Exhibition Chinwag is the original segment of the podcast where Joana invites professionals from other fields to visit and discuss the work of an artist through their solo exhibition.
Guest: Susie Ridell Co-Producer and co-Host of the Podcast Limited Time Only
The artist: Jenny Saville and her solo exhibition The Anatomy of Painting. National Portrait Gallery - 20 June - 7 September 2025.
How do artists paint the body nowadays? And why does Saville produce monumental images of it? + Susie's candid questions about the art market!
Check out images referred to in the episode here.
→ To dig deeper into the episode's references and receive little gems, notes, and musings that didn't make it into the episode, SIGN UP: https://joanaprneves.substack.com/s/exhibitionistas
→ For our third season, we're working with intern production assistants for the first time. Your donations will contribute to pay for their work: https://exhibitionistaspodcast.com/support-us
Key themes:
Painting; children in art; painting the body; the representation of the body, Jenny Saville
Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://joanaprneves.substack.com/subscribe
If you appreciate my work, why not buy me a coffee? It's a nice way to show your appreciation without having to commit to a membership: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
For behind the scenes clips, links to the artists and guests we cover, and visuals of the exhibitions we discuss follow us on Instagram: @exhibitionistas_podcast
Bluesky: @exhibitionistas.bsky.social
exhibitionistaspod@gmail.com
#contemporaryart #immersive #artexhibitions #jennysaville #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #joanaprneves #thenationalportraitgallery #painting #contempirarypainting #londonart #museum #londonmuseum #artpodcast #artconversations #arttalk #ralkart #greatwomenartists
00:00:01
Here we are beginning of season 3 with a banger of an episode.
00:00:07
Welcome back. The season is full of surprises
00:00:12
new episode formats such as art, travelogues and art topics, but
00:00:19
this one changed in name only. The segment exhibition Chinwag
00:00:24
is more or less the same as the whole of the first season where
00:00:29
I was the dusty specialist and my Co host.
00:00:32
The wonderful Emily Harding who is back in the next episode of
00:00:37
this segment was the novice exhibition goer.
00:00:41
My new Art Outsider guest today is Susie Riddell who was a joy
00:00:48
to have over for many many reasons.
00:00:50
It was really fascinating to chat with her because although
00:00:54
we both work in creative fields, the rules are so so different.
00:01:00
You must be wondering in what field exactly Susie works in or
00:01:04
you are recognizing her name because she is no fish out of
00:01:09
water. When it comes to podcasts.
00:01:12
Susie is 1/2 of the award-winning podcast Limited
00:01:16
Time Only, which she Co hosts with Esther Stanford.
00:01:22
I actually watched Susie and Esther receive their award live
00:01:28
at the Independent Women Podcast Awards at the BBC studios a few
00:01:33
months ago and they completely won me over.
00:01:38
Susie jumped up and down like a kid, and Esther had such an air
00:01:44
of utter confusion that they really, really cracked me up.
00:01:49
But don't be fooled by their humble attitudes because since
00:01:53
we've recorded this episode, Limited Time only received a
00:01:56
second award, the Women Who Podcast Awards, in the category
00:02:02
Laughter and cheer. So listen, all I wish for them
00:02:07
is for this streak to continue to the point where they'll do
00:02:10
their best. Doris Lessing when she learned
00:02:14
through a reporter stalking her outside of her home, that she
00:02:17
had won the Nobel Prize and seemed utterly unfazed, even a
00:02:22
bit bored. You've won the Nobel Prize for
00:02:25
Literature. How do you feel it's been going
00:02:31
on now for 30 years. I can't get more excited, right?
00:02:38
Well, I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks of some kind.
00:02:41
There are other people here. So any kind of remarks, just
00:02:43
just tell me what this prize means to you.
00:02:47
Well, the beginning, I say. For 30 years, one can get more
00:02:50
excited than one gets, you know. But this is a recognition of
00:02:55
your life's work, yes? This is all I wish for all of
00:03:00
us, all of you out there and for myself to just have the Doris
00:03:05
Lessing level of Norfolk's given.
00:03:07
So back to Susie who is a multi hyphenated professional.
00:03:12
She is the Co director of the theatre company Idiot Child,
00:03:17
which we did not get to talk about it, didn't have time, but
00:03:21
she did share some insights into her voice work.
00:03:25
You'll even learn how to do the best Liverpool accent.
00:03:30
The only question is should you? OK, just kidding.
00:03:36
Another thing I have to mention is that because we talk about a
00:03:40
Cali mucho and if you don't know what that is, we'll you'll soon
00:03:44
find out. Susie mentioned a snake bite in
00:03:47
black, which is I can confirm because we had a few doubts.
00:03:52
And alcoholic beverage made of equal parts lager, cider and
00:03:56
black currant cordial. Yum.
00:04:00
I also mentioned Sight Wombley, and it occurs to me now that I
00:04:05
was so intent on making a point that I didn't get to mention how
00:04:11
some of Jenny Savile's drawings and paintings in the exhibition
00:04:15
bear twombley like scribbles, which add another layer to the
00:04:21
work. And you'll also get to witness
00:04:24
Susie discovering site Wombley. It really is what exhibition
00:04:29
Chinwag is for and I am so here for it.
00:04:32
I'm so grateful that I got to experience that with someone as
00:04:38
special as Susie. So another heads up for those of
00:04:42
you who have been following exhibitionists out there.
00:04:46
In this season, I am more relaxed about the exhibition
00:04:50
visits because the more I invite people who have questions and
00:04:54
who are fascinating and have curious, inquisitive minds, the
00:05:00
more we get to address certain questions that may not have been
00:05:06
obvious to me where I'm not talking to someone outside of my
00:05:10
little art bubble. And so we really wander off
00:05:14
sometimes into very specific areas of the contemporary art
00:05:19
field or even the artist's work. And I want the episodes to make
00:05:24
space for that. I do advise you to follow us on
00:05:26
Instagram or better yet, to sign up to The Exhibitionist as files
00:05:31
through the description notes of the episode because I will have
00:05:36
images of the show there as well as useful links such As for
00:05:41
example, The New Yorker article that I referred to in the
00:05:46
episode written by Rebecca Mead about Jenny Savile.
00:05:50
So all of this said and done, this is Exhibitionist, this I am
00:05:57
your host, Joanna Pianevis, contemporary art writer and
00:06:01
curator. And don't forget, we visit
00:06:05
exhibitions so that you have to. And now on with the episode.
00:06:11
Enjoy. Hi there and thank you for
00:06:19
joining us. Today we are talking about Jenny
00:06:22
Savile exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in
00:06:26
London. The title of the exhibition is
00:06:28
The Anatomy of Painting and you have exactly 2 days to visit it.
00:06:33
If you're in London, rush to the National Portrait Gallery.
00:06:37
I'm really, really chuffed today because I have a new guest Co
00:06:42
host and she is a fellow colleague podcaster.
00:06:46
It's none other than Susie Riddell from the award-winning
00:06:51
podcast Limited Time Only. She is not only a podcaster, but
00:06:57
also an actor, a voice artist, a writer and a presenter.
00:07:02
And you probably will recognize her voice from the world's
00:07:08
longest running drama, The Archers on BBC.
00:07:14
Her character's name is Tracy Horbin.
00:07:17
So it really is an immense pleasure to have you here.
00:07:20
Susie, thank you so much for agreeing to do this, this crazy
00:07:25
experiment. Thank you very much for having
00:07:26
me, Joel. I feel like I kind of foisted
00:07:28
myself upon you. Actually.
00:07:29
I sort of was like, please have me as a guest podcast.
00:07:32
So you didn't really have much choice, did you?
00:07:34
Could all podcasts be a bit like that?
00:07:36
You know, to take take your guests somewhere different and
00:07:39
interesting and spark off other different thoughts and avenues,
00:07:46
especially something creative like that.
00:07:47
I I was delighted to be asked and delighted to go to this
00:07:50
particular exhibition as well. Before we went in, I said
00:07:53
listen, let's take a selfie so that we have a before and after.
00:07:57
We didn't do and after. Did we have?
00:07:58
We were so exhausted by the end of it and we completely forgot.
00:08:02
I was very, very tired yesterday afternoon and and I was
00:08:06
remembering you saying that you get tired at exhibitions and
00:08:09
taking it all in. I think we've done about an hour
00:08:11
and a half and we an hour and 40 or whatever the exhibition and I
00:08:14
said that is that's me done. That's that's my I'm exhibited
00:08:17
out because you said, yes, I get exhausted when I go to
00:08:20
exhibitions. It really made me think when I
00:08:22
got home, God, I am dog tired. I had to sort of, I think I had
00:08:28
a nap. I did, knowing that you were
00:08:31
going to Do the episodes have an impact on that?
00:08:34
Did you visit it differently? Were you more tired than usual
00:08:39
when you see an exhibition? Maybe because I think I, I would
00:08:42
spend a lot longer in there than I probably would have done if
00:08:46
I'd been on my own. Because obviously we were
00:08:49
discussing things, I was able to ask you questions.
00:08:52
So I was taking that in. I suppose I was really trying to
00:08:56
really look, I do often read the little, you know, bits of blurb
00:09:00
by the sides of pictures, which I think is quite exhausting in
00:09:03
itself trying to do the text and then get what you can initially
00:09:08
from the picture, read the text, go back to the bit.
00:09:10
But I probably wouldn't have spent that long in that one with
00:09:15
that one artist, even though it was a special exhibition.
00:09:18
I think I would have probably been an hour tops and and moved
00:09:22
on a bit. But yeah, so I think I, I did
00:09:25
approach it with more of a sense of purpose that that I I needed
00:09:32
to remember. But it, but it wasn't arduous.
