Preview of Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern

25/03/19

Published in the spring 2019 issue of Art Quarterly

Interview: Cathie Pilkington at Pallant House Gallery

Published in the autumn 2018 issue of Art Quarterly magazine

Review of Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion at Two Temple Place

11/02/17

Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion

Two Temple Place

28 January – 23 April 2017

As artists continue to be priced out of even the farthest reaches of London’s boroughs, and many move down to places on the south coast, such as Hastings, it seems there is something of a revived rural exodus to mirror that – or, more correctly, those – of the early- to mid-20th century, when numerous artistic communities established themselves in the county of Sussex, with guilds, enclaves and retreats. Exemplifying the many faces of modernism, these various groupings might, at first glance, seem as different from one another as chalk and cheese, but biographical and conceptual links can be made, weaving a deft narrative of the period and its protagonists, and this is precisely what the sixth annual exhibition, in the successful winter exhibition programme at Two Temple Place, has achieved. The result, Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion, brings together painting, film, sculpture, furniture, music and photography from more than 30 lenders and nine museums and galleries. What the curator, Dr Hope Wolf, describes as a “visual cacophony of styles and media” is contextualised against the late-19th-century interiors of the London venue, making visible the very style from which many of the artists included sought to depart.

Read this review here

Review of Francesca Woodman: On Being An Angel at Foam, Amsterdam

07/01/16

Francesca Woodman: On Being An Angel

Foam, Amsterdam

18 December 2015 – 9 March 2016

The sad thing about Francesca Woodman’s work is that it cannot be reviewed without hindsight and reference to the photographer’s premature death at the age of 22, when she jumped from a building in East Side, New York. As with her contemporary, Ana Mendieta (1948-85), who died falling from a 34th floor apartment in Greenwich Village, critics and academics have sought to see her work as a premonition of what was to come, with the female subject – commonly Woodman herself – melting into the background, becoming indistinguishable from the wallpaper or crumbling stone of the derelict building, “anticipating her own disappearance”.¹ Woodman’s photographs, like Mendieta’s, often depict a silhouette or trace, a blurred impression, a delicate and ghostly absence of the subject, suggesting a sense of has-been or might-have-been. Did the teenage girl foresee her untimely end?

Read the full review here

Interview with Penny Slinger

10/04/15

Interview: Penny Slinger

History is Now: 7 Artists Take on Britain

Hayward Gallery 

10 February – 26 April 2015    

Penny Slinger (b1947, London) was a lively and prominent figure on the 70s London arts scene. She studied at Chelsea School of Art, where she wrote her thesis on Max Ernst, and, after graduating in 1969, was offered a place at the Royal College of Art. That summer, however, she met and fell in love with a young film-maker called Peter Whitehead. They decided to go off and make work together, including the 1969 film Lilford Hall, currently on show at the Hayward Gallery (History is Now, 10 February – 26 April 2015). After the breakdown of their relationship and a dark period of self-examination, questioning both who she was and where she fitted in to the contemporary art world, Slinger discovered tantric art. Seeking a spiritual guide, she met Nik Douglas, and, with him, moved first to New York and then, in 1979, to the Caribbean.

She returned to the US in 1994, but Slinger’s legacy in the UK was all but lost until 2009, when she reappeared in an exhibition, Angels of Anarchy, at the Manchester Art Gallery. Since then, she has had several exhibitions around the country and is firmly re-establishing her place in British art history.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/penny-slinger-interview-being-different-is-just-who-you-are-tantra-nik-douglas

Portfolio: Sarah Pucill

22/06/14

Portfolio: Sarah Pucill

“I read somewhere the other day that in black and white film, you do still see colours. It is more imaginative. It has ambiguity. The flesh is the same colour as the beach, so things happen.” This is why photographer and filmmaker Sarah Pucill prefers to work in monochrome. Uncertainty of recognition and bending of identity are key themes recurring throughout her works. From her first film, You be Mother (1990), through Stages of Mourning (2004), made in memory of her late partner Sandra Lahire, to her most recent and first feature-length film, Magic Mirror (2013), based around the work of French Surrealist and early queer thinker, Claude Cahun, Pucill has employed motifs such as blood, milk, hair, masks and the mirror, to call into question representations of the female body from Medusa to Venus. At a time when it was popular to portray masculine lesbian identity, Pucill sought instead to celebrate the unison of two feminine female bodies in Swollen Stigma (1998) and Cast (2000) considers the lesbian overtones she sees inherent in encouraging young girls to nurture female dolls. Her works are evocative and uncanny, speaking a language that will resonate for women across time and space.

Magic Mirror is shortly to be released on DVD. Details to follow on Sarah Pucill’s website and through LUX:

http://www.sarahpucill.co.uk

http://luxonline.org.uk

To see this full portfolio, please buy the July 2014 issue of DIVA magazine