Emily is the co-host of this episode about art, transgression, female desire and the male gaze through photo montage, as cultural commentary and self-exploration.
We re-visit the exhibition "Danger Came Smiling" at Hayward Gallery. A punk goddess whose image was used in the Buzzcocks’ EP Orgasm Addict (1977), Linder is an under-exposed contemporary artist. 99p glue, a scalpel, vintage magazines, and she “travel(s) in time”, to bring back cyber domestic goddesses and anachronistic deepfakes. Her work seems to be at its peak, and always timely, as she enters her 7th decade on earth.
Support us: here.
Check out Linder on social media: @lindersterling.
Listen to Linder's band Ludus.
More about the exhibition here: Hayward Gallery.
00:00:04
Hi, welcome to Exhibition Estas, the podcast where we visit
00:00:09
exhibitions so that you have to. And this time I'm very happy to
00:00:13
tell you that I, Joanna Pierre Nervous will be hosting this
00:00:18
episode with Emily Harding, who is back to talk about Linder and
00:00:23
her exhibition Danger came smiling at the Haywood Gallery.
00:00:27
And I'm particularly happy that she comes for this episode
00:00:31
because she does love photography and Linda's work
00:00:35
somehow has something to do with it, although she cuts it,
00:00:40
reassembles it. Basically, she works with photo
00:00:44
montage, but in a way that is absolutely breathtaking and also
00:00:50
a way to run towards the danger, to quote kind of a favorite book
00:00:54
of mine by Sarah Polley. And again, I will remind you
00:00:59
that you can contribute either through our website or through
00:01:03
the link in the shows notes. Thank you so so much to those
00:01:09
who have been donating, who've become members of exhibitionists
00:01:16
or those who have chosen to go for maybe a more substantial
00:01:20
donation as a one off, thank you so much.
00:01:24
This means a lot to me because it is such a pleasure to be in
00:01:30
your eardrums and on YouTube and Spotify also in your presence as
00:01:37
a video. But it is also a lot of work.
00:01:42
And so to see that you value this work is really, really
00:01:46
meaningful. So thank you so much to those
00:01:49
who supports exhibition NISTAS and to to those who cannot do
00:01:54
it. There's others who do, so this
00:01:57
is for everyone. The content of exhibitionistas
00:02:00
will always be 100% accessible, whether you donate or you don't.
00:02:05
So thank you. And without further ado, let's
00:02:08
do this. Hello and welcome to Exhibition
00:02:16
Listers, the podcast where we visit exhibitions separately and
00:02:21
then compare notes during the recording of the episode.
00:02:24
You'll be very happy to know that today I am Co hosting with
00:02:30
Emily Harding. She is here, she is back and I'm
00:02:33
so delighted to have her here with me.
00:02:38
We are going to talk about Linda's exhibition Danger came
00:02:43
smiling at the Hayward Gallery. So we're going back to the
00:02:46
Hayward, Emily. Yeah, I know.
00:02:49
Yeah, Great stuff. And it is so exciting to be back
00:02:51
to Anna. Nice to see you and so good to
00:02:54
be the other exhibitionist. Is that are listening?
00:02:57
Yes, we are in your eardrums or in the space around you
00:03:02
sonically or maybe in video form.
00:03:05
Available on Spotify and YouTube.
00:03:07
Let's talk about our exhibition which is Danger Came Smiling.
00:03:14
Open until the 5th of May at the Hayward Gallery and the artist
00:03:19
in focus is Linda. So did you know her?
00:03:24
It's all the. Image The cover image for the
00:03:27
exhibition was familiar. I didn't know how to place it,
00:03:30
but I knew that I had seen it before and basically it's a very
00:03:34
sexy, slim woman who's looks like she has some kind of oil on
00:03:40
her and she's completely naked. Instead of nipples, there's a
00:03:43
couple of mouths pasted over her breasts, which is really
00:03:48
unsettling to see. Like teeth?
00:03:50
Say the least, yeah. Where nipples should be like
00:03:54
Ouch. And then her head.
00:03:56
It's a laundry utensil. Yes.
00:03:59
Yeah, So. So, yeah.
00:04:01
So it's a giant iron over her face.
00:04:04
I was familiar with that, but I wasn't familiar with her.
00:04:06
I mean, I I didn't know anything about her.
00:04:10
After we after I got into the exhibition, it was there a lot
00:04:13
of links being made in my mind, but I wasn't actually aware of
00:04:19
her. She's been a presence in the UK
00:04:23
and probably internationally because that image was used in
00:04:29
the, I think, 1977 album of the Buzzcocks.
00:04:34
It was used on that cover. So obviously that image rang a
00:04:38
bell to a lot of people, but most of us didn't know who had
00:04:42
made it. And so the person who actually
00:04:45
did that collage is Linda, who now is the focus of this
00:04:49
exhibition. So she it's a solo exhibition of
00:04:52
this woman's 50 years of work. She is actually 70.
00:04:57
She's now 71 years old, and she has this massive body of work
00:05:04
that you can discover in this exhibition.
00:05:07
So I will maybe just introduce Linda, her life, which is quite
00:05:12
eventful. I mean, she was at the right
00:05:14
time, at the right place and at the wrong time in the wrong
00:05:18
place many a times. And then after the break, you'll
00:05:21
take us through the exhibition, if that's OK Emily sounds good.
00:05:25
All right. So Linda Sterling, as she named
00:05:30
herself as, born Linda Mulvey in Liverpool in 1954.
00:05:35
So she comes from a working class background.
00:05:39
Her dad was a bricklayer and her mother was a hospital cleaner
00:05:43
and she lived happily in Liverpool and, you know, she was
00:05:47
10 years old. When she was 10 she moved to a
00:05:52
little place near Wigan in basically a very rural setting
00:06:00
and a very small countryside town where she was.
00:06:06
She felt very confined and she felt kind of her world reduced
00:06:10
quite a great deal because she says that she loved being in
00:06:14
Liverpool. She loved particularly looking
00:06:17
at the women in the street and the way they adorned themselves,
00:06:21
their fashion styles, even though it wasn't her own style.
00:06:25
She just loved looking at people, at glamorous people, at
00:06:29
people well dressed and culture and all of the activity and the
00:06:34
the noise of the big city. So this was quite daunting to
00:06:39
her. She talked about how all of the
00:06:41
very glamorous people were coming from Liverpool in her
00:06:45
sort of in her world there. So it was like London was sort
00:06:49
of another planet, you know? I mean, the big cosmopolitan
00:06:52
Center for her was Liverpool, which is, yeah, just lovely her.
00:06:56
Work developed outside of the big capital, which is kind of
00:07:01
interesting as well, and it kind of mixes with the punk movement.
00:07:06
But before we go there. So there's something that's
00:07:09
quite striking in her biography, which is that she was groomed by
00:07:15
her step grandfather. So there's this really
00:07:19
terrifying situation within the family home whereby at the very
00:07:25
right age of 3, she was groomed by being shown pornography and
00:07:31
then she ended up, you know, being molested by this person.