00:09:34
It wasn't, it was quite nice actually.
00:09:37
I think in a way it would be great to record a podcast after
00:09:40
every time I went to an art exhibition because I think that
00:09:43
gives it a focus that sometimes I feel I don't have when I go to
00:09:48
an exhibition. When I see a play, your focus is
00:09:50
that is, you know, is the play and you're following the story
00:09:53
from the beginning to end. I still find that exhausting.
00:09:55
And I actually often can't discuss a play straight
00:09:58
afterwards. I I have to go away.
00:10:00
I mean, it's funny when you go see a play with somebody, you
00:10:03
know, you've you've messed up at the theatre, you go, you have a
00:10:06
chat, you go to see the play, chat about the play in the
00:10:08
interval a bit, go to the end, you come out and then you're
00:10:11
like, OK, then yeah, what are you doing next week?
00:10:15
It could have been something really life changing.
00:10:17
But but it's hard to kind of get the words and to, to you need to
00:10:22
process it, don't you? And I think that's what we were
00:10:24
doing as we were going along, which is why it's so exhausting.
00:10:29
And as you say, it's every part of you is involved in in instead
00:10:34
in looking at the picture. I enjoy this idea that I have to
00:10:37
carve my own space and I have to look around and be mindful of
00:10:41
what other people are doing. The the this experience we have
00:10:46
in the 19th century had this idea we must travel.
00:10:48
We must go to the sea to heal and to, you know, encounter the
00:10:53
elements and, and, and be a better person.
00:10:55
But now a century later is like, oh, I'm doing Thailand.
00:10:59
Oh yeah. I'm doing and.
00:11:00
They're like, no, Thailand should do you.
00:11:03
Yeah, no, just have some reverence, have some some sense.
00:11:08
I. Completely agree.
00:11:10
Yeah. And I enjoy that museums, I
00:11:12
loved your description because I love that museums make you feel
00:11:16
first that you have this space where you don't quite know how
00:11:20
to behave. And then you have to measure
00:11:23
your, your, your movement in space and your attention and
00:11:30
your focus and your intention. That was such a lovely
00:11:32
experience to have together as a first 3D encounter.
00:11:36
Yes, it was really. We're not going to forget that.
00:11:38
I felt a little bit like I was a student and you were my tutor.
00:11:42
Oh no, don't say that. Not in a bad way.
00:11:45
There's not a negative at all. To say that it was it was AI
00:11:48
felt like it was a great opportunity to be able to ask
00:11:51
those questions that I thought perhaps were a bit silly, but
00:11:54
you made me feel comfortable enough that I didn't worry about
00:11:56
asking. How big was the paintbrush?
00:11:58
No, there were really good questions.
00:12:00
But before we move on, do you want to talk about your
00:12:04
award-winning podcast, Limited Time Only?
00:12:07
Which I must say is the most endearing podcasts out there
00:12:13
because not only are you colleagues with Esther, but also
00:12:17
great friends. Such a lovely thing to listen to
00:12:21
because it just gives you energy and it makes you believe in
00:12:24
humanity again. But also you do sketches because
00:12:27
you're both wonderful professionals and you also
00:12:30
interview people. And one of the best interviews
00:12:32
out there, a very uncanny experience, is when you
00:12:37
interviewed the person who does the voice of Wallace in Wallace
00:12:42
and Gromit. And that was I.
00:12:47
I I didn't even have a word for it, 'cause I love Wallace and
00:12:50
grown. Do you and?
00:12:52
It was just so funny to see and also to see the work of the
00:12:56
voice. So firstly, I'm gonna ask you to
00:12:59
quickly introduce the podcast and also maybe talk about voice
00:13:03
acting, because I don't think we talk enough about it.
00:13:07
Yes, limits time only award-winning.
00:13:08
We just won an international women's podcast award for comedy
00:13:12
gold. Our little tagline, if I could
00:13:14
sum it up, is it's a pick me up in podcast form.
00:13:17
So our aim is to brighten your day and we do that through a mix
00:13:21
of chat between myself and Esther, who we've known each
00:13:24
other for over 36 years. I know we don't look that old,
00:13:27
but we. Positively.
00:13:31
We were in a youth drama group together from the age of 12 and
00:13:35
are now several decades older. But we, you know, we, we, we
00:13:38
know each other really well and a very similar people.
00:13:42
And we do genuinely love each other so.
00:13:45
And our chemistry is completely natural and it's just a joy.
00:13:47
I really admire what you do, Joanna.
00:13:49
Because I couldn't do a pocket. I wouldn't have the motivation
00:13:51
to do a podcast on my own. I would give up after about two,
00:13:55
but having. I'm just bossy that that's what
00:13:58
it is. You boss.
00:13:59
Yourself around. So we have chats between us, we
00:14:03
have comedy sketches that are all original and to do with the
00:14:06
topic of the episode. And we interview interesting
00:14:09
people like Ben Whitehead, who's the voice of Wallace and Wallace
00:14:13
and Gromit. And we've had pop stars and
00:14:15
broadcasters and sports people and all sorts of and actors,
00:14:21
comedians and artists as well. We had an artist, Nadia Otura
00:14:25
came on. So I mean, I, we believe
00:14:28
everyone is interesting. Everyone's got an interesting
00:14:31
story to tell, that voice work. I mean, yeah, talking to Ben's
00:14:34
really interesting because it doesn't sound remotely like
00:14:38
Wallace in real. Life, that's what was so
00:14:42
peculiar. This is the first time we've had
00:14:44
a bona fide Hollywood superstar on the show.
00:14:48
Who's there? Because who's there?
00:14:50
It's you, Ben, you've just been at the Oscars and the, it's
00:14:54
amazing what the human voice is capable of, isn't it?
00:14:57
What Ben does in the way of changing his voice is, is just
00:15:02
phenomenal. And I loved hearing how he
00:15:04
described getting into the voice.
00:15:06
And that's something that's quite common.
00:15:08
Like people often have a, a phrase or a certain word or
00:15:12
something they have to say to get into a certain accent or
00:15:15
whatever. But we, I think everyone is
00:15:17
capable of doing all these things.
00:15:20
It's like I think everyone's capable of doing most things
00:15:22
really, if we just concentrated. I was recording an audio book
00:15:26
actually. And do you have other
00:15:28
directives? Like do you have to have a
00:15:30
certain speech pattern? Do you have to have a?
00:15:32
Because in England the accents are quite a thing.
00:15:34
There's so many of them. And I always wondered, is there
00:15:38
a sort of ABBC speak that you have to do for audio?
00:15:41
Books, no, I mean what what will happen with an audio book is
00:15:44
they will ask so if they if they wanted me so my my criteria, you
00:15:50
know, my voice would be either RP received pronunciation, which
00:15:54
is kind of no discernible British accent.
00:15:58
It is just quite a play. I'm not.
00:16:02
How can you? It's called RP and it's there.
00:16:06
So for example, suppose it is like ABB in all BBC speak of the
00:16:11
past would have been very much like that.
00:16:14
That would have been the RP accent from the, you know, the
00:16:16
1930s, forties, etcetera. That's how they would speak and
00:16:20
everyone would speak like that and you'd go to drama school and
00:16:22
you'd learn to speak like that. Of course, we don't speak like
00:16:24
that anymore. It's a Judi Dench.
00:16:26
Yes, it's got yes. And I think a lot of actors of
00:16:28
that generation didn't speak like that, went to drama school,
00:16:31
had their accents knocked out of them.
00:16:34
But now, if you want something quite plain, I'm not discernibly
00:16:38
from the north of England. I'm not discernibly, I suppose,
00:16:41
people you would tell from the South of England, I suppose, but
00:16:44
I could be from the north. I just haven't got an accent but
00:16:48
or I or I often get cast As for Scottish narration as well.
00:16:52
I'm born in Scotland, I'm of Scottish heritage and I can do a
00:16:55
very good Scottish accent. So sometimes I have to do that.
00:17:00
But you know, sometimes they want a northern voice or a
00:17:03
specific part of the of the UK. It depends what the book is.
00:17:06
I've done a lot of books for Liverpool.
00:17:08
Believe it or not, I've got no links with Liverpool whatsoever.
00:17:11
I can just do a quite a good Liverpool.
00:17:13
Apologies, my sincerest apology. Do you hate the Liverpool
00:17:18
accent? Horrifying.
00:17:20
What's wrong with it? It's absolutely fine.
00:17:25
That wasn't a great accent. So sorry.
00:17:26
It was great. And if isn't it the accent of
00:17:29
the that that series adolescent? Is it the?
00:17:32
Yeah, Stephen Graham. Yeah.
00:17:34
Yes. It's quite abrasive at times.
00:17:36
It depends which part you're doing.
00:17:38
I quite like it though, because it's really exciting to do.
00:17:41
It's like interesting in your mouth.
00:17:43
If I watch myself on the screen, my mouse going really wide
00:17:47
because they don't, they don't, they're not going down like
00:17:49
that. It's right out to the side.
00:17:51
So that's how I that's how I would get that accent.
00:17:54
And then Scottish is a bit more forward, so I've got a bit more
00:17:57
of a pout. And it also, I mean, obviously
00:17:59
there's so many different accents in the country and
00:18:01
different dialects. So it depends what, which part
00:18:03
of Scotland you're going to do. But that would be my, I suppose
00:18:07
I don't know Aberdeen, Fife side of Scotland, but yes, Potey and
00:18:13
then the Liverpool, like you see, it's much more open like
00:18:15
that. It's I just, I think it's
00:18:17
fascinating. It's fascinating because what
00:18:20
you know, what really fascinates me and I need to find more about
00:18:22
is when people have go into a coma, they have something, they
00:18:26
wake up and they have what's called foreign accent syndrome
00:18:29
and they start speaking with a completely different accent.
