Solo-show and other delights

#artling 43 (2015)

On Saturday I gave an artist's talk via Skype during the private view of my solo-show Strands of wishful thinking: Hairlings and other things at R-Space Gallery in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.
Here you can see an illustrated version of the talk, which will also give you an impression of the actual exhibition:
Greetings from the in-between

Marion Michell 

Strands of wishful thinking: Hairlings and other things 

2 – 30 May 2015 

Artist’s talk at 3 pm on 2 May 2015 

R-Space Gallery 

The Linen Rooms 

32 Castle Street 

Lisburn BT27 4XE 

Northern Ireland

Holding too much and too little

Work-in-process (2014)
Materials: Childrens' shoes, painted twigs, wool, bandage, artificial hair

I'm posting images here, and if you're interested and would like to find out more their context please follow the link to my blog 

Sleep-drunk I dance

on a-n Artists's Blogs and read, esp. as writing&making have become completely enmeshed. You can leave comments here or there, whichever is easier.

Back with foundlings in tow

Foundlings

Material: Crocheted from cotton-thread

Foundling1

Dimensions: 24 cm x 28 cm

Foundling2

Dimensions: 24 cm x 27.5 cm

Foundling3

Dimensions: 22.5 cm x 27 cm

Foundling4

Dimensions: 23.5 cm x 40 cm

Foundling5

Dimensions: 22 cm x 39.5 cm

Foundling6

Dimensions: 19.5 cm x 30 cm

Foundling7

Dimensions: 18.5 cm x 27.5 cm

Although I enjoy blogging as part of Artists Talking I've missed posting here, partly because over the years (on-line) relationships developed that I don't want to leave behind, partly because this is accessible to a much wider audience and leads to encounters beyond all kinds of borders. And the image size allows a much better/closer view of the work. I'll be trying to maintain both blogs for a while, see how it goes what with not having amazing amounts of energy at my disposal. Expect duplications!
Have proposed a little pact to my bbf Mien of Redredday who is also thinking about going back to blogging, along the lines of I will if you will. Well - I have, Mien. PLEASE come out and play.
Thought I'll introduce you to my foundlings, inspired by a visit to the Foundlings Museum a couple of years ago.

Lopsided (11)

There is a photograph of her, tiny against the mass of happy relatives: Whitsuntide 1957, my mother's and father's engagement, the whole family photographed standing in the park. Everybody smiles, my mother's face lit up like I have never seen it. E. is about five years old.
She stands there, one hand clutching the other one as if she had to keep them from moving, from gesturing uncontrollably; stands there, her little body so tense, like a jack knife about to flick shut; stands there, clutching her hands to her stomach as if it was aching; stands there, pressing her hands to her middle as if about to fold in onto herself. She stands there, as if all she could do was try to contain her pain, as if all she could do was try to hold her aching body in this transfixed form for the eternal moment it took to take the photograph. She stands there with an old face on a child's body.
While some of the women in the photograph wear sleeveless dresses she is dressed as if for winter. The coat with its little round collar is cut like a dress, only that the material is heavier. She wears a sweater or blouse underneath, its edges just visible under the coat sleeves, and a pair of dark trousers, which in the photograph have congealed into a heavy black pedestal for a legless girl. I read pain into the hands clutched over her stomach and into her little serious face that is the only one in the photograph that doesn't show at least the trace of a smile.
She looks straight into the camera.

Lopsided (10)

tights

Material: tissue paper
Dimensions: 40 cm x 82,5 cm

Lopsided (9)

This view of the paper shoes - photographed from above and close-up - comes closest to the pair I found on Berlin flea-market and which moved me so. I'm thinking again about how they move - the sadness about them is manifold. Leaving aside their unevenness – it’s enough that these are children's shoes which would not fit anymore on the feet of whoever they belonged to - if they were still alive. It's enough that they have obviously been worn extensively and repaired and repaired, with tears and cracks in the leather and lots of tiny nails hand-hammered in their soles. But there’s something beyond the passing of time that (de)rails me, twofold: It’s the actual time they seem to refer to - war time, fascism in Germany, which I need to explore. Just for now I’ll focus on this though: what I find most immediately disconcerting is the discord here - there being two of a kind, but (probably) not two of a pair, and thus the impossibility of a whole and of restoring them to an owner, even an imaginary one.

Sketch for ’Twelve hanging maidens’

Since last autumn and following on from my ‘Five perfect maidens’ I’ve been thinking and feeling my way towards a larger project titled ’Twelve hanging maidens’ and it seems to me now that with my tied shoes I’m going in the right direction. The twelve hanging maidens are of course from The Odyssee. To set the scene: Odysseus has slaughtered the 100 suitors who hoped to take his place as king of Ithaca at Penelope’s side and instructs his son Telemachus to kill the twelve maids/servants/ slaves as he feels that they have betrayed him by shamelessly sleeping with the suitors. I am not even getting into questions like ‘did they have a choice, being female slaves?’, and ‘is the term shame ever applied in relation to sexual exploits by male figures?’ but going straight to the fact that apart from one (Melantho) they are nameless and nobody mourns them and the image of them hanging side by side with their feet twitching in the air until they’d breathed their last breath has long haunted me.
Anyway. Here is another pair which I ‘finished’ just yesterday. It’s taken me a good two weeks to get this one done, partly because the tieing needs more energy (holding the shoes firmly, the continuous tieing motion with taut thread, etc.) than say crocheting which I can do lying down, but also because I’ve been trying to tackle more practical things, i.e. how how to join the shoes together more securely and how to suspend them. I am quite happy with this version, although it’s still a sketch, there’s more to work out and I have yet to decide on the colour of the thread. The first pair showcased is still my favourite, but it's good to keep playing as something new emerges with each different pair: here I’ve let myself be led by the red-fleshy tone of the cotton which seemed to demand slight digressions into more curved contours.
(When I first read the Greek myths as a teenager there weren’t any alternative versions, but thanks to feminism we now have authors reading/re-imagining/rewriting some of the female figures, breathing new life into them by allowing them a complexity that is sadly lacking in Homer’s version. Christa Wolf’s Kassandra is one of my all-time favourite books, and now there is Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad.)

PS. Following Catherine Scriven's example (thank you, Catherine!) I've entered my Four furry maidens in the Saatchi-showdown. You can view this work and vote for it or check out other artists here.
Everybody can enter, so go on.

The shoes that go with the dress

I made these shoes some years ago. They are made from tissue paper, the lightest and most translucent of papers. Light and lightness interest me here. I wanted to explore the paper’s characteristics, using them, heightening them, changing them. The feel of the paper, the way it almost disintegrates when handled with the glue (which is applied individually to each tiny scrap), makes for a slow and painstaking process. The shoes are built up from one or two layers of paper, just enough to hold their shape. To make objects from this very perishable, fragile and non-precious material is almost paradoxical, as the objects made become precarious and precious in turn.