00:07:36
So this event in her life propelled a lot of things in
00:07:42
her. And what I found quite admirable
00:07:46
and at the same time unsettling is that she's very able to talk
00:07:52
about this as a traumatic event that is very much connected to
00:07:56
her work. And at the same time talk about
00:07:59
desire and talk about the appearance of fascination with
00:08:05
bodies at a very young age and her own compulsiveness and her
00:08:12
own desire and her own form of lust in that same time.
00:08:17
So it's quite interesting to see that she holds these two things
00:08:23
that would have been contradictory, which is to being
00:08:27
the victim of sexual assault and at the same time still having a
00:08:33
nascent form of sexuality and desire and then developing into
00:08:39
someone who's really attracted to marginal forms of sexuality
00:08:45
connected with issues of identity, etcetera.
00:08:48
So that's really, I think, one of the cool themes of the
00:08:52
exhibition and also of her life. She talks a lot about how gender
00:08:57
roles were so observed and so enforced in that space.
00:09:01
And in that time she goes to Wigan and she goes to a bookshop
00:09:06
and finds Jermaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch with an
00:09:13
amazing John Holmes cover. So a design cover that is going
00:09:19
to be incredibly nurturing for her own creativity, which is a
00:09:26
female body hanging on a sort of a rod and also with handles.
00:09:35
So there's this curvy shape, and then there's this kind of
00:09:40
domesticity of the image that certainly turns the female body
00:09:47
into functional objects of the home.
00:09:51
I mean, you just think about that and it's like, you know,
00:09:53
growing up in, you know, a very working class neighborhood and,
00:09:58
you know, not a big city in the UK at that time.
00:10:02
I mean, she's growing up in a post war UK that is trying to,
00:10:09
you know, become more contemporary.
00:10:11
So much of popular culture is being born in this time.
00:10:15
So it's like your your cultural reference from being, you know,
00:10:19
a very young person is so small. And then suddenly sort of
00:10:24
there's this boom of magazines and books and Jermaine Greer and
00:10:29
all of these ideas about sexuality that have, you know,
00:10:33
busted down the doors. Thank God, you know, given her
00:10:36
background that she was able to have some access, the access she
00:10:41
did have to those ideas. I imagine they were life saving
00:10:45
in some sense. You know, you think of the her
00:10:48
work and the story she can tell through her work and how she can
00:10:52
express through her work, giving her agency over these narratives
00:10:56
of desire and objectivity as a woman.
00:11:01
And you know that that certainly perhaps helped her through that
00:11:07
trauma. Yes, the empowering aspects of
00:11:14
having access to those images and being able to manipulate
00:11:17
them is huge. Exactly.
00:11:20
It's huge for her. And thank you for saying that,
00:11:24
because it also reminds me of something that she says, which
00:11:27
is that at the time there were only two channels, which is
00:11:32
something I can relate to in Portugal in the 80s and you as
00:11:36
well. So it's very generational.
00:11:39
Although she's quite older than us, it's, it's still affected
00:11:42
us. And she talks about boredom.
00:11:44
So she talks about not being able to be entertained by TV
00:11:49
because there was nothing. And then even when there was
00:11:52
something, it was probably not geared towards people her age.
00:11:56
And so she talks about drawing a lot, and she's fascinated by
00:12:01
glamorous princesses and glamorous women.
00:12:05
So she draws a lot of female bodies with luscious clothing
00:12:09
and dresses in these magnificent spaces, which she interprets as
00:12:13
also being a sort of fascination with bigger, wider, richer
00:12:19
cultured spaces that she didn't have access to in her working
00:12:25
class little home. And so she starts obsessively
00:12:30
drawing. And she also finds in, I think,
00:12:34
a magazine illustrations of the great Aubrey Beardsley, who was
00:12:40
an immense artist in weirdly a very short time because she
00:12:45
died. He died when he was 25 S in the
00:12:48
last decade of the 19th century. And he was this very
00:12:53
accomplished draughts person. She he would draw illustrations
00:12:58
for books for wonderful Oscar Wilde's plays.
00:13:02
And so he was quite famous, but he was also a bit decadent,
00:13:08
which is a term she uses at times.
00:13:12
So he he drew these intricate patterns very pre Art Deco, and
00:13:19
he would draw little penises and, you know, kind of very
00:13:24
sexualized images or erotica. And he kind of inserted these
00:13:30
little details into the drawings.
00:13:33
And so apparently when he illustrated Oscar Wilde's play,
00:13:37
he would include caricatures of Oscar Wilde, who would be really
00:13:42
furious about it. And then the publisher
00:13:45
apparently spent ages looking at the drawings, trying to see if
00:13:49
there was imagery that might have been, you know, complex to
00:13:54
deal with once it was published. Yeah.
00:13:58
And his drawing is line drawing in black and white.
00:14:02
Beautiful. And she talks about never really
00:14:06
having shoplifted in her life except for this rottering
00:14:13
number. I forget which kind of
00:14:15
rottering, which kind of thickness of the pen, but she
00:14:22
stole that to draw. And she talks about how that pen
00:14:28
in some ways kind of takes over the drawing and it's super
00:14:32
incisive. It's almost like cutting, which
00:14:34
is going to be important later. And how that allowed her to draw
00:14:40
like Beardsley and that. That's so interesting to me
00:14:43
because we're raising our kids in a time when there's access to
00:14:48
everything. And sometimes when you don't
00:14:51
have access to much, just a tiny little thing can open this huge
00:14:57
gate to a whole new world that you have inside of you.
00:15:02
But that also comes from everything that you're looking
00:15:05
at. Yeah, which is so interesting
00:15:07
it. Is it's like how much choice is
00:15:10
good and useful? Do we, you know, how much choice
00:15:13
do we need in our lives and, and is productive?
00:15:16
I mean, is there a certain point of beyond which you have an
00:15:19
abundance of choice that is suddenly stifling?
00:15:23
You know, having access to a lot can be as terrifying as having
00:15:27
access to nothing, basically. That's incredible in her
00:15:32
biography. And so of course, at a certain
00:15:35
point, she does reconnect with the big city, so she goes and
00:15:38
studies graphic design in Manchester Polytechnic.
00:15:43
So that's a big time for her because in 1976, she goes to a
00:15:48
Sex Pistols concert and she meets everyone, basically.
00:15:53
She becomes long and lifelong friends with Morrissey.
00:15:58
She's still friends with him. And she meets the Buzzcocks, who
00:16:04
ask her. And that's, again, such a funny
00:16:09
and endearing story. So she meets the Buzzcocks and
00:16:13
they ask her, oh, So what do you do?
00:16:15
And she says, well, I'm studying graphic design.
00:16:17
I do drawings and stuff and they say, oh, do you want to do stuff
00:16:20
for us? And she says yes.
00:16:22
And so that's that's how it starts.
00:16:25
So easy, so easy, so simple. And so she produces in 77 that
00:16:31
cover for Orgasm Addicts, which is this very iconic image.