00:18:32
I have seen white English women who wake up and start speaking
00:18:38
with a Jamaican accent or Italian or Chinese.
00:18:43
It's hilarious, but it's like they're not taking the pee and
00:18:47
they're not doing a mock up. They are absolutely.
00:18:50
If you dropped her into Jamaica, she would sound like everybody
00:18:54
around her amazed. And I think there's something,
00:18:58
there's something weird going on there.
00:18:59
There's a cross soul. There's something going on in
00:19:02
the ether. When they've they're out of it,
00:19:04
they've just someone else's voice has got into them.
00:19:07
They collected someone's soul. Yes, that's what I think.
00:19:10
Something because it's too weird.
00:19:12
I know there was somewhere talking to someone else for so
00:19:15
long and they acquired the accent.
00:19:18
Yeah, well, they time travelled back.
00:19:21
Become somebody. It's it's amazing.
00:19:24
I didn't know that. Yeah, it's really weird.
00:19:26
Really weird. Fascinating.
00:19:28
All of this? Yes, but not in a way.
00:19:36
Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge.
00:19:39
She moved across the UK quite a bit because her mum was an
00:19:43
elementary school teacher, but her dad was a school
00:19:46
administrator, so she was in the kind of education environment
00:19:51
and she's very well read. She also had an uncle who was a
00:19:55
really important influence in her life, Paul Savile.
00:20:00
He was an artist. He was also an arts teacher in a
00:20:02
private school. And he took her passion for arts
00:20:05
seriously, so seriously that he taught her a lot of techniques.
00:20:12
And apparently it was so obsessive that he made her draw
00:20:15
a hedge every day for a single for a whole year.
00:20:21
And she said it was really interesting because the hedge
00:20:24
changes across the year and it also changes you.
00:20:28
And I'm quoting her here, and it's so interesting that she was
00:20:32
doing the same thing, looking at the same thing in a huge span of
00:20:37
time, especially for a child, because she was a child back
00:20:40
then. But another thing that he did
00:20:42
that was quite interesting is that they travelled a lot.
00:20:46
And they travelled not only to go to museums, but also to visit
00:20:51
the places where Rembrandt painted, like a bridge in
00:20:56
Venice, where Titian painted a certain painting or did a
00:21:01
certain drawing. And so they would go to the
00:21:03
exact places, and they also would go to the studio.
00:21:07
So she went to Rembrandt Studio. And she says that when she went
00:21:11
in, it's not a museum. Actually, I think in the
00:21:14
beginning of the 2000s, it became a museum.
00:21:16
And she says that looking at the lights made her understand the
00:21:20
difference between the light coming through the window and
00:21:23
the fire, you know, in the corner in the fireplace.
00:21:27
And she observed that space so much.
00:21:30
And also then they went out and they would go to the butcher.
00:21:34
And she would imagine he would go to the butcher and buy a
00:21:37
piece of meat and then put it in the studio.
00:21:39
And she says that she became fascinated with artist studios
00:21:44
much more than with artists. And so in some ways, her uncle
00:21:50
didn't romanticize being an artist.
00:21:54
He kind of went through the nitty gritty and the technical
00:21:57
aspects of it. So much so that he even
00:22:00
advocated drinking red wine and Coca-Cola at 9:00 AM in the
00:22:04
morning. Which is.
00:22:06
A bizarre mix, isn't it? No.
00:22:12
Don't, Susie. You don't know what you're
00:22:15
saying. It's delicious, is it?
00:22:18
And it has a name. OK.
00:22:21
It's Spanish and it's called a Cali Mucho.
00:22:23
I'm going. To have to try this.
00:22:25
I mean, I've no, I know. I mean there's there's there's
00:22:29
mixes that we have here like beer and cider.
00:22:32
No bit Pims. No, no, I know I'm talking the
00:22:34
wrong thing. Is it beer and black Current and
00:22:38
cider? I can't remember the snake bite
00:22:40
and black can't remember what it is.
00:22:41
Do you know that one? I don't know diesel.
00:22:43
No, no. Well, diesel sounds.
00:22:46
I mean, it's the same as snake bite and black, but it's the
00:22:48
northern version. The northern.
00:22:50
Oh my God. So, right, OK, so red wine and
00:22:53
well, I'm going to give it a go because I'm.
00:22:55
Well, think of a shandy, Shandy I.
00:22:57
Do love a shandy That's. True lemonade, lemonade and
00:23:00
beer. Fizzy fizzy lemonade and beer
00:23:02
something. About the red wine, well, Cherry
00:23:06
Coke exists. It could, it could.
00:23:08
I'm going to try it. I'm going on holiday on Friday.
00:23:11
I'm going to have a. What's it called again?
00:23:13
Cali Mucho. I'm going to have a Cali mucho.
00:23:16
Yeah, and it's really 9. AM Thanks very much, kids.
00:23:19
Yes, move over. Any who she said she wouldn't
00:23:23
recommend it and but at 9:00 AM at the very least, and and so
00:23:29
she says quote. It made me feel like the things
00:23:32
I was doing making paintings in my room was the way I could
00:23:35
live. So very early on she had this
00:23:38
idea that she could be an artist.
00:23:40
Artists work in studios. They have a space.
00:23:44
So in 1988, she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art where
00:23:48
quote, everybody had a Freud catalog at their feet when they
00:23:53
were painting. But weirdly, you almost, and I'm
00:23:57
quoting her here. She also said you almost had to
00:23:59
apologize to be a painter at the time because in the art field
00:24:06
and also in art schools at the time, we were coming.
00:24:09
So it was the 80s and we were coming off a moment where there
00:24:13
was a lot of performance, 60s and 70s, there was a lot of
00:24:16
conceptual arts, there was a lot of abstract minimalist art.
00:24:21
And so the teachers at the time were teaching that.
00:24:25
That's what they were bringing into the art school.
00:24:28
And so painting, when you look at Jenny Savile's work, you kind
00:24:32
of drew a Direct Line to Freud, to Lucian Freud.
00:24:35
But when she was at school, it was not a given at all.
00:24:40
But to contextualize this because there's Auk painting
00:24:46
history or art history and then there's the whole of Europe in
00:24:50
1988. So when she goes into school and
00:24:53
starts painting Gerhard Hector, who we did an episode about was
00:24:58
this German really important painting like real reference in
00:25:02
the art world was painting a series called October 8th 18th
00:25:08
1977, which takes as its subject the Bader Meinhof group.
00:25:15
So, you know, this terrorist group in in Germany that he took
00:25:20
on, as you know, a decade later as a subject, as a German artist
00:25:26
who grew up in eastern Germany, had to flee eastern Germany to
00:25:33
West Germany to live in Berlin undercover, hiding out, leaving
00:25:38
his family, not seeing them for many, many years.
00:25:41
And so there was another kind of painting being done.
00:25:44
History is known for copying photography very faithfully, the
00:25:49
glitches, the blurs, and also doing abstract painting, like
00:25:54
having a sort of a very broad take on painting.
00:25:57
So this was what was happening and in the same year, 1988, he
00:26:01
had I think his first exhibition in London and Anthony at Anthony
00:26:06
Duvey's gallery. So there was a presence of
00:26:10
painting, but a very specific kind of painting.
00:26:13
Like Garrett Hister was not picking sides, he was doing
00:26:16
abstract painting as much as realist painting and taking in
00:26:19
technology, so photography in his own painting.
00:26:22
Whereas in the UK we are going to relate Jenny Savile much more
00:26:27
with Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud, you know
00:26:31
what is called the London School.
00:26:33
So in 1991 there's a huge shift for her.
00:26:37
She goes to the University of Cincinnati in the US and she
00:26:43
does something which was not happening in Glasgow at the
00:26:46
time, women's gender and sexuality studies.
00:26:49
And so she reads a lot of Julia Christeva, Ilan Siksu, Luz
00:26:54
Irigaray. So all these feminists, French,
00:26:58
most of them that kind of open up something for her in terms of
00:27:04
painting. So there's this real
00:27:06
relationship with female bodies in painting, right?
00:27:09
Do you talk about the representation of women, for
00:27:12
example, in your own craft and, and, and are you aware of how
00:27:15
it's talked about in in contemporary art?
00:27:18
Drama, it is just it's discussed and, and all the time, you know,
00:27:24
we, we have those moments where I'm in a scene with somebody, a
00:27:29
woman. In fact, it was one of our
00:27:30
guests recently, an actress called Lucy Speed and we had a
00:27:32
scene together in The Archers and she was very conscious that
00:27:37
the scene was these two women sort of being quite bitchy and
00:27:41
arguing. And often that's how, you know,
00:27:45
women get portrayed as these kind of, I don't know, they
00:27:51
don't like other women. It's when other women women
00:27:53
don't like other women. And and that's that is something
00:27:57
we try and avoid in a way, because I don't think it's help.
00:28:00
It's not helpful in the wider context of everything else.
00:28:04
We need to kind of need to stick together.
00:28:06
But but yeah, I mean, there were a lot of there's a lot of female
00:28:09
form in in art, isn't there? From from right from the
00:28:13
beginning, a lot of naked women on the walls of many galleries
00:28:19
around the world. Yeah.
00:28:20
I mean, so many. It's almost not surprising,
00:28:24
isn't it, when you not surprising at all.
00:28:26
We see a boob or whatever. When you walk walk into a
00:28:30
gallery, it was expected expect to see a boob in paint and
00:28:35
sculpture form. Yeah, it's interesting.
