Day 124 since the Covid-19 'lockdown' was announced. I continue to go for my daily walks and went in a food shop for the first time this week. It has been really hot. I’ve not been very aware of the news this week, just in the studio working all day every day to complete Schism [division or disunion] before going away for a week. I’m now completely exhausted but it’s done, and I have done some more work on Husk [the enveloping or outer part of anything, especially when dry or worthless] too, though it’s never enough …

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Distorted, stretched, twisted, ill at ease: I am immersed in ideas of the body and our relationship with our own bodies. I have been re-reading Susan Sontag’s ‘Illness as Metaphor’ and Audre Lorde’s ‘Cancer Journals’ both are much quoted in everything I have been reading about illness Arthur W Frank, Anne Boyer and Sinéad Gleeson. The work of Sontag and Lorde still strongly resonate though they were both written sometime ago. I identify with Sinéad Gleeson’s poetic descriptions of pain at the end of 'Constellations: Reflections from Life'. In my head her work collides with that of Helen Chadwick expressing as she does something about the experience being alive and not just pain which is associated with something being wrong. 

 

Tugging, Pulling, Wrenching

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Smear Tests

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If someone said they’d put the moon                                                    Inside you, there is a chance                                                                 You would consent                                                                                 To feel the white cold of it

 

Soles together in                                                                                    Reclining Goddess Pose                                                                      Feeling less like a deity                                                                         Than a speculum’s captive                                                                    (Gleeson, 2019 p.159)

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It has been a delight to ‘discover’ the work of Helen Chadwick a fresh and realise some of the complex ideas it holds. I have an immediate very visceral response to her work, something it is quite hard to put it into words. This leads to an acute awareness of biology and the body’s complexity, the potential for sensual joy coupled with fragility and the possibility of collapse. All this seems to be captured in Chadwick’s work, jour de vivre and mortality, the beauty of a beautifully made object twinned with an ever present possibility that decay will overcome the beauty,  it is an embodiment of the tradition of memento mori. 

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I am surprised at the power of my response to The Oval Court and Enfleshings which I have seen only in reproduction. Though I crave the experience of being in a space with the actual work there is also an intensity about the discovery of these works through images and others’ descriptions of their responses to them. Listening to ‘The Legacy of Helen Chadwick’ chaired by Louisa Buck link held at the ICA in 2016 (20 years after Helen Chadwick’s death) I am struck by the passion of each participant as they describe remembered encounters with specific works. Their passion feeds my determination to seek out the works they describe, those that still exist so I too can have a personal encounter with them. I can’t help thinking that here is a useful lesson to learn about the presentation of my own work online.

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I continue to make Schism [division or disunion] with images of Chadwick’s work swirling in my head. I find it makes me bolder and though frustrated by how long each stage of making seems to take, equally I enjoy the clarity of knowing when something is done and when it needs a bit more work. I have coined the phrase 'free sewing' to describe what I am doing, the freedom and spontaneity of the 'mark making' I now have using the sewing machine feels like an extension or another way of painting or drawing. At the end of each day there is always a list of the next steps – as if there is any possibility of forgetting the list serves only to underline how much there is still to do … 

 

The second coat of distemper works well. I paint it on when the work is nearing completion successfully using it to stiffen the canvas again after the softening provoked by constantly working it on the sewing machine. I relish this final painterly action; mixing the pigment into the, still warm rabbit skin glue, checking the depth of colour and then applying it with a brush in bold irreversible strokes, layering it on with a confidence that surprises me.  Stimulated by this success I seal the cast plaster shapes I am using to weight the top and bottom of Schism [division or disunion] with Acrylic medium and then I paint them with distemper too. The result is a rich uneven drippy matt surface – encouraged I wrap their wire hooks in fabric, their resulting sensibility fits perfectly with the rest of the piece. I want to follow up on this with more experiments with plaster, but I discipline myself and instead mix some deep raw sienna soak stain and pour it onto Husk [the enveloping or outer part of anything, especially when dry or worthless].