00:16:40
And of course the the sound is that punk sound.
00:16:45
So she gets involved. It's a great song.
00:16:48
Orgasm magic. But in 78 she also has her own
00:16:55
band called Ludus. Marina Warner in the catalogue
00:17:00
says something really interesting.
00:17:02
Which is so Ludus in Latin means play, playfulness.
00:17:06
But she also connected, connects the words to ludicrous.
00:17:10
She buys cameras. So she as soon as she goes into
00:17:15
Manchester Polytechnic, she stops painting and drawing
00:17:19
because she had some point she did paint and she also buys
00:17:26
cameras. And that at a certain point she
00:17:29
even had this idea of becoming the Diane Albus of the UK.
00:17:34
So she really was into photography and she wanted to
00:17:37
produce her own images. She would go.
00:17:40
So she was very in tune with the counterculture.
00:17:43
She says that she could be wearing like bondage trousers,
00:17:48
go to one of these clubs, like for example, drag Queen Club.
00:17:52
So Dickies, she went to look to Dickies and Manchester and took
00:17:55
pictures of the drag Queens there and she felt safe.
00:17:59
She said. You know what?
00:18:00
What is really? Strange is that.
00:18:02
Going into the punk spaces was feeling safe for me.
00:18:09
That's where I felt that I was at the, you know, in the in the
00:18:13
safest of spaces because we could be whatever we wanted to
00:18:17
be. We could do whatever we wanted
00:18:19
to do. Whereas elsewhere I didn't feel
00:18:22
safe. And you know, famous last words
00:18:24
because when she already had started even taking pictures of
00:18:28
gigs, for example, she was attacked in the street by a
00:18:33
serial rapist. He was caught by the police a
00:18:37
few months later and she was carrying her cameras.
00:18:41
He so she he took a blade, stiletto blade her throat and
00:18:48
started like assaulting her. And she said, well, my friends
00:18:53
are coming, people are coming. I have a meeting with them.
00:18:55
So she's really started bartering with the person and
00:19:00
she said, and I have really expensive cameras and I can give
00:19:03
you my cameras. So he took the cameras and left,
00:19:07
didn't attack her. And apparently she found out
00:19:11
through the police that he raped a woman that very night.
00:19:16
She was so traumatized that she did not take up photography and
00:19:22
did not touch a camera until the late 90s.
00:19:26
And so she turned to photo montage.
00:19:29
And this is where, you know, it becomes a big kind of a desert,
00:19:36
not desert, but like a crossing of the desert for her because
00:19:41
she so she takes photo montage really serious that seriously,
00:19:49
as she was already doing in the 70s and and took that up as her
00:19:53
activity. And she says, you know, she's in
00:19:55
her 70s. And I think another take from
00:19:58
this exhibition, after having seen a lot of exhibitions of
00:20:02
older women who always practice, who always worked as artists,
00:20:09
and who deliver this life story to you, packaged with a nice
00:20:16
little. You know, ribbon and bow.
00:20:20
And she says, well, but this wasn't all straightforward.
00:20:23
Like it took me a long time to pull myself out of these States
00:20:29
and come to a clarity of what I was doing in terms of my own
00:20:35
production. So the title of the exhibition
00:20:38
is connected to her band. It's the title of the NLP or
00:20:45
second album Danger Came Smiling.
00:20:48
And it comes from one of her grandmother's novels, is a title
00:20:53
of like a sort of, I think a romance novel of some kind.
00:20:57
Danger Came Smiling or maybe a thriller of some kind.
00:21:02
So from that time and into now, there is a sort of a a life that
00:21:12
was lived a family life until recently.
00:21:16
She was artist in residence at Tate St.
00:21:22
Ives in 2014. She got the Paul Hamlin
00:21:26
Foundation Award in 2017, and she was included in several
00:21:31
exhibitions. And he she's shown her work very
00:21:35
recently. So in her 60th decade into her
00:21:40
70th year, she's had this or late 50s, she's kind of had this
00:21:49
presence again in a more institutional world, let's say
00:21:55
of exhibitions. So recent solo exhibitions, for
00:22:00
example, include the one at Nottingham Contemporary
00:22:05
Kestnergel Shaft. Well done.
00:22:11
I, I, I, I went for it. You took.
00:22:12
A shot. Yeah, I did.
00:22:14
I did. You know, German listeners, I
00:22:17
apologize. I know there's a lot of you.
00:22:19
I apologize for this mispronunciation.
00:22:23
But this one, I'm going to ace. I'm going to tell you right now.
00:22:26
And this one, this next one, I'm ready.
00:22:33
That's it. And Museum of Modern Art PS1 and
00:22:38
group exhibition and exhibitions and collections, as you can see
00:22:41
in the exhibition Tate Modern, Australian Center for
00:22:45
Contemporary Art, Tate Britain, Museum of Contemporary Art of
00:22:49
Chicago. So, and you have the privilege
00:22:53
of visiting an exhibition of someone who who has had a long
00:22:57
time producing her work because she needed to.
00:23:01
So this is a very specific kind of experience as an exhibition,
00:23:07
I find. And International Women's Day,
00:23:09
right? It's like it's, we're recording
00:23:12
the day after. And, you know, it was a great,
00:23:15
great thing to see around around that time.
00:23:18
Yeah, absolutely. And we are going into the
00:23:22
exhibition right now after the break.
00:23:24
Yeah, happy to, Happy to. All right, well, welcome back
00:23:33
everybody. We are heading into the
00:23:35
exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.
00:23:38
It's on until the 5th of May, so you have some time go over and
00:23:43
check it out. So this is the same space
00:23:46
obviously where we saw the Heggie Yang exhibition, but this
00:23:51
is sort of half of the space. The other half is has another
00:23:55
exhibition. So it's 4:00 rooms in total.
00:23:58
It's a retrospective, so it's obviously looking at the full
00:24:02
expanse of her work. And the rooms are entitled
00:24:06
Grammar, Glamour, Seduction and Cut.
00:24:10
So lots of of, of great material in all of them.
00:24:15
But so it starts off. So this is work that she started
00:24:19
when she was at Manchester Polytechnic in 1976.
00:24:24
And she had, you know, abandoned drawing and she was going for,
00:24:28
you know, photo montage and really doubling down on that, as
00:24:31
you mentioned. So she's got a bunch of images
00:24:36
from men's interest magazines, which is like cars, DIY
00:24:41
pornography and women's interest magazines, which is like fashion
00:24:47
and homemaking and romance. And she is using all of these
00:24:52
images to kind of gather into a single image.
00:24:56
And she has a very distinctive kind of visual style.
00:25:00
She's kind of starting to cultivate this very distinctive
00:25:03
style that she has of, you know, mashing these different ideas
00:25:08
together to create something new.
00:25:11
And in this room grammar, she has a whole kind of floating
00:25:18
wall that in the middle of the room that has images with
00:25:23
different mouths, different lipstick mouths kind of pasted
00:25:28
on, and all of the mouths are sort of a bit oversized and a
00:25:33
bit different in subtle and not so subtle ways.