00:28:38
One of the things that we're becoming really aware of, for
00:28:41
example, is in Greek mythology, there's a lot of sexual
00:28:46
assaults. Yes, yeah, it's constantly women
00:28:48
being dragged or pierced. I think what is very strange
00:28:52
about Jenny Savile and who'll probably talk about it, is that
00:28:55
her upbringing is quite patriarchal.
00:28:57
So you have her uncle and when she talks about what she calls
00:29:02
her team of artists, so her family of artists, she quotes
00:29:07
Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian, who you but very well noted.
00:29:12
As we were coming in, dear listeners, Susie told me I know
00:29:16
nothing about art. I mean, I do love Artician.
00:29:18
And I was thinking, wow, yeah, the reference for Jenny Savile,
00:29:23
but she nailed it. I couldn't.
00:29:24
Believe that would have saw the first thing on the the chart on
00:29:27
the wall of her sort of yeah, going to see this this piece and
00:29:32
I thought, oh God. Well, you know, there you are
00:29:34
then. I didn't need to do anything
00:29:36
else. I just I know everything.
00:29:40
I know one thing, which is everything, yeah.
00:29:44
And so she quotes. So she's a Picasso.
00:29:48
Exactly. And there's more.
00:29:49
Oh really? The Kooning.
00:29:51
Yes. Michelangelo, Leonardo,
00:29:54
Twombley, Monet, Sutin, and Matisse.
00:29:57
And they're all and CUNY. What era is he?
00:30:01
Oh, he's so alive, is he? No, de Kooning is 20th century,
00:30:06
so he's abstract, beginning of the Abstract Expressionist
00:30:09
movement. Sai, Sai Twombley, she actually
00:30:13
was friends with him for a while.
00:30:14
So Sai Twombley is this painter who has a very strong
00:30:20
relationship with classic literature, Dante.
00:30:25
You know, all of those references like really classical
00:30:28
references as Jenny Savile does. And his paintings on the other
00:30:33
hand, are quite childish in the sense of the line.
00:30:40
They look like scribbles, They look like doodles.
00:30:43
I am going to send you on the chat.
00:30:45
Gosh, yeah, crikey. I mean, this is fascinating
00:30:48
because I look at that and go, I'm sorry, what?
00:30:52
That's just, that is literally squiggles and and I can't, I
00:30:56
can't. Oh, but it's massive.
00:31:02
Is it always massive? They were quite sizable
00:31:05
paintings, a little bit like, you know, 3 by 2 meters for
00:31:09
example, sometimes much bigger. That's that it's fascinating.
00:31:14
I would love to learn, learn more about that.
00:31:15
And there's, there's one further down my my son on the other day.
00:31:19
It's the black, it's black squiggles starting quite small
00:31:24
and they get quite big. It's almost filling the page.
00:31:27
My son, who's 7, the other day, he said the best drawing he's
00:31:31
ever done and he drew, he drawn what he said was a waterfall.
00:31:35
And it was squiggles all the way up up because they really saw
00:31:39
the waterfall in it. But it's literally just him with
00:31:43
a black pen. And he's so, so proud of it.
00:31:46
But it, it kind of reminds me of that.
00:31:48
So yeah, this is this is where I struggle slightly and I expect a
00:31:54
lot of people struggle, but I, but I can see that that's
00:31:56
enormous. So I think the effect of seeing
00:31:58
it on this little page here in a tiny box entirely different to
00:32:02
standing, as I can see. I mean, it's it's twice the
00:32:05
height of a human, that is going to have a different effect.
00:32:10
Yes, I think seeing them in the flesh is really interesting and
00:32:14
quite an impact on you because someone is taking so seriously
00:32:21
the first marks that you're going to do on a page and really
00:32:26
studying how when a child draws, and if you look at children's
00:32:32
drawings, there's no bad drawing.
00:32:34
No, the question of good and bad is absolutely irrelevant.
00:32:40
And that's what he's interested in.
00:32:41
He's interested in that sweet spot where you're just marking
00:32:47
your mark making and you are going beyond what is good, what
00:32:52
is bad, and you're entering a territory where there's no
00:32:57
difference between writing, drawing and painting, which is
00:33:03
the origin of the word graphic comes from graphene and it's in
00:33:07
Greek. It was inscribing and it was as
00:33:11
much writing as it was drawing. It really was this idea of being
00:33:15
and close to mark making and close to a dimension of relation
00:33:21
with reality that is almost unmediated by knowledge.
00:33:24
I enjoy, I enjoy work that is quite immersive, I suppose.
00:33:29
I mean, I'd, I'd really enjoy going to see the side Twombley,
00:33:31
partly because it's what a great name.
00:33:34
I mean, that's one of the best names I've ever heard.
00:33:36
I'd love to be called Susie Twombley, but that that scale,
00:33:41
the scale of a work to what I like feeling is small.
00:33:48
I think it's very healthy. You do.
00:33:51
Yeah, I think it's really healthy experience to feel to,
00:33:55
to have a sense of your own unimportance in a way against
00:34:01
something and and I suppose in the face of the entirety of
00:34:05
humanity or whatever's being depicted.
00:34:10
Why don't you think that it's interesting that he's giving so
00:34:13
much importance to those squiggles?
00:34:16
Yeah, and to that compulsive mark making.
00:34:19
Yes, it's and it's a it's, it's, it's humanness and it's a human,
00:34:23
it's creativity in its purest form, isn't it?
00:34:26
Because it's it's just happening.
00:34:28
I mean, it's not obviously with him because he's thought about
00:34:31
it excessively, but of course, but with.
00:34:33
But it is as well but. Yes.
00:34:35
Well, yeah, because it's inherent.
00:34:36
It's in his inherent gift, I suppose.
00:34:39
And yeah. And that's the thing about
00:34:42
contemporary art. I think in the whole of the 20th
00:34:45
century, there's been this move into a kind of authenticity of
00:34:51
gesture in the performance pieces that you sometimes see on
00:34:56
video and you think, what is going on?
00:34:59
What are they doing? And you know, artists, voice
00:35:03
artists like Meredith Monk, who's a composer, but like a lot
00:35:08
in relation to the minimalist movement, he's just
00:35:11
deconstructing voice. And some of her work is really
00:35:16
like stutterings in in singing form.
00:35:20
And you listen to that and you think, why is she not singing
00:35:24
properly? Is the first instrument and that
00:35:27
it's a direct connection to the deepest level of energies and
00:35:32
feelings for which we don't have words.
00:35:35
So I felt this very strong power of the voice to be a universal
00:35:39
kind of instrument. I just knew that I was on to
00:35:48
something that was had truth. There's just no question about
00:35:52
it and and I felt that I was. Meant in the 20th century there
00:35:55
was this idea of let's get to that creative impulse and let's
00:36:00
also have this appreciation for the glitch, for the error, for
00:36:04
the meandering, for the and for the not good for the this, this
00:36:09
kind of fixation on good painting, on good sculpture, on
00:36:14
technically, why do people listen to podcasts?
00:36:17
Because there's a lot of mistakes and there's this kind
00:36:20
of sense of authenticity. Although we do edit to the bone.
00:36:24
Well, I don't, we don't realise. It I do, but yeah, there is a
00:36:27
lot of editing. But yes, it's more it's because
00:36:29
you're listening to a conversation, isn't it, rather
00:36:31
than something that's, yeah, been been either scripted or
00:36:36
absolutely. And it's safe and self
00:36:38
exploration in podcasting where you, you, you are vulnerable and
00:36:44
you risk an idea that may not be yours at the end of the day now
00:36:49
that you've tested it. Yeah.
00:36:51
So we've got to go back to that, to the embracing the
00:36:54
imperfection. And I think that idea of those
00:36:57
pieces where I go round an an art gallery and I go, Oh my God.
00:37:01
I mean, that is that's, I don't what what is that?
00:37:06
I don't get it. But in a way I'll get something
00:37:08
from it. But so to finish on this, there
00:37:11
is this really strange shift in her work whereby she goes to the
00:37:17
United States, she goes to gender studies, which didn't
00:37:21
exist in Glasgow School of Art. And she later on befriended
00:37:25
Linda Knockling, who in the contemporary art world is quite
00:37:28
an important reference because in 1971 she wrote an article
00:37:33
provocatively titled Why Have there been no Great Women
00:37:38
Artists to? And you can this is the 70s.
00:37:42
So bringing it home that we don't have female artists in
00:37:46
museums and we will never say this enough.
00:37:49
Like when Saville was born a year later, Linda Knocklin was
00:37:54
writing this. So this is a very recent and the
00:37:57
conversations we're having now, you know, in cinema, in
00:38:01
contemporary art, they're all very recent.
00:38:03
Because how could it be? It's it's almost impossible to
00:38:06
address redress in that, you know, you think of the
00:38:08
centuries, centuries of work, It's going to be another, it's
00:38:12
going to have to be another sort of 600 years before.
00:38:15
But then then you've still got those are the extra 600 years of
00:38:18
all the male artists. It's.
00:38:21
Tintoretto had a daughter, he was a painter, and the king of
00:38:25
Spain actually wanted to hire her and he didn't let her.
00:38:29
And the Lord of Women who painted were the daughters of
00:38:34
painters. And so they remained in the
00:38:36
studio. And you can be sure that a lot
00:38:38
of paintings that you see in the National Gallery have some brush
00:38:41
tricks of a lot of women who were just not historicized.
00:38:46
And it's interesting 'cause I heard this expression, I just
00:38:49
did an interview. Well, when this episode comes
00:38:53
out, the interview will have come out with EJ Scott, who is
00:38:57
this trans curator and and trans activist who was talking about,
00:39:03
he created something called the Museum of Transology and he was
00:39:06
talking about how trans people are historically homeless.
