Home Truths

'The work in Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood and Identity aims to challenge long held stereotypes and sentimental views of motherhood. Set against a backdrop of the seemingly insatiable appetite for pictures of celebrity mums, streams of Instagram bumps and babies and a history of the Madonna motif in art history, the work here addresses changing conditions of power, gender, domesticity, the maternal body and familial relations. It is a critical space for the representation of mothers to exist aside from more reductive cultural assumptions of mothering.'

Hanna Putz, Untitled, (LL1), 2012 © Hanna Putz

This exhibition opens today at the Photographers' Gallery in London, with an accompanying exhibition on the theme of motherhood and loss (sob) at the Foundling Museum. Looking through the preview gallery for the main exhibition I see a combination of really beautiful photographs of mothers and motherhood (Elinor Carucci's The First Week literally took my breath away, for obvious reasons) and a fair bit of conceptual work, which isn't exactly my bag, but I'm really looking forward to going to both. It's been a while since I wrote a Things I've Done in London post (because I haven't been doing owt) so maybe I'll reprise that series once I've been! 

‘No. You’re forgetting,’ said the Spirit. ‘That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.’

I haven't read C.S Lewis's The Great Divorce, but somewhere, some time over the last couple of weeks I found this quote and it has been flitting around in my mind, making my heart and brain tingle . I wanted to write it down here because without ever really knowing how or why, the things that flit around my mind making my heart and brain tingle tend to fall out of it and be completely forgotten. I can't help but feel life would be richer if I could just remember the things that move me.

*watercolour by William Turner, c 1830

George Bellows at the Royal Academy.

Today I went to see the George Bellows exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. It was my first trip to the Academy and my first gallery visit in what feels like forever. About 6 weeks ago I was in central London shopping, I turned a corner at the bottom of Savile Row, looked to my right and spotted the RA. I gasped. Literally gasped. Like a child seeing Cinderella's castle at Disney Land for the first time. Then I knew that maybe, just maybe, I still wanted to draw and paint.

Today, in the Sackler Wing, as I stood in front of the amazing work of George Bellows, who had a relatively short-lived career between 1905 and 1925, I felt myself getting a little closer to opening the bag I brought home, putting charcoal and ink to paper. Bellows drew and painted life in early 20th Century New York and  later Connecticut. His most remarkable pieces are the drawings and paintings he did of the underground boxing world, illegal matches in darkly lit warehouses. They were breathtaking. I don't care for boxing but they were some of the most beautiful drawings and paintings I've ever seen.

Trying to describe his work to Nye when I got home I kept talking about photography and fleeting moments captured. Bellows seemed to me a great documentary artist, working with charcoal and ink and oils to capture the briefest, most passionate of moments, filled with the rawest human emotions. His work was so moving and emotive that I had to skip right past the small section of his war paintings, they were too distressing.

I can't find a single image of his work online that does justice to how beautiful and alive his pieces are, on screen they are mediocre, in the flesh they are not. This drawing (which isn't in the exhibition) perhaps comes close to suggesting the feeling of movement and excitement that was present in almost all of his work. Again, I don't care for polo but that doesn't seem to matter in the face of such great talent.

The exhibition closes this Sunday. I don't know how many exhibitions I have to go to in the closing days before I start remembering to go earlier, when they're (maybe) a little quieter. Probably a good handful more. If you're looking for something to do this weekend I'd highly recommend catching this exhibition before it leaves, it was one of the best £10 I've spent since moving to London.

The Floral Coalition

I know these two really amazing women, who just happen to be two really amazing florists; Lotte, of Lotte and Bloom in Glasgow and Miss Pickering of Miss Pickering (rumour has it she has a first name, but I could neither confirm nor deny such gossip) in Lincolnshire. And they just happen to know each other and well, they got together to form The Floral Coalition and to host a class at Miss P's shop in the Shires. 

When I heard that they were hosting a class I immediately knew I wanted to go, partly because I like flowers but mostly because Lotte and Miss P make me laugh. In the midst of deliberating over whether or not I could afford to pay them to make me laugh I remembered something brilliant; I can take photos. And they might need photos. I could probably get in on this action without paying anything at all. And so I offered to photograph their Flower School in exchange for lunch and the time of day from The Hound. 

They took me up on my offer and so on Monday I spent the day in Stamford, photographing The Masters impart their wisdom. It was a lovely way to spend a day, a brief lull in the sadness and noise of life. Miss P's shop is a cool, dark, quiet cave. Scented with masses of roses and peonies (natch), it's easy on all of the senses. And yes, Miss P and Lotte made me laugh. Which was nice. The Hound wasn't exactly generous with his affections but he let me pat him on the head, which I'll take. 

