory of my cousin Edith (who ghosts in the pix above), the little girl in “Triumph of the Will”, and my relationship to both. I may have told you before: Edith was five years older than I and died when I was twelve. We only met a few times when I was small as our fathers had become estranged, but I found her again in an uneven pair of worn children’s shoes bought on a flea-market. They were of a different time (stuffed with a page of 1941 newsprint), but brought her back to mind with a bolt as they reminded me of the boots she wore, one of which had a high-raised sole.

I was unable to more than scan the text with the help of edit/find (unexpected pun, I swear!), and my writing happens in fits and starts, but look at this:
“I can’t tell Edith’s story but can talk about my memory of her, which surprised me 25 years after her death, when last year I looked at the shoes that I had bought in Berlin some weeks before.” And then the sentence which made me catch my breath: “I imagine a photograph of Edith, which turns out to be of myself.”

I remember my surprise at the time, having searched old photographs at my parents’ house, to find that a photo I could clearly ‘see’ did not exist and instead featured me. It seems for a moment then I knew something about how memory works and fails, not just in theory. Something about the limits of imagining another’s life. I wrote in the end, mournfully: “Regarding Edith: I may be trying to bring something to do with her into a present, into my present, into another’s present, but never into hers.”

I want to write about the depth, the complexity of TBoH in a way that brings it to life for those who cannot see it (not many are finding their way to the gallery, alas) but haven’t quite been able to rise to the challenge. At the moment I feel more like a big fat spider, sitting in the web she’s spun and wrapping the prey caught in it in dense bundles of silk, beautiful in their own right but obliterating the shapes and singularities of what’s inside – only I do it with words. One thing I can say though, which I’ve come to understand through my post-outing engagement with the exhibition (I keep going on virtual walk-throughs): each work there, gloriously interesting in its own right, and skilfully, beautifully made, really becomes what it can be in the relationships formed/forming with the other pieces in this show.

First I couldn’t wait, then I found it looming: the day before the private view my head was a meeting-place for a vociferous, foul-mouthed community of doubts, all shouting at the same time. Was my work good enough to be sent into the world? While I am making I can use my muddles to work something out, try a different outlook, propel me on. Here though, oh my, perspective was nowhere to be found. Spent the day lying on bed and tweeting my tripping heart out (open question: does tweeting calm nerves or frazzle them further?), and trying not to let the joy of finally exhibiting my work be quelled before I’d even seen the show.

Went early so I could have a quiet look around the exhibition – it is gorgeous! Curator Nick Kaplony has constructed mental and material pathways across walls and floors, teasing out connections, relationships, cross-overs and divergences between works by Charlotte Brown, Ben Cove, Kate Murdoch, Shelley Rae, Karen Stripp, his own and mine – artists who share an interest in the weight and mystery of memory but pursue very different practices.

The Beginning of History. What a good exhibition to be involved in, not only in terms of subject, but in the meaning/fruitful gathering of artists. I hope to write about the whole of the show, with photos, in my next post and can’t wait for the makers’/curator’s talk on 30 November, to speak, hear, share.

For this art-starved person it is clear once more how different it is to see and present work in the flesh, as it were. The clamour of critical voices in my head has lost some of its force. For most of my pieces this is the first time they appear in a gallery space. With one swoop they take on a professional air. And next to other art you begin to see your own emerge anew, reveal aspects you haven’t meant. Nothing better than being surprised by one’s own work!

One of the pieces I’m showing is I am a stick, I am a stone, crocheted last year, and quickly stored away. It is actually part of a series of four, but the one I find most difficult. And suddenly unexpectedly affecting. You’ve seen I have a thing about arms and gestures and how they shift and scramble and change meaning. The implications of a right arm raised up straight, to the Hitler salute, and its crooked copy by the little girl in the Riefenstahl film, have trailed my work for years. In this series tentatively titled Second Generation, I’ve played about with our four limbs, arranging them in simple constellations and exploring how they might reflect emotive states.

The piece is mounted high up on the wall next to the doorway, the perfect place for it. It seems to be cartwheeling, hurtling, chortling – there’s a sense of uncurdled exuberance, energy, joy, in a way only a child can experience and express (oh, I long for it). A being in the moment, seemingly untethered by history, by rules and expectations. Flight, not fight. All that is there for me, in this piece, which was born in the shadow of a swastika (I can hardly even write the word). I can’t begin to work out how I feel. One moment I fly along with it, helter skelter, the next I fall, heavy, hearing the sound of goose steps. Has the piece shaken off (no!) its provenance? Have I made light of something that is unbearable? My uncertainty is about giving history the charge it deserves, acknowledging the terrible weight carried in German identity, and making something that allows for complexity, digression even, something that takes me/you unforeseen places. I wonder what a viewer who has no idea about my concerns perceives. What is there to see? Feel?

A couple of days ago I listened to Desert Island Discs with Alfred Brendel, who as a child saw Hitler traveling through Graz in an open car, with arm outstretched, the streets lined by cheering masses. When asked what he made of what he saw he said: “I was just storing impressions. It was much later that I realized what it was meaning. I can only tell that my memories of war-time have been decisive for my whole life. They have prevented me from being credulous, from fanaticism, from nationalism, from creeds of any kind.”

I am a stick, I am a stone (2012)
Materials: crocheted from wool/polyester mixture
Dimensions: 78 cm x 78 cm