00:39:11
And I love that expression. You don't have a home and as a a
00:39:15
person who identifies as a woman, you go into a museum and
00:39:20
you don't see authorship associated with the gender you
00:39:25
feel that you are, that you identify with.
00:39:28
And that is that has a massive impact.
00:39:30
Absolutely. And it's so big that you can't
00:39:32
see it. And well, it's, it's, it's the
00:39:33
question of representation across, across, yeah, gender and
00:39:39
sexuality and race within all everything, isn't it?
00:39:45
It's a, it's a huge, huge issue and that you can see steps being
00:39:52
taken, but it's, and it's something you're not even, I
00:39:56
don't know, aware when you're not even aware of it in a way.
00:40:01
Certainly as a, as a young person and I look back at the
00:40:04
things I liked and the wimp, it's like, well, there's not
00:40:06
very many women there. But I didn't, I never, I sort of
00:40:09
identified with the male. Characters or whatever people
00:40:14
that I'd like to be but and then you think back well, actually,
00:40:16
but that's not quite that's not quite good.
00:40:18
It's not quite it is it Because there's no, there's not there's
00:40:21
not a me. And obviously when you you you
00:40:24
funnel, you funnel it gets to narrower and narrower when you
00:40:28
get to, you know, trans people that is.
00:40:32
Yeah. Like I think that the idea of
00:40:35
homelessness is is it's an awful thought, but it's completely,
00:40:42
completely true. And I hope.
00:40:45
That the museum as a home. Yeah.
00:40:46
You know the museum is a home. And it's and it's for, for
00:40:49
everybody, for. Everybody but it's should.
00:40:51
Be, you know, when they, when they aren't, when there isn't a
00:40:54
representation there, it's not because you because you used to.
00:40:58
And it's like that with theatre and it's, you know, and
00:41:01
classical music, an opera and but they, but I know that
00:41:05
institutions are trying to trying to change that.
00:41:08
But if you, if you can't see yourself, you're not going to
00:41:11
want to do that as a for a living.
00:41:13
And then it's just perpetuates, isn't it?
00:41:18
Time for a short break to let you into the exhibitionist
00:41:23
studio. Look around you.
00:41:26
There is a computer, a good mic, the software in the computer,
00:41:32
which is a sort of virtual space through which you and I meet
00:41:38
with a time and space delay. Then there are my books and two
00:41:43
perfectly round Flintstones. All the magic happens here.
00:41:49
I've been talking to a university whose students need
00:41:52
placements and I could use some assistance with production and
00:41:57
research while also mentoring the future professionals of the
00:42:03
field. But for that, I have to pay
00:42:06
them. And that's where you come in.
00:42:10
Do you know how much a membership costs?
00:42:13
A mere £25 a year. Which means that you pay £2 a
00:42:20
month. 25 lbs for a whole year. When you'd buy a catalog, that's
00:42:27
the average price for one single book with two texts.
00:42:32
If you become a member of exhibition esters through a
00:42:36
platform called Sub Stack, you not only get to support
00:42:41
exhibition esters, but you also receive on average about 18 more
00:42:46
texts minimum that I will have written about many, many, many
00:42:52
fascinating topics of contemporary arts, philosophy of
00:42:56
art, and many other subjects. There's a little bonus that I
00:43:02
added, which is getting to ask me questions.
00:43:05
If you have a question about contemporary art, about the
00:43:08
field, about the market, about studies in contemporary art, I'm
00:43:13
very, very happy to do the research for you or to dig into
00:43:18
my little well of knowledge and put the information out there
00:43:22
for you. I can name you or you can be
00:43:24
anonymous, so you get to put me to work as long as the questions
00:43:30
and the prompts you give me are within my abilities and the
00:43:36
research material available to me.
00:43:39
Otherwise, you can go to donor books in the description notes.
00:43:43
If you have 1 LB to spare, you can just donate one time.
00:43:48
It's very very small amount. That's what I do with Wikipedia
00:43:52
once in a while. I put some money in there
00:43:55
because I use it almost daily and I want to reward people who
00:44:01
nourish me. Thank you for spending some time
00:44:03
with me here in my studio. Thank you for considering this
00:44:07
decent proposal. On with the episode.
00:44:16
So she comes back 1992. OK, so she's 22 years old,
00:44:20
right? Putting that into perspective
00:44:23
and talking about the strong willed character of Jenny
00:44:26
Savile, she makes these paint this painting called Propt 1992.
00:44:32
It's 7 by 6 foot. It's so about 180 by 210 meters
00:44:39
and she writes on it. It's quite a massive presence,
00:44:45
let's say in in the exhibition. Yeah, there's a huge portrait of
00:44:51
a naked woman with from an angle, we're already looking up
00:44:58
at it, but it's painted from an angle where the, the the
00:45:01
foreground is very much her, the, the, the woman's legs, her
00:45:06
thighs. And it kind of gets gets smaller
00:45:10
up to her head, which is is actually slightly off the top of
00:45:13
the the picture and sort of raised, but you can't see her
00:45:16
face totally clearly. But she's definitely gazing up
00:45:20
at this person. But she's sitting on a very
00:45:22
uncomfortable stool. I mean, I thought it looked like
00:45:24
it's digging into her legs. It was almost tree like.
00:45:28
I thought like, which might be relevant, I suppose, but that
00:45:34
that's sticking into her, her, her calf, and then and also very
00:45:40
uncomfortably. You're very polite.
00:45:42
Because I think for me, she's being impaled to be awfully,
00:45:47
awfully polite. Yeah, impaled.
00:45:49
Looks like she it's basically making her.
00:45:52
Well, that's yes, but there's another bit that looks like the
00:45:54
the bit that looked more uncomfortable to me was the bit
00:45:56
digging into a leg. But then yes, the the central
00:45:59
post. A straight.
00:46:01
No, it's a. It's not a straight leg.
00:46:03
It's like a kind of a an old classical.
00:46:06
Stool or a bit of trunk or something.
00:46:09
But yes, it looks like it's impaling her vaginally, which is
00:46:14
not very comfortable. And yeah, but kind of a lot of
00:46:20
flesh a lot. It looks, it's sort of spilling
00:46:25
over really on on on this stool and her and her her knuckles are
00:46:30
digging into fingers digging into her thighs and very
00:46:35
uncomfortable. It looks very it's it there's a
00:46:39
great amount of discomfort. It it's not it doesn't look like
00:46:44
pain in a way it's more. It's a bit pre pain.
00:46:50
Pre pain maybe? It's, it's, yeah.
00:46:52
It's she's. I don't know she's.
00:46:54
Interesting. She's it's like a almost I
00:47:02
almost hurting herself that gripping the digging your nails
00:47:06
into yourself is is almost a self preservation.
00:47:11
I think when you're you're hurting yourself to avoid
00:47:16
feeling the rest of it, I think something there, but yeah.
00:47:21
And then this back this, this text, which is as if you're
00:47:26
looking through, yeah, as if it's in front of you.
00:47:29
You're looking through a a window that it's written on on
00:47:32
the other side. So it's kind of backwards, which
00:47:37
is. And it's kind of like a Zen,
00:47:40
like as a as if she had taken her finger and written yeah,
00:47:43
with the paint, like putting a finger into the paint.
00:47:47
Yes, 'cause it reflects exactly the same colours as the as the
00:47:50
image in front. So yes, it's.
00:47:52
It's an indentation. Yeah.
00:47:53
Exactly. And the text says if we continue
00:47:57
to speak in the sameness speakers, men have spoken for
00:48:01
centuries, we will fail each other.
00:48:04
And it's this idea that failing each other speaks of the
00:48:07
sisterhood like the community. And then, you know, it's it's a
00:48:12
sentence by Luce Uruguay, who's Irigaray, who's this feminist
00:48:17
philosopher. And she does talk about
00:48:20
community. So it props is a self-portrait.
00:48:23
I mean, she doesn't like to talk about portraits, but she did use
00:48:26
her own image. She did use her own body and she
00:48:29
talks about and so it's described as being this kind of
00:48:32
fat BLOB of a woman, of an ugly woman and also an affiliation
00:48:38
very specifically to Lucian Freud's painting.
00:48:41
And Lucian Freud was known and and almost kind of like infamous
00:48:47
for working with models that he kind of took extracted the truth
00:48:54
from, right. He was rather this truth teller
00:48:57
about people. And there's this painting that's
00:49:00
quite famous of his with this very, very plump woman on this
00:49:06
on the couch, lying down on the couch.
00:49:09
And this definitely is her quoting that operation of
00:49:15
looking at someone else, but she's reverting the situation.
00:49:18
So the reverted text kind of tells you that here is the woman
00:49:23
painting herself. So looking at herself, and she
00:49:27
said I liked painting a nude body, which was very frowned on
00:49:30
in feminist studies. Where's the gaze or that kind of
00:49:33
debate? That conflict is what made that
00:49:36
painting work. So of of course she's
00:49:39
conflicted. So her reference is a male.
00:49:42
She is going straight into body and soul, into the most
00:49:50
patriarchal tradition of portraiture, painting huge
00:49:54
dimensions. So her paintings are all very,
00:49:57
very big S large scale paintings and she is very upfront about
00:50:01
it. And she said I went to Venice, I
00:50:04
went to Florence, I went everywhere.
00:50:07
The paintings were huge and I wanted to do that.
00:50:11
I saw myself making that. I saw myself in that pleasure of
00:50:16
expanding on that big surface. So you could say echoing like
00:50:21
much later feminism saying like you want to take space.
00:50:25
And then in 9394, she's going to make, she's going to produce
00:50:29
another painting, which is called Trace, which is also in
00:50:32
the exhibition, which are is a a body seen from the back with the
00:50:36
lines of a Bruin, knickers drawn, indenting on onto the
00:50:41
flesh. And the flesh is painted in a
00:50:43
way that pretty much emulates Lucien Freud's painting of the
00:50:48
skin in its grey, green, pinkish, yellowish tones, very
00:50:53
white skin. There was something a bit.