00:25:37
A bit grotesque bit. Grotesque.
00:25:40
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's, the image is
00:25:43
exactly the same and the only difference is the mouths.
00:25:47
And it's, I loved it. The, the exhibition kind of
00:25:50
peaked early for me and that I just found this fascinating.
00:25:54
I this aggregation of difference, these subtle
00:26:00
differences that make you feel vastly different about each
00:26:04
image. And then to see them all in
00:26:07
aggregate stacked up next to each other is just a really fun
00:26:12
work to regard. It's fun to stand in front of.
00:26:16
I mean, which is why you go to exhibitions, right?
00:26:18
But but yeah, I felt that really profoundly with that piece.
00:26:23
And then it's another thing. So Sufiana Babri had a great
00:26:28
curtain. There's a great curtain in this
00:26:30
one, too. So it's this kind of meshy white
00:26:34
curtain that is sort of a horseshoe around this floating
00:26:37
wall. And just inside this meshy
00:26:41
curtain is these hanging masks. So if you're going to a
00:26:47
masquerade ball, you might put one of these things over your
00:26:51
face, but they are all these. Heads wearing the It's just
00:26:55
heads. That's true, yeah.
00:26:57
Wearing masks, which is even more haunting.
00:27:00
Yeah, it's like mannequin heads wearing these masks.
00:27:04
You're right. And they're just sort of
00:27:06
floating there, you know, disconnected from anybody,
00:27:11
disembodied. But they're extraordinarily
00:27:15
sexy. I mean one of them has like
00:27:18
tassels. I love, I love.
00:27:21
I took a picture of that one. It's the pink 1 isn't it?
00:27:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like a hot magenta colour.
00:27:28
Yes. And it has, Yeah, those tassels
00:27:31
like the stripper would have over their nipples, you know,
00:27:35
and kind of swing them around and.
00:27:37
Yeah, that's beautiful. Eyes as nipples.
00:27:40
Yeah, love it. And nipples on the eyes.
00:27:43
Yeah. And.
00:27:44
And eyes on the nipples. Yeah, why not?
00:27:46
It's already kind of like inspired by her photo montage
00:27:51
works. Exactly.
00:27:53
But yeah, there's kind of like an overly sexy Lacy tassily, but
00:27:57
also a bit bondagey. You know, there's a lot of
00:28:00
images in this in these 4 rooms. I thought the ones of herself
00:28:06
were the strongest. I think she's a captivating
00:28:10
model and someone who can express so much, you know,
00:28:14
through her own, you know, through her own talent in front
00:28:17
of the camera as well as behind the camera.
00:28:21
But I thought that that was that was some of the strongest work
00:28:24
in here. But but yeah, I, I kind of there
00:28:27
was a resistance I had to it because I was like, I am already
00:28:32
uncomfortable and I did feel uncomfortable, like a lot of
00:28:37
this made me feel uncomfortable. But there was a there is more
00:28:41
charm, Yeah. And more, more sort of charm.
00:28:46
There was more dimension to the work rather than just trying to
00:28:52
shock me. You know, I, I like, I don't
00:28:56
know, I mean, maybe in Mike Kelly, it's like he was just
00:28:59
like, I kind of felt like he was just trying to shock, shock,
00:29:01
shock and isn't, you know, I don't know.
00:29:04
And I, I felt like I was worried I might go in feeling like that
00:29:09
about her work. But I, you know, this is the
00:29:13
again, the great beauty of exhibitions as you go on a
00:29:16
journey with it, if you just kind of open your mind a little
00:29:19
and, and I really appreciated that about this exhibition.
00:29:24
It's funny because if we went with the same mindset, because
00:29:29
as we've spoken about before, photography for me is quite
00:29:33
exhausting, right with the, you know, the listeners.
00:29:36
If you haven't listened to the Daido Moriyama episode, it's a
00:29:40
big one on that, about the apprehensions about portrait
00:29:45
portraiture and photography in general and the massive presence
00:29:49
of photography in space. And I also had an apprehension,
00:29:52
and it's funny you should say that, how you reacted to the
00:29:55
image of the show. So the iconic image of the
00:29:58
Buzzcocks cover, which in the Buzzcocks cover is kind of
00:30:03
diluted by a monochromatic color, whereas in the exhibition
00:30:08
space and the poster of the exhibition is the original
00:30:11
version with the oily body, which is a very 80s body.
00:30:15
It's weird that it's a 70s image.
00:30:16
That's because it became the 80s imagery of fashion and like
00:30:22
these oiled up bodies, super muscular but sensual and curvy,
00:30:28
with big breasts but not too big, not too small.
00:30:30
Like this idealized woman who is, you know, sporty and at the
00:30:36
same time works and is empowered and wears stilettos but also
00:30:39
blazes and whatever. But it seems to preempt all of
00:30:42
that. But I had this apprehension
00:30:45
because I find photo montage tiresome, saying lots of things
00:30:50
at the same time and kind of gathering images that you
00:30:53
already have in your mind and then kind of reorganizing them
00:30:56
in ways that become symbolic and you have to interpret.
00:30:59
But it's sometimes it's quite obvious what it's trying to say.
00:31:03
So I had big apprehensions. And when I saw the image of the,
00:31:09
of the juicy smiles nipples, I thought, OK, there's something
00:31:17
going on, that this is a good image.
00:31:19
This is doing something for sure, right?
00:31:21
And I was a bit more excited, I have to say.
00:31:25
So again, yeah, exhibitions are a journey, man.
00:31:27
They really are so so the rest of the room has images around
00:31:33
the sides and then there's a couple of kind of tabletop
00:31:38
exhibitions that have, I think, some of her magazines and notes
00:31:44
and. Listen, let me talk about those
00:31:47
later. Describe the room because those
00:31:49
are, wow, incredible. Well, let's go ahead there.
00:31:53
Let's start there. So we have these tabletop
00:31:55
images. Well, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
00:31:58
What? What?
00:31:59
So you have those tables behind with covers and the artwork she
00:32:04
did for Laddus, for her band. And those drawings are those
00:32:09
famous drawings that, well, not those ones that she talks about
00:32:14
in her childhood, but where Aubrey Beardsley comes back and
00:32:19
the marriage between Beardsley's line, black and white drawings
00:32:25
and the punk geometric. Because her eyebrows are
00:32:30
triangles, right? She has the 80s eyebrows painted
00:32:34
on her face almost. And so they find themselves in
00:32:39
those covers with these beautiful drawings.
00:32:43
They are so incredible. I mean it.
00:32:47
And the, the, the drawings are just beautiful to gaze at
00:32:51
because they're so contemporary to those times.
00:32:54
And at the same time, they go and seek out Aubrey Beardsley
00:32:59
and say, this is probably what you would have been doing.
00:33:02
He was a dandy, and he had this very mysterious sexuality.