It was really amazing to watch these ladies work. They are both absolute artists so it was like magic seeing them weave flowers effortlessly into bouquets and arrangements and buttonholes while simultaneously chatting about methods and making cups of tea and fielding customers and giving the dog a pigs' ear, all while retaining a mysterious air of calm. Then the students were set free in a shop filled to bursting with the most beautiful flowers imaginable to create their own arrangements. There was also tea, coffee, diet coke and biscuits on tap; florist fuel. I loved it. 

If you're interested in learning more about floristry I can't recommend their next class (date tbc) highly enough. Sign up for the mailing list here. Probably best to get in there while they're still charging pennies, before they realise how stupidly good at this they are. 

Aside; I'm hoping to branch out into more lifestyle-ish photography, artists and craftsmen and designers at work. So let me know if you know anyone who is after that (this) sort of thing. Ideally I'd like to aim towards getting paid in real money for my work, but I'm also fond of biscuits and a nice red wine. 

Magnolia Bugs no. 6672

A quick glimpse at the list of blogs that these have appeared on makes me wonder that I hadn't seen them already and suspect that you probably have. But whatever, they're beautiful and if like me they're new to you, enjoy. (If anyone is looking to gift me, Magnolia Bugs no. 6672.)

By Kari Herer, via etsy.

All images copyright of Kari Herer. 

London Art Things, reviewed.

Bringing you this week's instalment of London Things (what I have done.) 

It's been a good week for galleries. I went to see the Juergen Teller exhibition at the ICA with my friend Rachel on Wednesday, then yesterday my mum and I dropped into the National Portrait Gallery to see Marilyn Monroe, A British Love Affair. I hadn't been to either gallery before so just stepping onto the premises of each gave me thrills (for real. I really really love art galleries and the ICA is a particularly beautiful space to be; good light, nice floors.)

The Marilyn Monroe display was really lovely. It's a display rather than an exhibition, so just a small room of photos. We were expecting an exhibition seeing as it was featuring highly on the NPG's website last week but when we got there it was a struggle to even find it and we were beginning to think we'd missed it when we finally stumbled upon room 33 on the first floor. It was worth the hunt though, ever since I read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates when I was a teenager I have been a little bit in love with Marilyn. I don't think I'd even seen any of her films at that point so I only knew of her on-screen magic by reputation, but at 15 I fell in love with what a beautiful mess she was. A fiery, determined, impossible mess who suffered from endometriosis and depression and men.

The display concentrates on Marilyn Monroe's relationship with British photographers throughout her career and starts with some of the very first photographs taken of her when she was 19. It then travels through her career and focuses heavily on the time that she spent in Britain filming The Prince and the Showgirl (the time depicted in My Week With Marilyn) mostly made up of publicity shots featured in magazines and behind the scenes documentary and a handful of straight-up portraiture. My favourites were the press shots by Larry Burrows, more famous probably for his graphic documentary of the Vietnam war than his celebrity photography.

We didn't really take the time to look around the rest of the NPG (we were hungry) but I'm planning to go back soon. Aside: Trafalgar Square! I didn't see any pigeons but a bloody big falcon flew right at my head. It was pretty cool.

Juergen Teller at the ICA was less lovely. If you don't know; Teller is a fashion photographer who shoots for the 'grittier' end of the market. He has been working in the fashion industry since the early 90s and pretty much changed the world of fashion photography. You know fashion photographs that feature nice clothes, models in pretty make up with their hair brushed and are beautifully lit? Once upon a time all fashion photos looked like that, it was a given that they had to look nice if they wanted to sell stuff. It sounds kind of quaint now. That's because of Juergen Teller. His photographs are (in the main) not pretty, they're weird and dirty and sleazy and horribly lit. He blasts his subjects with multiple flashes and as a result the photos look like they were taken with a cheap shitty automatic camera. They're not, they just look like that. I can't deny the huge impact that his style has had on photography, particularly fashion photography, or that he made fashion photography a more interesting genre than it was 20 years ago, but god do his photos make my head hurt. They're just really really ugly and the fact that they're of (often naked) celebrities just wasn't enough to make them interesting.