00:50:57
That paint painting gave me a bit of a idea of the Mortuary
00:51:02
slab, to be honest. That that image of the trace
00:51:07
that because it was so pale and tinged and with the with those
00:51:14
the lines and I think because the arms are not visible really,
00:51:18
it just gave me a sense of it just being a almost lifeless,
00:51:22
although it's not, it's not horizontal.
00:51:25
But yeah, there was something, the idea that we're, you know,
00:51:29
constricted and contained by these.
00:51:32
Yeah. That kind of, I don't know, the
00:51:36
trappings of being a woman, you know, And yeah, and also they
00:51:43
have those, those parts are so sexualized and, and viewed how
00:51:49
they're viewed. Yes, it was I I found that one
00:51:55
very, very striking for that. Charles Saatchi bought propped
00:52:01
spots her, supports her for a year and a half, gives her money
00:52:07
to prepare an exhibition in 1994.
00:52:11
She's part of the exhibition Young British Artists Three at
00:52:15
Charles Saatchi Gallery, where he has invested in a lot of
00:52:20
very, very young artists who are going to be shown in the famous
00:52:25
or infamous exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Art in
00:52:29
1997. And this is really interesting
00:52:32
because Jenny Savile is doing her little what she's going, you
00:52:36
know, she's journeying into the contemporary art world because
00:52:41
she also has an exhibition in 96 at Pace McGill in New York with
00:52:44
a huge gallery. In 99, she will have an
00:52:48
exhibition at Gagosian. At 29 years old, Gagosian is a
00:52:51
huge gallery. Now Gagosian has galleries all
00:52:55
over the world. It's huge.
00:52:59
The the, the gallery represents her, still does.
00:53:02
So she's set for life selling her work and in 97 sensation
00:53:08
happens the UK loses its mind along with the Turner Prize and
00:53:15
discovers contemporaries Tracey Yemen's tent with all the lovers
00:53:19
names that she's had sex with embroidered on a tent on the
00:53:23
tent's sides and and and there's this activity of people who seem
00:53:29
to do nothing skilled really and call it art and sell it for
00:53:33
millions in the BBC your home Susie the most incredible.
00:53:40
It's on YouTube. I've I've talked about this in
00:53:43
Tracy Yemen episode and it's the most astonishing program ever
00:53:49
ever made. The title is is Painting Dead.
00:53:53
And I think in Jenny's Jenny Savile's context is really
00:53:56
interesting because they invite a bunch of people, curators,
00:54:02
David Sylvester, like this revered critic Norman Rosenthal,
00:54:07
Lots of people. Tracy Yemen, drunk as a skunk.
00:54:13
She leaves the show midway, saying they're real people
00:54:19
watching this. And she leaves and they're
00:54:23
debating in the most horrifically jargony terms if
00:54:28
painting, whether painting's dead or not.
00:54:30
And it it's really fascinating to see how Jenny Savile was a
00:54:36
painter, was in the show. There were other painters.
00:54:40
And there's this question that is being asked.
00:54:43
Meanwhile, people keep on painting.
00:54:46
And what's also really funny is that in 1994, Jenny Savile
00:54:53
produces her first cover for manic St.
00:54:56
Preachers album Holy Bible, which is one of those paintings
00:55:00
of these massive bodies seen from the left, from the right
00:55:05
and centred. She becomes a mum at some point
00:55:09
in already in the 21st century. Motherhood shifts her
00:55:13
perspective. She has a magnificent,
00:55:16
magnificent quote about it, saying giving birth is like
00:55:19
being in a Francis Bacon painting, which I thought that's
00:55:25
so. Funny, isn't it?
00:55:26
Yeah, That's so, Yeah. So that's lovely.
00:55:29
That link with. Yeah, I, I'd probably, if I had
00:55:34
to describe it, probably would end up being something, you
00:55:36
know, theatrical in some way. But yes, that, that, that's
00:55:40
wonderful. Yeah.
00:55:42
I wonder if she's experienced it at the time.
00:55:44
I sort of saw that at the time, you know, while.
00:55:48
It's while it's going on, I don't know about you, but it was
00:55:52
not my I didn't have that kind of awareness.
00:55:55
No, but sometimes I do have things where I'm in a situation
00:55:59
I'm like this is like a this is like I'm in line of duty or or
00:56:02
I'm in EastEnders or something and I'll I'll sort of be seeing
00:56:05
myself and this and I'm like, this is just weird.
00:56:08
Is that are there cameras? She started looking at the
00:56:12
figures of the Virgin Mary and how they're depicted in
00:56:16
painting. And so she really is drawing
00:56:19
from motherhood and from her own physical experience of
00:56:23
motherhood. And she even says something
00:56:25
really interesting about the umbilical cord.
00:56:27
She says that she saw that as a kind of a rope that connected
00:56:31
her to ancient worlds, and that's why she's going to go
00:56:35
into the ancient history. She loves epic poetry.
00:56:38
She really is a very classical referenced person and I think
00:56:42
you see that in her work. And so later on, I mean, and
00:56:46
this is like at the end of the 90s, there's there's a a
00:56:50
question of Speaking of representation that I wanted to
00:56:52
bring up about her career, which is the fact that she is very
00:56:57
moved by the body. So the body really is the focus
00:57:02
of her art and she and, and very she's very aware and, and she
00:57:06
claims it for herself. And at a certain point she's
00:57:09
going to look into types of bodies and into, she moves away
00:57:14
from that Lucien Freud like skin.
00:57:16
And she, this idea of going into a plastic surgeon's office and,
00:57:21
and going into the archives and even witnessing some operations
00:57:26
is very much what she's going to go in in search for besides
00:57:31
looking at paintings so precisely and in such detail.
00:57:36
And so she does a painting of Della Gray's volcano, who's a
00:57:41
queer intersex visual artist. And the painting's called
00:57:46
Matrix. And it's the composition is like
00:57:50
Gustav Corbis painting the origin of the world Laurie Jean
00:57:54
du Monde, who's it was a very famous painting that is
00:58:00
permanently at the Muse dos in Paris.
00:58:03
And it's to open legs and in the center of the painting you have
00:58:08
the vulva and you have the pubic area and and it's cut at at mid
00:58:17
level, at waist level. So you only see the legs open
00:58:22
wide, You see the vulva and then you see the torso in sort of you
00:58:27
are almost that's vagina level, if I might say so.
00:58:30
And you don't see the rest of the body.
00:58:33
It was the realist movement in France, and it was also this
00:58:38
idea that OK, realism. So let's really paint women.
00:58:42
Let's really paint what we see and what we desire.
00:58:45
And the male gaze here is really interesting because in feminists
00:58:51
rereadings of contemporary art and also of our own relationship
00:58:54
to our own body, there's this discourse about how we don't
00:58:58
know our own bodies, how we're not taught to look at our own
00:59:01
bodies. And here you have painting of a
00:59:03
man who is painting a vulva. And of course, it was a huge
00:59:10
scandal at the time. And she was looking at this
00:59:14
painting and she was looking again at quoting this painting
00:59:19
visually, but also looking at other types of bodies.
00:59:22
And she talks about being fascinated by the fact that
00:59:25
there was there were breasts. And so she continues the body up
00:59:29
to the face. There were breasts and there was
00:59:31
a penis as well. There's an article about Jenny
00:59:34
Savile, a recent article in The New Yorker, who also talks about
00:59:38
the other side of things and touches upon this idea of wire
00:59:42
ISM of the painter. And so they contacted the.
00:59:48
Person who was. In the painting there's there's
00:59:51
a quote of the the model saying that it reproduces the intersex
00:59:58
body as a public spectacle and thereby reinforces the status
01:00:03
quo. So there's this difficult
01:00:05
relationship with from the models perspective, which
01:00:09
weirdly enough is what she was trying to subvert in the
01:00:13
beginning of her career. And here she's going into kind
01:00:17
of the exception. What are the visual exceptions
01:00:23
to the regularity or the average visual condition of the body?
01:00:31
I copy pasted it. Oh yes, OK, so yes.
01:00:46
And so there's there's a quote of the the model saying that it
01:00:52
reproduces the intersex body as a public spectacle and thereby
01:00:57
reinforces the status quo. So there's this difficult
01:01:01
relationship with from the models perspective, which
01:01:06
weirdly enough is what she was trying to subvert in the
01:01:09
beginning of her career. And he is she's going into kind
01:01:13
of the exception. What are the visual exceptions
01:01:19
to the regularity or the average visual condition of the body and
01:01:28
here of gender? I'll leave it at that because I
01:01:30
think we'll and and in we'll talk about it in regards to the
01:01:34
exhibition, but just referencing in 2009.
01:01:37
So she does another manic St. St.
01:01:41
Preachers album called Jennifer Play Lovers, where there's this
01:01:47
painting of a boy. It seems to be a boy with a sort
01:01:53
of bloodied face that is in the exhibition or a version of which
01:01:58
is in the exhibition. And the CD at the time was
01:02:03
considered inappropriate. And so this is a direct quote
01:02:08
from Sainsbury's representatives who decided not to show the
01:02:15
cover of the CD on sale and then and so kind of stocked it in, in
01:02:19
plain slip cases. So again, this idea and, and we,
01:02:24
we know the story of this of this kid.
01:02:27
So Speaking of the market context as well.
01:02:29
So her London galleries, so Gagosian says of her, she's
01:02:35
incredibly says of her, so her London galleries says of her,
01:02:39
she's incredibly precise about her process.