00:33:08
So he was accused because, you know, after the play he did the
00:33:12
illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play.
00:33:15
Oscar Wilde was imprisoned, as we know, and was accused of
00:33:20
being, I don't know what the term was at the time, but of
00:33:24
being homosexual, basically. And so there were suspicions
00:33:30
about Beardsley's sexuality. It is kind of thought now that
00:33:35
he was either asexual or had an incestuous relationship with his
00:33:40
sister, which I find weird because in the exhibition at the
00:33:44
at the Tape Britain a few years back in 21 I think, or 22, there
00:33:50
were some pictures of Mabel, his sister.
00:33:52
He was dressed as a man and seemed to gear more towards the
00:33:57
towards the lesbian aspect of sexuality.
00:34:00
But we don't know because in those times those things
00:34:04
couldn't be written about and busy actually asked people to a
00:34:08
friend to destroy his more more sexual obscene as he said
00:34:14
drawings after he died, which luckily wasn't done.
00:34:18
So there's also kind of this idea of what would have Beasley
00:34:23
have done and where are the issues in our society now, what
00:34:27
is accepted and what isn't. That marriage between Beasley
00:34:30
and the punk movement is kind of something.
00:34:33
And the the music is quite good. Lotus, It's quite, it's quite
00:34:36
nice. The so that yeah, so that first
00:34:40
room has a lot of images of, you know, kind of her early photo
00:34:44
montage. One whole section has is called
00:34:48
Pretty Girls and it's from 1977 and it is a series of naked
00:34:55
women with various kind of appliances and household items
00:35:02
for their heads. So kind of they're all in a
00:35:05
domestic scene. Think it's the same woman
00:35:08
actually. It's the same woman.
00:35:09
Yeah. On on several pieces of
00:35:12
furniture, basically completely naked in sexy posing like in pin
00:35:18
up poses. Yeah.
00:35:21
And they have like maybe a coffee pot for a head or, you
00:35:28
know, other items masking how they how they look.
00:35:31
You can see the birth of her ideas here, you know, and, and,
00:35:37
and kind of much more developed perhaps later on.
00:35:40
So. She works very early on and she
00:35:43
collects very early on pornographic magazines of
00:35:48
certain periods. So she goes back to the 40s, to
00:35:51
the 50s to the 60s and this becomes systematic across time
00:35:56
up until now. And she has an incredible quote
00:36:00
that connects the assault she suffered as a child and this use
00:36:08
of pornographic images. In an interview for The
00:36:11
Guardian, she talks about how she had to undergo the form of
00:36:16
therapy that was supposed to heal, which is based on eye
00:36:20
movement. That was supposed to heal
00:36:22
something that was happening to her so very recently, so late in
00:36:26
life, which was these recurring images that was coming back,
00:36:30
that were coming back to her, these visions that were very,
00:36:34
very vivid. So she says, quote, a whole new
00:36:37
swathe of imagery came up and it was very, very vivid unquotes.
00:36:42
And so she describes these images that obviously are
00:36:46
related to her assault. And she says, quote, I was
00:36:49
somehow recalling the ballet books I used to have aged three.
00:36:54
I think that's kind of grooming begins with the handling of the
00:36:58
child's body in a certain way in domestic spaces.
00:37:02
In my montages I reverse engineer what a paedophile
00:37:06
spends their time engineering unquotes and that is incredible.
00:37:15
I mean that's just, there's so many layers to this.
00:37:18
So the ballet. So she was fascinated by ballet
00:37:21
images, which is what I meant when I said that she was already
00:37:24
looking at these images of bodies for to be watched, doing
00:37:34
elegant, beautiful, creating beauty and noting that men and
00:37:40
women were wearing makeup. So there's a form of dragon
00:37:43
ballet that she was really drawn to, and she found that that was
00:37:49
the place to be. That's where she wanted to be.
00:37:52
But those image was also the ones that she associated.
00:37:56
So that pleasure she had, which at that point was visual
00:38:00
pleasure, obviously aesthetic pleasure, were connecting to the
00:38:03
images that she was being shown by a member of her family that
00:38:07
were explicit images and sexual images.
00:38:11
And so she kind of like associated both.
00:38:14
And in this room you can see you can have a very surface reading
00:38:20
of these images, which is echoed by the texts, which I find
00:38:27
really problematic because they solve the images for you.
00:38:31
I love that there's text in exhibitions.
00:38:34
I really respect that job. I write as well for exhibitions,
00:38:39
But I am really worried that the subtleties of her work kind of
00:38:48
go out of the window with those texts that resolve quite quickly
00:38:53
what she's doing and kind of connecting the imagery to women
00:38:58
rights and to the role of women in domestic interiors.
00:39:03
When there's also a layer of pure admiration for women's body
00:39:10
and an intentional relationship and pleasure with sex and sex
00:39:15
that is given to you in the voyeuristic sense.
00:39:19
On the printed image that also comes in Playboy.
00:39:23
She collects a lot of play Playboy magazines with Truman
00:39:27
Capote texts and with artists who sometimes illustrated those
00:39:33
magazines. So there's a real connection and
00:39:37
there's a taboo. And she, she says in an
00:39:40
interview, no one talks about, no, she doesn't say that there's
00:39:44
a book about porn which starts with no one talks about their
00:39:48
consumption of porn. It's the 20% of the images and
00:39:54
the searches on the Internet. It's a lot.
00:39:56
Wow. And no one talks about it.
00:39:58
Yeah. So that's a really important
00:40:03
point because as you say, these are, you know, the first images
00:40:09
that she's working with. There's actually one which has a
00:40:14
woman on the kitchen counter inside a pan emerging from the
00:40:19
pan. She looks a bit like one of
00:40:21
those prehistoric Venus little amulet sculptures.
00:40:24
And then there's a mixer on her head.
00:40:27
And then there's eyes and a mouth on the mixer, and it looks
00:40:30
a lot like the Germaine Greer cover of the magazine.
00:40:34
And there's a sausage jar on the foreground, and you don't know
00:40:41
exactly what was added and what wasn't.
00:40:44
And the degree of absurdity of the images, the source of images
00:40:50
kind of pops out as well. So my fear of the photo montage
00:40:55
images being a bit overwhelming was diffused in this room.
00:41:00
Because she is surgical, Yeah. She is precise, yeah.
00:41:05
And she's very minimal in what she adds on to the images.
00:41:08
Yeah, you really feel the start of something because it's like
00:41:11
later on there's some photo montages that she does that are
00:41:17
just so just so layered, like she's using so much more that
00:41:23
the feel for line and composition.
00:41:27
You can feel it just all all of her years of life and experience
00:41:33
kind of coming together there. So that is grammar.
00:41:36
And then we go to glamour. And she was, you know, sort of
00:41:42
interested in these glamorous women from Liverpool and from,
00:41:46
you know, kind of the urban centers around where she grew
00:41:49
up. And she has a section in this
00:41:53
next room that is dedicated to what she calls working class
00:42:00
drag clubs near where she near where she was.
