Jenni Hiltunen (1981-)

Rineke Dijkstra (1959-)

Collected references from Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time

Derek Jarman's garden

Rosa Mundi

Cedric Morris, Spring Flowers (1923)

Iris Benton Olive

Eliot Hodgkin, St Paul’s and St Mary Aldermanbury from St Swithin’s Churchyard (1945)

Nigella Mrs Jekyll 

Sheila Heti, Motherhood

When I borrow books from my father, I inevitably have to contend with his notes and underlining and navigate which passages resonate with me because of my own reading, or because he has marked them before me - a fitting comtemplation given the themes of Heti's incredible book, Motherhood, and how imperative it is for the narrator/Heti to establish her own importance, purpose, desires, legacy. 

This passage resonated with my teenage self:

I loved this book - particularly how it holds nuance and conflict and allows multiple things to be true, including both ugly and tender thoughts about one's life and the lives of others. The narrator's internal dialogue (not monologue!) and questioning, the back and forth, the using of coin tosses to answer profound and consequential questions reminds me so much of conversations with female friends and the amount of analysis that goes into decisions and life changes as well as just the need to formulate one's own perspective and take, whether or not action ensues. 

I found the following passage provoking, especially the denoting of having children or becoming a mother as 'submitting to nature' and choosing not to as 'resisting nature'. My own version of this binary thinking takes the form of 'domestic' vs 'fiery' as they both apply to 'Jess' (always in third person) - my conclusions (if I could be said to have any) are merely that this is not made of simple stuff, and often we don't choose one or another but are always both, moving from one version to another throughout any period of time. 

Sheffield Doc Fest 2024

More films I enjoyed at Sheffield Doc Fest! 

1. The Boy with the Suit of Lights

2. Light Darkness Light 

3. The Contestant 

Books I've enjoyed recently

The Mother of All Lies (2023) at Sheffield Doc Fest

The exquisite film, The Mother of All Lies, directed by Asmae El Moudir, premiered in the UK this week at Sheffield Doc Fest. 

Set in Morocco, and using incredible miniature clay figurines and a replica of her childhood neighbourhood in Casablanca crafted by her father, El Moudir tells the story of her family and community during the 1981 Bread Riots when many were killed or imprisoned. Along with her father, she invites her mother, grandmother and two former neighbours to revisit this moment, share their memories, and possibly to heal from their trauma. Moving between the space this group occupies for what appears to be an extended period of voluntary togetherness and cohabitation where the miniatures are created (what El Moudir has called an atelier or laboratory) and the world of the miniatures themselves, powerful storytelling ensues. 

El Moudir opens her narrative with an evocative personal anecdote of the forbidding of all family photographs by her oppressive, dictatorial grandmother (referring to her as a neighbourhood customs officer), matriarch and ruler of their household. She recounts the night of her childhood rebellion - without any photographs of herself (and by extension, for her, without her own memories) El Moudir sneaks out of her house to the photo centre to have her picture taken against the 90s in vogue Hawaiian background, hiding and keeping this photograph for herself. 

Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art

Fantastic exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts bringing together works by Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore, particularly those that depict, use or evoke bones. 

The pairing of these artists made me think of bone or sculpture as camera or framing instrument: while O’Keeffe would often place bones against the sky or landscape and paint a framed segment of her vista, Moore’s sculptures in the exhibition space itself, with their holes and negative space, framed O’Keeffe’s paintings, creating layers of circular or oval frames both pictorially and in situ. 

Thinking about framing and photography, I also had in mind the process of making bronze sculptures whereby there is an original plaster cast. While we often take sculptures to be unique and one of a kind, the process of making bronze sculpture is not so dissimilar to, for example, the making of etchings or photographs from an  absent “original” - the decision to limit editions to one or few taken (or not) by the artist. In a video of interviews, Moore expressed his wish to avoid the fate of Rodin’s sculptures, whereby preserved casts were used to make multiple copies of the same sculpture, which could be found in a number of places all over the world simultaneously. Moore I stood took action to destroy his casts to ensure reproductions were controlled. Of course, Walter Benjamin comes to mind. 

Vigdis Hjorth, Will and Testament

Will and Testament is an extremely powerful book, packed with the messiness of emotion, trauma, memory and family dynamics - it holds nuance and contradiction brilliantly. 

I read this passage in a moment when I was thinking about influence and different paths that lead to different versions of yourself/your life:

Dealing with the aftermath and trauma of childhood sexual abuse, Hjorth makes use of Freudian proposals around exploring repressed memories and containing anger - she examines how people use extreme thinking and lies to justify their actions and render their enemy worse, all bad, to ensure a clear narrative of victim and aggressor. Interwoven with Freud's theories on repression and anger are conversations the protagonist has with a friend on war mentalities - specially in relation to Israel/Palestine. They discuss the slippery slope of abuse, where victim can become aggressor and use justifications for attacks - how victims inherit beliefs and narratives use them to justify self-defence or acts of aggression. 

What would it mean to end the cycle of violence and not to use the comfort of 'victim status' to perpetuate suffering? What might a person have to confront and absorb to ensure they don't become the next aggressor? What is the cost of this absorption and how can a person manage their self-destructive impulses to be freed by the truth, and healed by the recognition of others of this truth? What happens when you don't get the recognition from the people you want it from? 

The protagonist's friend describes his discomfort in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv which mirrors almost perfectly what I felt on my visit in 2018. In sum, the strange atmosphere where a modern and shiny city was built with walls that keep perceived threats or aggressors out - these walls hide the suffering of others and support those inside to try to forget what sits behind those walls and live under illusions of peace, kindness, happiness and fairness. To truly heal however is to acknowledge the blurred lines of victim/aggressor, not to conceal your aggressions behind sophisticated architecture and technology but to endure the ambiguity, acknowledge the suffering and manage this alongside the good without self-destructing acts or shame. 

Digital collages from oil paintings

Self portrait 2, oil on canvas paper

Zoe Spowage exhibition 'Pet' at Persistence Works

Incredible exhibition of paintings on new motherhood and fantastic blurb by the artist:

“From the start I was using 'Pet' as the title for this body of work: 'Pet' as in a creature you pour your love into; 'Pet' as in the affectionate/patronising touch of an authority (figure?); 'Pet' peeve/theory/name as in 'held dear'. There was something darkly comic about how lightweight the word Pet is in contrast to the seriousness of having a child.

I was considering who my new self would be - postnatally. The female characters in the paintings are all personifications of my musings or anxieties relating to this metamorphosis. Featured, too, is the unruly family pet, the pushed-out dog, displaced by the new child. And a toyed-with frog representing the cruelty and innocence of small children - a duality that no animal could ever understand, or forgive.

Aesthetically, this work is economic in terms of colour, drawing, and surface. It is elegant and filled with open space. Many of these elements feel at odds with my new existence as a mother - which feels chaotic and punk. Babies scoff at elegance.”