01:02:43
And there's handsome demand with limited supply.
01:02:47
Oh. Interesting, In 2018 propped was
01:02:53
sold in auction at Sotheby's in London and it sold for the
01:02:57
equivalent of $12.4 million. So I saw this in The New Yorker
01:03:03
article and was too lazy to convert it back to pounds.
01:03:06
But you can. I mean, it gives you an idea of
01:03:09
how expensive it was. And it made her, at the time,
01:03:13
the record price in auction for a work by a living female
01:03:19
artist, now surpassed by Cecily. Brown So when you sell a piece
01:03:23
of work, I don't know this. So does she own that work
01:03:27
initially to then sell it or was it already because Tachi had
01:03:35
presented it? Is that right initially?
01:03:38
And and and and bought it. He bought it.
01:03:40
It was the first. Painting.
01:03:43
What did he buy? He bought.
01:03:46
I don't know is the answer. I don't know how much it was at
01:03:50
the time, couldn't find the price, but it certainly wasn't
01:03:53
12 million, I can tell you that. And what happens and that's a a
01:03:57
very good question and a a thing that makes it incredibly
01:04:01
difficult to evaluate the market.
01:04:03
So if you are represented by a commercial gallery, as Jenny
01:04:07
Savile is by Gagosian, they list your work, they have a price
01:04:14
list, and when you're a collector, you go there and they
01:04:17
present you the prices. And so it is a sort of
01:04:20
management as well that you get when you're represented by a
01:04:23
commercial gallery. That said, there's a lot of
01:04:26
secrecy around prices. And so the only perception you
01:04:30
have of prices is when you have auctions.
01:04:34
And so as you very rightly asked, what happens is that
01:04:39
Saatchi sold his collection, someone bought it.
01:04:43
What happens when you're a living artist, which is you're
01:04:46
represented by a gallery gallery, so sells your work and
01:04:50
then it's in a collection. Now it's in an auction house, so
01:04:54
completely disconnected, unaffiliated with both the
01:04:59
gallery that represents the artist and the artist.
01:05:03
So when an artwork and I worked in commercial galleries goes
01:05:08
into auction of one of the artists you represent as a
01:05:11
commercial gallery, panic mode. Huge panic.
01:05:16
Because what can happen? There's 2 possibilities. 3
01:05:21
there's a possibility of magically it's selling for the
01:05:25
exact price that you have. It's priced in your own gallery,
01:05:29
or horrifyingly, it sells for less.
01:05:33
Or befuddlingly, it sells fur a shit load of money 100 times
01:05:42
more expensive than what you're selling it for in your gallery,
01:05:45
which is not great either. And this is completely
01:05:50
disconnected from both the artist and the person who
01:05:53
represents them. Right to the to the artist.
01:05:56
This is what I I've never actually thought about before.
01:05:59
So Jenny Savile's painting sells for $12 million.
01:06:04
Does she, she doesn't. That's terrible.
01:06:07
That goes to the owner because it's a question of ownership.
01:06:09
You own something. So thus the speculative markets.
01:06:13
I think it's kind of. Scrabble if it feels very dirty
01:06:17
to me, this whole thing. It you heard it here first.
01:06:23
And I'm then I'm then assuming that, you know, if, if this
01:06:27
painting first sold for 12 million, then her stock goes up.
01:06:31
Like she, you know, if, if you want a Jenny Savile painting,
01:06:35
you're going to have to pay a lot for it.
01:06:37
Does she then get commissions? And how does she make money?
01:06:42
I mean, I've never ever thought about this before and it's
01:06:46
really interesting. Question the value increases
01:06:48
because you think, oh, I want to buy a new one because then it's
01:06:51
going to go up. It's going to take her five
01:06:54
years to paint it. And she's like, shit, it takes
01:06:59
me two years to make painting you.
01:07:01
Know better? Do.
01:07:02
Some small ones going on and there's another angle for it
01:07:05
which is auction prices. Also tells you where we are in
01:07:10
terms of the gender gap. So you will notice that I said
01:07:17
at the time record price paid at auction for work by a living
01:07:20
female artists. To give you an idea, in 2018 the
01:07:26
painting Portrait of an Artist's Pool with two figures from 1972
01:07:32
by David Hockney was sold by approximately $90 as
01:07:41
opposed to the 12 million of her own work.
01:07:44
And in 2008, Mian Hearst's Golden calf of also 2008.
01:07:51
No, that can't be right. Same year production sold in
01:07:56
auction for 16. About 16. 10 years
01:08:01
before. So more than 10 years before
01:08:04
Jenny Savile. I suppose you see props in the
01:08:07
distance, but the first picture that was the the very first one
01:08:13
as you go in was the I don't know what it was called
01:08:15
unfortunately, but the two the 2 girls faces very close together,
01:08:20
1 peeking over the other shoulder.
01:08:23
Huge, huge canvas, massive paint.
01:08:31
I was really taken by the the texture of it and being that
01:08:35
close. How kind of close to the this
01:08:38
huge amount of paint and the flesh and these these bright
01:08:43
faces, girls faces that her work is very well, not all of it
01:08:47
actually, but those certainly this first room, the fleshiness
01:08:51
of it. I really and the really got a
01:08:56
sense of the texture of of the paint, but also of the of the
01:09:00
feeling of flesh and and and I love under her eyes.
01:09:06
I I'm really struck by the all the eyes, huge eyes.
01:09:10
They're very realistic as opposed to all the other
01:09:13
impressionistic or gestural like real big brush strokes like she
01:09:19
uses these big brushes blobs like very.
01:09:22
Big that are that are sort of part of the picture, obviously,
01:09:25
but they're just huge chunks of paint kind of globs globs of
01:09:30
them. But yes, the eyes are really,
01:09:33
and I and I, I do, I love, I love looking at what I was
01:09:37
saying to you that I like looking at portraits of people's
01:09:39
faces because I do like looking at people's eyes.
01:09:42
And we actually had a discussion about looking into people's
01:09:44
eyes, didn't we, before we even went into the exhibition about
01:09:46
how that's the only way you can, that's how you humanise
01:09:50
somebody. If you, if you're going to have
01:09:52
an argument with someone, swear at someone in the in the car,
01:09:55
you actually look them in the eyes.
01:09:57
It really it stopped it kind of, you know, you can see a cyclist
01:10:02
as just as a thing on a piece of metal.
01:10:04
But if you see that, if you look them in the eye, then they
01:10:06
become real. And I think that that's what's
01:10:09
so wonderful about these huge oversized pieces of art that are
01:10:13
quite clearly not they're not realistic.
01:10:16
They're far too big, but they're but they but yet they are
01:10:19
because the eyes are feel real. You know, you can see into
01:10:24
their, into them. And I, yeah.
01:10:29
And I, I mean, I immediately thought of my daughter, I
01:10:31
suppose. And that's the youthfulness,
01:10:33
the, the fleshiness of, of youth and the connection between the
01:10:39
two, the 2 heads. It's all, well, it's completely
01:10:43
indiscernible in a way. It's almost like a 2 headed A2
01:10:47
headed creature. It's almost like a 2 headed I
01:10:48
was. For a moment I thought it what I
01:10:50
really had to look quite closely to see that she was actually had
01:10:54
a had a the one behind had her chin on the other's shoulder.
01:10:59
Yeah. That that close, that connection
01:11:02
the between two young people and that you can be so close and and
01:11:10
so physical with another person that's either a sister possibly
01:11:15
or a friend that you might not necessarily have as a.
01:11:19
Grown up, skin to skin connection.
01:11:23
And then in the other room, there's what we talked about
01:11:26
before, which is these 90s paintings where you have again,
01:11:30
an indentation on the painting. You have a body of a, a naked
01:11:34
woman. And in this case, it was the
01:11:36
painter's finger that touched the image and made these lines
01:11:43
around inside the body that's kind of outlined the shape of
01:11:47
the body. And she explained that that some
01:11:50
friends of her, so this is the 90s diet culture.
01:11:53
And so she explains that some friends actually drew the drew
01:11:57
these lines that as the the the place where they, their bodies,
01:12:03
where they wanted their bodies to lose weight into or to be
01:12:07
reduced to because they were obsessed with being skinny,
01:12:12
because that was kind of the 90s sort of culture.
01:12:17
And she talks about not being really touched by that culture
01:12:21
and but but being very aware of it.
01:12:24
And the Manic St. Preaches album, a lot of the
01:12:28
songs talk about anorexia and she was really interested in
01:12:31
being part of it because of that.
01:12:33
Yeah, it's yeah. And the the the lines she draws
01:12:38
are quite as circular. I mean, there's no way you
01:12:40
could, I suppose, shrink down to what the but but in a way
01:12:46
that's, that's what it was like, you know, you can't, you can't,
01:12:50
you can't lop in lop off limbs to become as thin as some as
01:12:54
people wanted to be, I suppose. Yeah, something something about
01:12:58
mapping the body as well. And that, that just being
01:13:03
unhappy with everything about your own physicality, it's, it's
01:13:10
very sad. She's in the paintings quite a
01:13:13
bit. She wants to be in that
01:13:16
tradition. I had a hard time understanding
01:13:21
the flipping of the narrative, like Full disclosure and I and
01:13:25
I, I was interested in seeing where she was going to take
01:13:27
this. And I, I, I propose that we go
01:13:30
to the Manic St. Preachers image which which is
01:13:34
worth painting, which is not that far away.
01:13:37
So you cross that corridor, you have the one with the knickers
01:13:40
and the bra that we described earlier.
01:13:43
And then we have it was. On its own, wasn't it?
01:13:45
It's on its own in that space. Yes.
01:13:49
And so you, I and I remember you being really captured by that
01:13:52
image. Yeah, I think because of the
01:13:54
because partly because there was colour.