00:42:05
And it's just really lovely, intimate pictures of of of these
00:42:12
people kind of putting on their glamour and putting on literally
00:42:17
the clothing of it, but putting on the internal kind of
00:42:21
machinations of it as well. And she has the she she images,
00:42:28
which is the self portraits. These are bigger portraits, self
00:42:33
portraits. And she'll have, she's dressed
00:42:37
in kind of like a old castaway dress with a bit of lace at the
00:42:40
top. She has strings and strings of
00:42:43
pearls around. Her mom's pulse.
00:42:45
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she. Borrowed her mom's pearls.
00:42:48
Yeah, and they're, I, I, you can't help but notice, like some
00:42:51
of them are quite choker, you know?
00:42:53
I mean, they're very close to the neck.
00:42:55
And then she kind of, she has herself, her face partially
00:43:00
covered in bandages or Saran wrap or really clever ones where
00:43:07
she has cut out the like the lower half of a woman's face
00:43:13
from a magazine, it looks like, and matched it up to her own
00:43:17
face almost perfectly. And then there's, you know, some
00:43:22
kind of quotes in there as well. Some I am your death behind my
00:43:27
flesh Does my skull smile. You know, kind of like.
00:43:31
Those are the lyrics of a lot of.
00:43:32
Oh right, OK, gotcha. I miss that.
00:43:35
That's why the text is so weird, because you look and you think,
00:43:37
yeah, this looks like a conceptual piece.
00:43:40
And then you read the text and you think, this doesn't sound
00:43:43
like texts of conceptual pieces. And yeah, because they are texts
00:43:49
that she used to shout as a as a band member.
00:43:54
And then you have a video of her as well in the middle of that
00:43:57
room. Oh, right, yeah.
00:43:59
Do you want to talk about the video?
00:44:01
Yeah, so the video shows 2 aspects of her practice in those
00:44:04
days, which were bodybuilding. That's why I'm saying like,
00:44:08
there's a lot of things, there's a lot of interviews out there of
00:44:11
her. So I knew quite a bunch of
00:44:13
things about her and I thought, oh, I know everything, you know?
00:44:16
But then you see an image of her bodybuilding.
00:44:20
So she at some point got interested in the idea of the
00:44:23
transformation of the body. And so she is filmed lifting
00:44:29
these weights with these shorts and this very serious stunts.
00:44:35
And I think she's wearing quite a bit of makeup.
00:44:37
So it's quite an ambivalent, ambiguous image.
00:44:41
And then you have another image which is her in concert wearing
00:44:45
pieces of meat that she would then take out and reveal a huge,
00:44:51
black, huge dildo emerging from her body.
00:44:56
And so that's when she was performing with letters with
00:44:59
with with her band. So there's all these aspects to
00:45:04
her where she's exploring and that's when you start seeing
00:45:07
that the narrative that you might have had because you've
00:45:12
listened to an an interview before of what happened to her.
00:45:16
You know, the way she was groomed is nuanced because she's
00:45:20
also talking about her own desire and her own interest in
00:45:26
this is not my expression, but deviant, you know, forms of
00:45:30
sexuality or marginalized identities who are associated
00:45:36
with different forms of sexual of sexuality.
00:45:39
And she doesn't put it out there.
00:45:41
Is it being her sexuality, which I found really interesting.
00:45:44
There's a a fluidness of the drag Queens in the corner.
00:45:49
It's just a a bunch of photos and it got me thinking like, I'm
00:45:52
glad that's that's a horrible thing to say because what
00:45:56
prompted that was a horrible assault.
00:45:58
But I'm glad that she reverted to a more creative practice
00:46:04
rather than photography because those are pretty, there's those
00:46:07
are great images. But I think she has so much to
00:46:11
give in terms of her own practice and her old photo
00:46:14
collage and photo montage. And there's really this
00:46:22
masterful presentation of what it means to be a woman who wants
00:46:30
to be more than just what the press or the society or a
00:46:37
certain class as well, the working class, you know?
00:46:41
She. Comes from a specific point of
00:46:43
view. Wants women to be.
00:46:46
So I think there is much more to her than just this sort of
00:46:54
surface level critique of the role of women in society.
00:46:57
Yeah, as much more to her than that.
00:47:01
I couldn't help myself. And this is a terrible thing,
00:47:04
but the last time I was in that space was for Hegie Yang and and
00:47:09
she just went all over the place.
00:47:11
Like Hegie Yang had so many different types of expression,
00:47:17
right? I mean, she had, you know, you
00:47:20
know, in some of those rooms she had installations of her moving
00:47:27
artworks around the world. So she had a palette with
00:47:30
literally, you know, all of her things packaged up in another
00:47:33
room. She had some sculptures that
00:47:35
she'd done. She, you know, had the the the
00:47:41
paper. Mesmerizing mesh, you.
00:47:45
Know exactly I mean, she, she was.
00:47:46
Shamanic folding the blinds inspired the blinds.
00:47:51
Everywhere, I mean, you know, she did so many, so many
00:47:53
different types of things. And there was part of me as I
00:47:56
was going through this exhibition that was saying that,
00:47:59
you know, I was sort of thinking, you know, she she's
00:48:03
really done this one thing, you know, the photo montage.
00:48:07
I mean, she's obviously done a bit of of photography and you
00:48:12
know, you know, music drawing some other bits certainly around
00:48:19
the side. But like her, her through line
00:48:22
is definitely this photo montage and you can see her deepening
00:48:27
within that. And and there was part of me
00:48:29
that was like a bit disappointed that because this is a
00:48:33
retrospective, I wanted to see more of those tangents and kind
00:48:39
of where she pushed out into other areas.
00:48:44
And so I was doing some comparison which which is never
00:48:47
I think that useful, but because.
00:48:49
She's done other things. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
00:48:53
I mean. But I agree that the main line
00:48:56
of work is the photo montage for sure.
00:48:58
But it but it did. I also was trying to catch
00:49:01
myself there because within the photo montage you can see so
00:49:05
much development. You know, you can see her ideas
00:49:09
forming and developing and her her eye for line and design and
00:49:14
competition. And you know, is she talked
00:49:17
about, you know, the fact that you can have, you know,
00:49:21
different time. You can go across time and get a
00:49:24
magazine from the 60s and a magazine from the 90s and a
00:49:27
magazine from now and, and combine all of those elements
00:49:33
together in a way that is just completely unique and special
00:49:37
for photo montage, you know, should we move to the next room?
00:49:42
Sure. Seduction.
00:49:43
So she there's a quote there at the start of the room that says
00:49:47
to be trained in glamour was often also to be trained in the
00:49:50
art of seduction. So she's big on the etymology of
00:49:55
words and the word seduction originally meant to lead astray.
00:50:00
So the, the, this, this room contains a lot of floral imagery
00:50:12
as well. So kind of rather than having
00:50:15
the domestic items, you know, covering certain portions of, of
00:50:20
people's bodies or having the the men's or women's interest
00:50:24
magazines represented, it's more about having, you know, a rose
00:50:30
covering strategic spots of men or women's bodies.
