Tuesday 29 May 2012

Tidbit 2



... I hadn’t been to the Freud Museum before (the shame!), and it would have been a thrill just to be in the house where he and his closest family lived after they’d managed to escape from fascism in 1938. Freud’s study cum treatment room is still as it was when he died in 1939, somewhat sombre with curtains drawn, his glasses on the desk, leather-bound tomes in the shelves, and anthropological objects proliferating on all surfaces. The famous couch is there, of course, with the chair behind, and it might all get a bit too reverential if it weren’t for the (temporary, alas) installation of LB’s Janus fleuri, which hangs heavily happily from the ceiling above the couch. Perfectly, ideally placed, in view of both analyst and analysand. Imagine the conversations! ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Monday 21 May 2012

Tidbit

...And while I wasn't blindfolded or barefoot (I feel cold by default nowadays and my feet would have touched cement), wasn't in Loughborough with the group and traffic noises underlayed my dawn chorus, I wouldn't otherwise have sat outside, fully alert for close to half an hour in the crisp morning air, and thought about how individual birds' trills and warbles seem to traverse space like ribbons, interweaving and making dense textures. I remembered a song from my childhood (Amsel, Drossel, Fink und Star, und die ganze Vogelschar... which I need to look up) and pondered how in Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation the moment the Virgin Mary conceives is often represented by a straight line from a white dove (Holy Ghost) into her right ear... Then I went back to bed, happy. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Saturday 19 May 2012

Here and there

I've decided that I will only post here when I've got new work to present. Otherwise I'll just put up a note that there's a new post on Sleep-drunk I dance and whoever wants to comment can do it here or there.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Here and there?



I keep wondering whether I should post here and at a-n, as I miss my little blogspot-community. Maybe I should just try it out? What do you think?
Some of you may remember that I posted about Louise Bourgeois before – I just went to have a look, and burst out laughing: on 22 October 2007 I wrote about seeing her show at Tate Modern and I posted the same pic as the one chosen (without checking) for my entry on the a-n site a few days ago!
(Beware if you've read the a-n post - I’ve only changed my text incrementally):
I had long been looking forward to a rather special art-outing with a friend, to visit Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed at the Freud Museum. As you know she is one of my favourite artists and the idea of her work presented in the rooms where Sigmund Freud lived with his family and analysed patients is tantalizingly interesting to me. In this environment her work will be charged anew and I crave to see it.
In her last decade (she died at 98) she seemed a little husk of a woman, but was still fiercely at work. Memory was her draw-well. Night after sleepless night that cyclop eye roved back in time. Greedy for their stir, their prick, the quickening of her, she probed old wounds, laid fault-lines bare, right ‘till the end.
Well, I can’t go. Body says no. Another ‘if only’ on the scrapheap. Am a tiny bit better, and with some help managed this week’s medical appointment, but that’s it. Thought one morning (you see, I’m finding it hard to let this go) – if I went, maybe I could rest on Freud’s couch for a few days and then slowly have a look around. Quite like the idea: during the day I’d be part of the exhibit (I won’t move much, promise!), and at night, when all is still, I’d hear the ghosts of Freud and Bourgeois arguing in German and French-tinted whispers about the place of woman in psychoanalytic theory.
M.E. can seem like a thief. Its booty is your energy, half a sackful of cognitive functions and whatever else it can find. Out goes your profession, your social life, the way you were in the world.
The strange thing with M.E. is, that outwardly you’re hardly changed at all. I’m a bit paler, a bit thinner, and not so much in the vertical, but without obvious marks on my body: no operation scars, no open wounds, no bits missing or growing where they shouldn’t… But to myself I am changed, physically, mentally. Looking at this drawing earlier, made in a different context some years ago, I thought: this is a bit what it feels like, as if one moment I’m looking down at my feet and all is well, and when I look next there’s an extra one and I have no idea how or why. And then that becomes normal too and has its own beauty and you make art from it.

Untitled pencil drawing (2001)

A4

Thursday 10 May 2012

This is not goodbye!

Dear all,
Please look me up at my new/parallel blog on a-n Magazine’s website: 
Sleep-drunk I dance
As ever greedy for your comments. Will keep visiting your blogs too!
The connections I made here over the years, the nurturing and support I received, have sustained and inspired me and my art-practice has benefited immensely. See you soon!
You can also look me up here:
www.marionmichell.com

Wednesday 2 May 2012

snap! opens today

I can't be there but a piece of mine is!



South London Women Artists (SLWA) are pleased to present snap!
at Bankside Gallery, Hopton Street, London SE1.
Private view and SLWA Women Artists’ Diary Launch Wednesday 2 May 6 - 9 pm
Open 2 - 7 May, 10 am - 6 pm

Curated by Althea Greenan, Dr Lara Perry and Sarah Sparkes.
This second major exhibition of members' work will also display archived Women Artists’ Diaries lent by The Women’s Art Library collection at Goldsmiths University of London, includes the 1999 edition featuring SLWA member Jackie Brown.
Our exhibition catalogue is a SLWA diary for the academic year 2012/13 (£10)
and this will join the collection in The Women’s Art Library after the show.

Other events:
Thursday 3 May 1:45 - 3 pm: Giant Bankside snap! School Event
Saturday 5 May 3 pm: Gallery talk by Dr Susan Wood
Sunday 6 May 3 pm: Performative event by SLWA members
Free Admission. Wheelchair accessible