01:13:56
And I think her work, it's apart from the end, the final images
01:14:01
and the the the most recent images in the the final room
01:14:06
which are very colourful. There isn't a lot of colour.
01:14:11
There's, there was a moment when there's, there's two, there were
01:14:14
two images in, in another room of, of female.
01:14:19
There was 2 females possibly or female and a male entwined with
01:14:22
lines across them. One of them was quite dark and
01:14:27
used darker colour, I think maybe a darker red and, and, and
01:14:30
the other one has pink, pinkish lines because of coral coloured
01:14:35
lines, a little bit of a little bit of blue, not a lot of colour
01:14:38
on either. But I was more drawn to the, the
01:14:40
brighter colour. It made me feel more positive
01:14:43
about it and I thought that's really interesting.
01:14:45
This kind of I, the, the, the, what you use completely affect
01:14:49
how you feel about, about the image.
01:14:52
And I, and I was drawn to this very large portrait.
01:14:56
I, I felt it was a young girl, but but it's a boy.
01:15:00
I'm not sure I think. Well, I, I did, I've googled
01:15:03
the, googled the, you know, talk about the Mannix pitch and how
01:15:08
it was, how that was covered over in shops because it was
01:15:12
deemed offensive in some way, because it could be seen as
01:15:15
blood, you know, blood and pain and lips that have been
01:15:20
bloodied. But in fact, it's, it's an image
01:15:23
she took of a, of a, a boy, or presumably it's a boy, but with
01:15:27
a port. Port wine stains a very large
01:15:30
birthmark across their face, which I, which I remarked when
01:15:36
you, when you look, I took a picture of it and I could see
01:15:39
that more clearly through my camera.
01:15:43
I could, it was very clearly a port wine mark.
01:15:45
Whereas if you're looking at it with the naked eye, it could be
01:15:49
there's multiple. Yes.
01:15:51
Multiple different ways of reading it, but it's a beautiful
01:15:54
blue behind the image and very it's a.
01:15:58
Sort of electric. Blue and the Blues reflected in
01:16:01
here is it Yeah, it's a it's a very well we sort of talked
01:16:04
about it being quite anime and that kind of graphic novel type
01:16:10
image because it was so it's the image is so strong.
01:16:14
The face is so strong against this very deep colour, which was
01:16:19
reflected in the hair. It's very, I, I really loved, I
01:16:23
loved all the lines of it and the, the, there's so much going
01:16:29
on and, and it's and also so many that idea of different
01:16:33
interpretations of the, what's the expression?
01:16:38
The the eyes are very so it's interesting 'cause the colours.
01:16:41
So she collects a lot of imagery.
01:16:44
She says it's a pain to travel with her 'cause she takes
01:16:46
pictures of everything and she loves taking pictures of
01:16:49
graffiti in countries, in foreign countries, because it
01:16:53
takes out the political message. And she's only looking at the
01:16:57
colour and the writing. A little bit like the site
01:17:00
Wombley's, as it were. Because now, you know, site
01:17:03
Wombley so you can say a little bit like Saitombley, don't you?
01:17:06
Like Yes, very. Erudite.
01:17:08
Yes, absolutely and. You're referencing them at all
01:17:12
times. No, we don't know what I'm
01:17:13
talking about. And Esther will be like, what
01:17:16
the hell are you talking about, Susie?
01:17:18
I've got good knowledge now. And so she's so and so she's got
01:17:23
inspired by those spray colours, but also when she had children,
01:17:27
she started looking at the colours that children wear and
01:17:31
that children are drawn to, like these neon colours and these
01:17:35
fluorescent colours. And so she changed her palette
01:17:38
quite a bit, which is the case of all the portraits at the end.
01:17:41
So the that looked like graffiti or?
01:17:44
Street Art. A little bit.
01:17:46
So she went from this fleshy colour to these kinds of
01:17:49
paintings and in this case particularly there's a whole
01:17:53
bunch. So it's the case of the intersex
01:17:56
sex worker and there's the case of her looking fur bodies that
01:18:02
are that that are different, but which are also uttered because
01:18:09
of their difference. And she's focusing on them and
01:18:12
reducing them to that otherness. So there's this, this criticism,
01:18:18
which is I, for me, the limits of the exercise of flipping the
01:18:21
narrative and not really interrogating the language that
01:18:25
you're absorbing from centuries and centuries of paint, of
01:18:29
patriarchal painting with enormous qualities, but also a
01:18:33
very specific point of view and a specific role in history.
01:18:40
Because paintings historicized before TV, before photography, I
01:18:43
did not have this impression of motherhood, of physicality, of
01:18:49
the skin. For me, it was all about
01:18:52
painting and this endless research for the masterpiece,
01:18:58
for that, for, for that image that finally strikes you and
01:19:04
situates or deconstructs enough. Like you were saying, quite
01:19:09
rightly so. You don't see the port wine
01:19:11
stain, you see blood. You see a hero of an anime
01:19:18
character. You see so many things, and she
01:19:21
does that really well. But there's also this kind of
01:19:24
stigmatization. Well, yes.
01:19:27
And I, I also because I was like, well, who is this person?
01:19:29
And it was a picture she found in a book.
01:19:31
And I thought, I don't know if I, if, if I saw, if I, you know,
01:19:36
that was me and I saw myself. I recognise myself.
01:19:40
And of course, having a port wine stain is something people
01:19:44
are going to look at and stare and point at and, and to have it
01:19:51
to have, you know, to put it on front of a of an album that then
01:19:55
has to be covered up because it's kind of offensive.
01:19:58
I was like, oh God, it's. That's a sad.
01:20:00
Story for that. Poor.
01:20:02
Child. It looks like a child.
01:20:04
Yeah, it. Does It's definitely a young
01:20:05
person. Yeah.
01:20:08
There is something slightly uncomfortable about that, I
01:20:12
think. The motherhood thing.
01:20:17
Just wondering about my own. I, I felt like the, the, the
01:20:26
bitches of her holding the babies and they're saying, yeah,
01:20:31
you know, you do get those the, the, the flashes of the, the
01:20:34
virgin holding baby Jesus and these kind of podgy figures.
01:20:41
Baby Jesus is always quite well, quite well behaved, doesn't
01:20:44
really wriggle around very much. I, I got, I did get the sense of
01:20:48
having to grapple with a sort of this kind of, oh wait, a
01:20:53
creature. I think they are at that stage
01:20:56
of these creatures and that of of having to step, be still and
01:21:02
be the solid. So just to explain, these are
01:21:05
these drawings that you were describing that were in graphite
01:21:09
and then these red crayons and or, or blue.
01:21:13
And it was this woman sitting a little bit like the Virgin Mary
01:21:19
holding the baby. And she said she did.
01:21:21
She said that she did a research and the only painting or drawing
01:21:25
I think she found was a Rembrandt of a Virgin Mary
01:21:29
holding or even not even a Virgin Mary mother trying to
01:21:32
hold the child. And there's a kind of like a
01:21:35
shoe. Flying off.
01:21:36
From the child's foot and because it's it's, it's hard to
01:21:39
contain the child, but all the other children in classic
01:21:42
painting, they're just because they're Jesus's, they have the
01:21:47
wisdom. So I don't know.
01:21:50
So she was really trying to revisit that iconography from
01:21:54
the motherhood perspective. So the Virgin Mary's perspective
01:21:57
whereby they're trying to hold the child for a family photo and
01:22:02
the children are naked. And there's even one where
01:22:04
there's a kind of this little, this small little penis sticking
01:22:08
out kind of like almost towards you.
01:22:11
It's such a weird Yes, it's. Very it's it's really is is in
01:22:17
your face literally, isn't it? It's.
01:22:20
Yeah, that's the only time where I was thinking, oh, that brings
01:22:24
memories of nappies. I mean, yes, especially the
01:22:28
penis is kind of the little is that it's always the danger when
01:22:32
you're changing a little. Boy's nappy.
01:22:33
Is it going to? Is it going to pee in my face?
01:22:37
Basically, if you've never changed a little boy's nappy,
01:22:40
this is what it's like. You have to be really super
01:22:42
careful. We have to wrap it up because
01:22:44
you have to pick up your children, and I think that's the
01:22:46
perfect way to finish it because that's motherhood and that's
01:22:50
what parenting is and contemporary life.
01:22:52
I very much, I felt like I've learned.
01:22:55
I've learned things. And I think that's if I go to
01:22:58
see an exhibit, I always want to be able to learn something about
01:23:03
another perspective or about my own interpretation of something
01:23:07
in my own experience, other people's experience.
01:23:10
And actually, I've learnt about art.
01:23:13
I've I have learnt about painting and of course about
01:23:16
Jenny Savile, but other thing, other painters as well.
01:23:19
And I've, it's so enriching. What an enriching experience to
01:23:22
to have been, to be on your podcast.
01:23:24
It's been really fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting
01:23:29
me. Thank you and likewise likewise.
01:23:32
It was such a pleasure to have you over and I hope you come.
01:23:35
Back. I will definitely come back.
01:23:37
I'd love to go to another exhibition with you.
01:23:38
Thanks, Joanne. Take.
01:23:41
Care bye bye. Exhibition This is is an
01:23:46
independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre
01:23:50
Nevers. We have episodes every two weeks
01:23:53
and this season, season 3 is a bit of a turning point.
01:23:57
We have 5 new episode types, from more experimental art
01:24:02
travel logs or art stories to conversational formats about
01:24:07
solo exhibitions with people who are not part of the industry.
01:24:12
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
01:24:17
If you're new here, you have a whole catalog of episodes to
01:24:21
enjoy. Discover them at your own pace.