00:50:35
And the way that she's doing this, and I don't even know how
00:50:41
to describe it. I mean, it's very sexy images,
00:50:44
right? Like there's some of sort of
00:50:45
orgies almost where there's several people naked together
00:50:50
giving each other. Some pleasure so striking.
00:50:53
Which one? There's three women together,
00:50:58
and she placed the flower in the way that just deconstructs the
00:51:06
sexual dynamic, and suddenly you're looking at these women
00:51:13
and thinking, what were they looking at?
00:51:17
How were they doing this? What led them there?
00:51:22
And she says about flowers, Flowers are basically so quotes.
00:51:27
Flowers are basically nature's pornography.
00:51:30
It's like, come over here and be attracted to me.
00:51:33
And the quotes, so they're still super sensual, but it's like
00:51:38
she's deviating sensuality to something much more open,
00:51:42
visceral and just the sheer pleasure of the body opening up
00:51:47
to you and calling you and seducing you.
00:51:50
And at the same time, and she talks a lot about this.
00:51:53
She went, she spends a lot of time with these images to the
00:51:57
point where she says that she feels smells.
00:52:01
So for her, Playboys from the 60s have smells of pipe smoke.
00:52:08
Bacon, she mentioned. Bacon so she has synesthesia,
00:52:13
she kind of has these ore trauma is bringing a lot of stuff.
00:52:17
She's very vague about that. And she says that there's she
00:52:21
goes into a sort of trans and she looks at these women and she
00:52:26
feels like she's releasing them. So maybe now is the time to say
00:52:30
that she uses a scalpel yeah, to cut the images.
00:52:34
So the these images are quite fantastic also in the way
00:52:37
they're associated together because it looks like Photoshop
00:52:40
and it preempts Photoshop because they're cut with huge
00:52:44
precision. She uses a scalpel.
00:52:47
And so the scalpel, she compares it to the rot ring.
00:52:49
So that line pen that she used to use.
00:52:53
And there's an incredible continuity and she feels like
00:52:56
she's still drawing, but she's taking these images, she's
00:53:02
cutting them, She's spending a lot of time and she thinks about
00:53:05
these women and she uses glue. So she says, it's funny because
00:53:10
no one asks me about the glue. And for me it's the most
00:53:13
important thing because that's the mess.
00:53:16
It's messy, it's horrendous. You've drawn your tableau,
00:53:22
you've put everything together and then is the moment where you
00:53:25
have to just take your finger, you know, humidify it with your
00:53:28
tongue. I don't know how she does it.
00:53:30
Lift the thing and then put some glue on it.
00:53:32
And she says that she uses like 99 P glue from the High Street.
00:53:37
And that glue is quote like the ghost that haunts every first.
00:53:44
Montage. And I associate glue to semen.
00:53:52
I'm sorry, dear listeners, but for me, when I was listening to
00:53:55
her, I was like, and maybe female, you know, excretions,
00:54:04
let's say. It feels like the pleasure.
00:54:09
It feels like the mess of the pleasure, the end of it.
00:54:12
And there is something and the excitement and there's something
00:54:18
about cutting. So she talks about forensic
00:54:22
nature of the images and the surgery that she operates
00:54:30
because a scalpel and she says like I was attacked by a
00:54:33
stiletto blade. I had a stiletto blade held to
00:54:36
my throat. So the blade is attacks you and
00:54:42
can can kill you or can harm you.
00:54:44
But if you're doing surgery, then it can heal you, so there's
00:54:49
the potential of cutting to heal.
00:54:52
I'll leave it there. It's a complex subject, but
00:54:56
there's something to it for sure.
00:54:58
In the middle of the room, there's this giant sculpture,
00:55:02
the one that has, it's like a, it's essentially like a cut rug,
00:55:08
I guess. And it's a colorful rug and it's
00:55:12
sort of spirals upward. And so it's connected to
00:55:18
something hang from the ceiling. So it's, you know, it's pretty
00:55:21
large. And then there's eyes that are
00:55:24
sewn into it. So it's tufting.
00:55:27
It's called tufting. It's the it's a sort of gun that
00:55:31
goes into the fabric or the canvas and pierces it and kind
00:55:36
of leaves the the yarn. She so someone else did that for
00:55:40
her. She made the pattern.
00:55:42
And so it's kind of like those eyes that are that she colleges
00:55:46
that she applies to other elements.
00:55:48
So it's there's an element of the reoccurring eye with Daida
00:55:54
Moriyama as well. Actually, there's a relation
00:55:56
there as well is in the in that thing that is kind of like an
00:56:00
orange peel hanging from the ceiling.
00:56:03
It's very thin and it kind of spirals at the center of the
00:56:07
space. That's a really good description
00:56:10
of it, an orange peel and it's called diagrams of love,
00:56:14
marriage of eyes did that in 2016.
00:56:19
Then sort of against one wall is something is some images that
00:56:27
are enormous. So it's three huge images and
00:56:32
the center image is the biggest, like it's sort of floor to
00:56:36
ceiling almost. And it's women.
00:56:39
It's it's people covered in like colorful goo and it's called
00:56:45
splotching. Splashing.
00:56:47
Splashing. That's it.
00:56:48
Splashing. And it it comes from sort of
00:56:52
this Eroticism of being covered in food scraps and.
00:56:58
Foods, mushy food, it's called. It's a sexual fetish.
00:57:03
Splashing. Yeah.
00:57:04
And you cover yourself with viscous liquids and and viscous
00:57:10
mushy food or basically. And it's yeah, fetish.
00:57:17
I mean it's a niche fetish like tickling or whatever, but it
00:57:20
does exist. It might be more niche than
00:57:24
tickling, I imagine, but it's so the, so there's a, there's the
00:57:30
two images on the side are of women covered in this and then
00:57:35
in the middle there's a couple of people covered in it.
00:57:38
And I thought it was interesting that they're clothed, so they're
00:57:41
under so much of this goo and this colorful goo that is just
00:57:46
streaming down their faces and their bodies, but they actually
00:57:51
have clothes on underneath. Which I noticed that too.
00:57:54
I found this very odd. I thought they would be naked.
00:57:57
Me too. It's it's her and a friend.
00:57:59
It's two women. And they did that after she was
00:58:04
feeding her father. He had a stroke and he could
00:58:08
only eat that kind of food, jell-o and custard and that kind
00:58:12
of thing. And and she did these photos by
00:58:17
using that kind of food on herself and her friend and I and
00:58:23
associating it with a sexual fetish.
00:58:26
And I thought that's peculiar because I thought they would be.
00:58:30
So it would be a freeing thing to just get naked.
00:58:33
So I, it's kind of a thing where you, you can't prevent yourself
00:58:37
from thinking, is this a sexual fetish for her or is it just the
00:58:42
imagery and the aesthetic that she's using for her arts?
00:58:48
You know, that I, I, and it doesn't matter.
