One of the first pieces I saw when I walked into the Alexander McQueen show on Friday was a white sleeveless top made from polyurethane. “So that’s what that material looks like,” I thought and remembered back to a tutorial I’d had concerning an earlier incarnation of “Angel’s Nightie”.
The idea for “Angel’s Nightie” first came about whilst I was on my MA at Chelsea in 1994. I wanted to make a Chrysalis-Body-bag with that willfully child-like title. The Boy who was the love of my life had made a nigh-successful suicide attempt after I’d ended our relationship.
I perceived his suicide attempt as an act of aggression, a retaliation, ultimately as a way of holding the trump card, of having the last word. And I was angry. Angry that he could throw away his life so easily. Angry that he would use his suicide as a way to pass his suffering on to me, not letting me get away.
So I dreamed up “Angel’s Nightie”, it’s title so ironically sweet and irreverent, covering over a cesspit of rage and hurt; a place I continually return to in my work.
“Angel’s Nightie” is death (and suicide) as a violent rupture from life; suicide committed in the white heat of the moment, as an act of aggression turned inwards.
It is also about metamorphosis and transformation. In my grief in those following months I discovered the work of the Jungian James Hillman. His book :”Suicide and the Soul” had a strong impact on my re-assessment of it. Anger was replaced by understanding.
The book helped me again, when I referred back to it eight years later, when the Man who had been the Boy that I loved more than anything in the world, did succeed in killing himself, at the age of 33.
