http://www.camdenartscentre.org/exhibitions/?id=101109

25.9.11

Mathilde Rosier and Deborah Levy talking on Rosier’s work. I looked around before the talk started.

What I saw:

The gallery was divided into separated spaces, a temporary-looking division.

A chair, a black, formal jacket on the back of it, a collaged photograph (?) in a frame on the chair where normally a person would sit. facing an open glass cabinet, branches protruding from it’s open door and a swathe of black cloth inside. Cut out birds in the tree. Was the photo watching the birds in the tree? Was the photo positioned for the birds to see? The branches reached out, like something from a fairytale, Brothers Grimm, ready to catch at clothing, tap at windows.

An old photo? painting? with a cutout birds head over the top. The bird faced to the right, it had it’s own eye, then 2 cut out eyes revealing the eyes of the person in the image beneath. Like a mask, a shamanic head-dress, or an old painting where someone could watch through the eyes.

A large piece, 2 figures - women? Cut out, partially overlapping itself. Wearing animal body costumes? Dancing or helping each other to dress?

Through to the next room, and a bed/bench with a red canopy, tree branches, cut out cats (I already knew or suspected - I can’t remember which - that these were referencing Freud’s Wolf-man).

At this point, the talk started.

MR talked about transforming the space into an apartment, a domestic space, representing a journey into the self, introspection. She talked of public/semi-public and private rooms; the first room represented a living room, consciousness; the second a bedroom - the link to the third room, dark, representing unconsciousness, shadow.

She talked of ritual, of Freud, of psychoanalysts as archaeologists of the brain, excavating moments from the past, finding things buried in the self. She spoke of ritual serving a similar purpose, and the loss of ritual in modern western culture.

She spoke of codified activities connecting to a deeper part of the self, of ritual as introspection, journeys within, self-discovery.

Her work is in various media; she said the link between her work is ritual.

DL spoke of the use of artefacts as triggers, a method employed by both Freud as a scientist, and by Robert Graves as a poet, triggers to understand the subconscious, to discover buried treasure, and of motivated forgetting and metaphor.

Moving to the ‘bedroom’, she started to talk about the significance of beds, then handed over to MR; she described the bed as a stage, an anchor, a place for changes of consciousness, of dreams as wishes. Someone in the audience was reminded of a Punch and Judy box, the red canopy cloth over the bed. DL suggested a space for play. MR agreed and reiterated a stage, it is a child’s bed. In response to a question from the audience, MR spoke of animals in all traditions/cultures as representing the wild within us all, the unconscious, the unmastered. And back to ritual - to acknowledge the animal inside, to discover it, master it, and then and only then, become adult. Without this process, we are always a child, immature, driven by unknown forces, not the master of our own destiny.

DL spoke of language, of words - feral, predatory - that we apply to people even though they are really descriptive words for animals. She spoke of how we live with animals, of keeping in touch with the gods, of talismans and superstitions.

MR spoke of 2 smaller paintings without animals; these are portraits about cycles. Each had a black circle or disc on it. They are about becoming adult, becoming aware of the animal inside. On an abstract level, this becomesa black circle, coming through the eye at the front of the space. She spoke of working ntuitively, then developing understanding of the work afterwards.

DL - the circle can also be entered…

Finally, a film, in the dark room, the unconscious. People with shell masks at a gathering, seen from above. DL spoke about how MR was interested in how this would translate into a ritual, this gathering together of people, given green drinks and mollusc masks. The shell’s inhabitant, the sheel creature was no longer there; instead the person becomes the living creature or the soul. The shells are a metaphor for armour yet they are paper, soft. The film has the look of being choreographed, but isn’t; the audience feel distanced, shut out, need to acquire and wear a mask. It becomes a ritual - to belong you need a green drink and a mask - this is the rule of the ritual. There is also referencing of dada happenings.

Returning to the living room, the portrait with the bird overlapping - DL referred to animal spirits, to play with, hide in, see differently through. As a writer, for DL it triggers thoughts about points of view - hard to know whose point of view here - blurred, multiple. DL spoke of throwaway materials, informality. She mentioned Leonora Carrington and animals representing aspects of the self.

[Listening to DL, I became very aware of how we impose narrative here]

The curator then spoke, about the chair and cabinet - she referred to these as 2 characters, a King and a Queen in conversation; she spoke of the symbolic, of animals as symbolic, as masks permitting the taking on of an animal, and this becoming a stand-in for identity or personality.

[I wondered about these characters, gendered by their ascribed roles of King and Queen - which was which? chair as receptive? cabinet as stuff escaping containment? But then all the audience members were finding and imposing and ascribing their own meanings, narratives; that is what we do].