00:58:50
I don't need an answer. I'm not curious.
00:58:53
It is just a question that pops up in, in kind of this thing of
00:58:57
where does the lifestyle stop and the arts commences?
00:59:00
And do they overlap? Are they the same?
00:59:03
And I think that's an interesting question because
00:59:06
there's this idea that certain people live as arts, you know,
00:59:11
drag Queens and drag kings and so many people who are
00:59:15
entertainers and their lifestyle and their clothing and what they
00:59:19
are and what they do becomes to a certain extent, a performance.
00:59:23
You know, there's a performative aspect to it.
00:59:26
And she did do performance. And I think at a certain point
00:59:28
it kind of overlaps. But I think the plasticity and
00:59:32
the visual creativity at the end of the day is the most important
00:59:37
thing for her. And on the other side, there's a
00:59:39
lot of photo montages from Playboy magazines of the 60s, I
00:59:43
think. And there's one which is called
00:59:47
A daughter's gift. And it's a woman again, with the
00:59:52
flat posing like peanut poses, revealing her breasts, probably
00:59:57
revealing her genitalia, but the genitalia is covered with white
01:00:01
roses. And there's a painting in the
01:00:04
back that was added because it's a bit wonky.
01:00:08
It was added to the image and there's kind of a, a yellow
01:00:13
margin on three sides and cut on the left side.
01:00:17
And she's wearing these boots, which at a certain point in, in,
01:00:24
from the, the 60s onward were kind of a symbol of liberation
01:00:27
and empowerment. And, and also in, in S&M, the
01:00:32
dominate, the dominatrix wears boots often.
01:00:36
So it's a symbol of empowerment. And it's called the daughter's
01:00:39
gift. And it's associated with that
01:00:42
time where she was taking care of her dad.
01:00:46
Apparently she was grieving her mom.
01:00:47
So it was a very difficult period for her.
01:00:50
She was grieving, she was caring for a parent, and then her
01:00:54
language is almost incestuous. And the relationship with
01:00:58
Beardsley comes again in this idea of the incest and the
01:01:02
desire coming from within a domestic space that is not safe
01:01:08
from transgression. And that room is unsettling, was
01:01:14
very unsettling to me. Not the fetish.
01:01:15
Couldn't care less. I mean, obviously I could never,
01:01:18
ever get close to that horrendous texture.
01:01:22
Yeah, splashing is not for me, let's just say that.
01:01:24
But I found the images really interesting and pleasing.
01:01:26
They're very colorful. There's a lot of yellow in
01:01:28
there. But then there's this incestuous
01:01:32
presence. And the the the orange peel made
01:01:35
me think of a story told by Louise Bourgeois.
01:01:39
There's a video of Louise Bourgeois peeling an orange and
01:01:43
saying that her dad was very inappropriate and he would peel
01:01:47
oranges. And as she goes, she peels the
01:01:50
orange. I hope I'm remembering this
01:01:51
right. And he would peel the orange,
01:01:54
revealing a sort of phallic shape because she's clearly
01:01:59
sharing something that was horrendous to her, Louise
01:02:02
Bourgeois. And so Linda's work, for all the
01:02:06
apprehension I had, really conquered me.
01:02:09
Like I was in it, loved it, but I was so tired.
01:02:14
Because it is all about finding your way as a woman who seeks
01:02:20
pleasure and who likes other women's bodies and likes your
01:02:24
own body and feels empowered by boobiness, genitalianness,
01:02:32
secretions, body liquids. And at the same time, the only
01:02:37
place you find is in this loop between seduction, danger,
01:02:42
glamour, the glamour of it all and sex.
01:02:47
And that kind of never ending loop where you feel caught as a
01:02:51
woman all the time. And it's something that I cannot
01:02:54
disentangle and that I find really tiring at this point,
01:02:59
nearing my 50th decade in the world.
01:03:03
There's a whole history of Pierre Molyneux, who took
01:03:05
pictures of women with her, their skirts up so you could see
01:03:10
their naked bodies from waist down.
01:03:12
And then you couldn't see her, their faces or their torsos.
01:03:15
There's Hans Belmer with, you know, she had this breastplate
01:03:19
that she used when she was, was she boxing at some point?
01:03:24
Listen, she had this huge amount of activities that then she uses
01:03:29
in some photo colleges where she puts herself image of her
01:03:33
younger self. So they're in from the 10s or
01:03:36
the 20s in the 21st century, so quite recent images.
01:03:42
There's so much in that loop that she explores constantly.
01:03:48
And I don't know, how about you? How did you feel at this point
01:03:50
in the exhibition? Yeah.
01:03:52
I mean, I, you know, I felt like, and this is complete
01:03:58
conjecture, right? Like, I have no idea.
01:04:00
But there was knowing a little bit about her past.
01:04:06
I thought, you know, is what a great thing for her to be able
01:04:12
to have some agency over these narratives and to be able to
01:04:16
direct, you know, I mean, she's creating them, right?
01:04:19
And she's putting them out there, you know, about women's
01:04:23
role in the world and their relationship to sex, etcetera.
01:04:26
She's creating her own, her own story there.
01:04:32
And, and I think, you know, that's hopefully that's a very
01:04:40
liberating channel for her to express.
01:04:44
And so maybe her, her, her private life is freer because of
01:04:49
it. You know, is, is less encumbered
01:04:52
with. I mean, I have no idea.
01:04:54
Of course, you know, it's like, but I know that it, it can work
01:04:57
that way for when people find those outlets and those
01:05:02
challenge channels, especially as she has done at such a high
01:05:05
level. But yeah, it was a lot more to
01:05:08
take in than I thought. You know, I mean, I, I sort of,
01:05:12
yeah. I, you know, the, I remember
01:05:15
when I first moved to New York in 1998, you know, going to
01:05:19
this, going to this artist opening and it was a, it was a
01:05:27
young person doing photo montage and not very well.
01:05:35
Like it was, you know, it was a first stab at it kind of thing.
01:05:39
And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, this has really been done
01:05:42
a lot. You know, this is the late 90s
01:05:44
by that point, you know, and, and so when I was, you know,
01:05:49
getting ready to go see her, I had sort of thought like, oh,
01:05:52
this is all going to be things that I will have seen before.
01:05:56
But I think there is something about letting the depth that
01:06:00
you're talking about really sink in and that is very heavy.
01:06:05
Like it is really heavy and it is very sobering about how much
01:06:11
has changed and kind of not as much and how much is going
01:06:15
backwards. There's so much more to it than
01:06:17
meets the eye. And it's nice to go through an
01:06:20
exhibition and just feel surprised and, and have that
01:06:25
journey of resistance and then kind of intrigue and awe and
01:06:29
wonder and, you know, kind of be left in a place that that makes
01:06:35
you want to know more. So yeah, that's great.
01:06:38
Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for visiting this
01:06:41
exhibition with me. And until next time, thank you
01:06:46
so much for listening guys, and have a good one.
01:06:49
Until the next episode, all. Right, see you soon.