There were a handful of really beautiful pictures in the exhibition; this one of Bjork and her son is lovely and his more personal work in the upstairs gallery held my attention for a few minutes, but in general I got bored of playing 'whose penis/tits/anus is that?' pretty quickly. I mean, in theory I agree with this review that says a gigantic full-frontal picture (or three) of a 68 year Vivienne Westwood is interesting and raises all sorts of questions about femininity and ageing and our perception of beauty, it really really should. But standing in front of Vivienne's vag, all I could think was 'this photo is UGLY. Why has he used so much flash?' But in reading reviews it appears that I'm entirely alone in thinking that this exhibition was a bit shit. So there you go.

What I did enjoy was the coffee. And hanging with these cuties. Oh and the staff at the ICA are delightful.

Have you been to either of these? What did you think? Did you enjoy?

We're planning on taking the girls into town next week to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition before it closes. I keep seeing the posters on the underground and that fluffed up crow makes me think it's worth braving central London with two year olds for. And I've been thinking about trying to see the Valentino exhibition at Somerset House before it closes, what do you think? Worth a tenner and an indecent length of time spent on public transport?

Light From the Middle East

Of all the London Things that excite me, the museums and galleries are up there with at the top (with the food.) Life has somewhat got in the way of doing many London Things since we got here but last weekend my sister-not-in-law, her sister (in blood) and I went to the V&A for an afternoon of culture (and food. And if I'm honest, the shop was a pretty big draw too.) But the culture: we went to see Light From the Middle East, a collection of contemporary work by artists from across the Middle East (both resident and diaspora). I don't normally love what I know of contemporary photography, art school pretty much killed my patience for large format prints of well lit shopping trolleys representing the loneliness of the human condition. But when the photography is dealing with politics as opposed to the angst of the wealthy white art student, my patience lasts a little longer.

I particularly loved the work of Atiq Rahimi, an Afghani photographer and film maker living in Paris who returned to Kabul in 2002 after 18 years of exile. He wanted to photograph the city and its changes but he felt that the photos that he took with his digital camera couldn't convey the emotion that  he felt on returning to his home, seeing it so changed since he had last stepped foot there. And so he started experimenting with pinhole cameras, and the pictures that he made went much further than crisp mega pixels ever could in capturing the muddled, dreamlike feeling of returning home after exile.

 Photographs by Atiq Rahimii © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Pinhole cameras are true magic; a box with a hole punched in it, some photographic paper taped inside, a guessed exposure time, and hope. The results are unpredictable, you might get an image or you might (as I always have) get a piece of over-exposed white paper.

These photos are tiny, maybe 5x8cm. To see them you have to get up close, hold your face mere inches from the frame. You feel like you are peering through a crack in a wall, a door left ajar, and catching a glimpse of someone else's memories. These tiny photos are so much that I love about photography.

tattoos.

The ones I love are nearly always birds. Freedom and independence, it would seem, are things that I need to be reminded of regularly, prone as I am to forgetting that they're mine. The ones I love are nearly always painterly, works of art on a living canvas. Muted colours, but not afraid. Sometimes I just fall for a reminder, or a record of a life lived.   A print of Jen Bandini's collarbones lives above my sofa, it's probably my most prized piece of art, it catches my breath every day. 

About once a day I think about tattoos, about where I would put what and how I won't because I don't want one badly enough to deal with the prospects of infinite choice, commitment and paying people to hurt me, but how I love the beautiful ones and what an amazing thing it would be to carry around a piece of art that is mine and mine alone. 

. image source. Tattoos by Berit Uhlhorn

Helen Fay

 

Last week I found myself in the city centre with the girlies. We'd been at the bank pretending to be grown ups. Instead of getting the train home  we went for a walk and before long I found myself passing a gallery, not one of those family friendly ones with crayons and interactive displays, a trendy gallery. It was empty. Looking in the window I was immediately drawn in by the (frankly amazing) photography exhibition and when we were done with that we wondered next door into the connecting print studio. Looking through the racks of prints thinking maybe I would find one for our house (ha! Maybe if I sold a kidney. Or a baby.) I came across these prints by Helen Fay and I could not stop coming back to them. In theory you wouldn't think that prints of dogs and penguins shouldn't be much more than 'kind of cute' and then passed over for something a little grittier, but these penguins and dogs really grabbed me. There's something so moving about them, so soulful. There's nobility and strength and perseverance; solitude, struggle, dignity. For reals.  The Glasgow Print Studio only had a couple of pictures but when I came home and looked up Helen Fay's website, her etchings of apes and monkeys quite literally made a lump rise in my throat. How can they be so emotive? I don't understand. All I know is that they might just be worth selling a kidney for. Any takers?

 

 

All images copyright of and reproduced with the permission of Helen Fay