Marina's Pre-Raphaelite Muses

Artist Marina Elphick brought four of her soft sculptures to the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters conference at York, where their contemplative expressions made a great addition to the scholarly papers about overlooked artists, and provoked a debate over the pejorative use of the term 'doll' [not Marina's choice] .  

The fabrics used are especially noteworthy, and the craftwoman's skill is alluring.





I am very happy to see Georgiana BJ wearing her famous coral necklace...

 and I  particularly  like the hair.


From previously seeing only images on Marina's website [ https://marinamade.me/]  i  expected the figures to be smaller, whereas they are a good size that enhances their presence, and can stand and sit in various poses.

the background figure is their creator  

AND HERE'S THE WHOLE GROUP 

Honorary Pre-Raphaelites: Florence Welch and Lily Cole

When the NPG’s Pre-Raphaelite Sisters exhibition was first projected, my aim was to include images of later models and actors whose features and presentation evoked some aspects of the original movement  - partly because many of the nineteenth  century images have a distinctly modern or contemporary look, and partly because of the loosely comparable social trajectories that begin with modelling.

In the course of creating the exhibition, this aspect was necessarily dropped; one may feel there are already too many exhibits and labels.  So I was delighted when last week, two present-day representatives of the theme took part in events associated with Pre-Raphaelite Sisters at the NPG.  Both have portraits in the Gallery collection.

Lily Cole, who has the same translucent skin and delicate features as Elizabeth Siddal, as well as Siddal’s tall and slim figure, and recently acted in that role for the BBC Radio3 programme Unearthing Elizabeth Siddal, came to film a personal introduction to the exhibition for the Art Fund.   I will post a link when it is published.

Then singer-songwriter Florence Welch took part in a conversation with photographer Tom Beard, ranging widely over their shared experiences and the visual links between the aesthetic adopted by Florence in life and art and that of the Pre-Raphaelite movement,  with some acute observations about both contemporary and historical imagery.  Plus neatly juxtaposed pictures from the exhibition and Florence’s albums. 

It was a triumphant evening, enhanced by the enthusiastic audience of Florence followers and lookalikes.   No Photography allowed  but the above picture shows their heroine with Tom Beard’s triple-mirrored photo recently acquired by the NPG.   Which chimes well with the picture of Fanny Cornforth posing against a cheval mirror in the garden of Rossetti’s home in Cheyne Walk, in 1863.

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters Making Art at York 2

https://prsistersconference.home.blog/

Papers on Emma Sandys, Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Eaton,  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Anna Alma-Tadema, Maria Zambaco, Effie Millais, Clementina Hawarden, Edith Hipkins, Kate Faulkner, Fanny Cornforth.  and the NPG exhibition.

Plus a call for new articles on other artists to be published in conjunction.

Oscar Murillo at Margate

 

Kara Walker Tate Modern Turbine Hall

Despite the vast volume of the Turbine Hall, the Fons  Americana still feels spatially constricted.

As sculptor Kara Walker's spoof advert indicates, this is intended for a large British public space.  It's modelled on the Victoria memorial by Buckingham Palace,  or the Albert Memorial and needs a similar outdoor location.

Conceptually however it is magnificent

Artistic soulmates?

this post is very belated owing to intensive work at NPG 
and half-finished, but still i hope worth posting





As a result of visiting the exhibitions of work by Natalia Goncharova and Frank Bowling in the same week, i was struck by their comparability [if there is such a word, not meaning similarity]

Both used colour so dynamically, in the sense of colour being the dramatic driving force of the visual image, whether figurative or abstract or in-between.


Then each was personally displaced from their lands of origin, whose themes were consistent sources of memory, imagination and energy  with being nostalgic.

And both responded to the successive art movements of their time, so that contemporary influences are visible in their own works as in a graphic conversation that might otherwise seem derivative. 

Critics tend to valorise 'original' artists whose work is entirely sui generis, but those who reveal their encounters with others tend to offer an equally interesting narrative  for the viewers.   Film art loves to include references, homage, allusion, subversion.

Mary Sibande at Somerset House

Installation series "I Come Apart at the Seams"

by Mary Sibande

that carries on the trajectory of Sophie who worked as a maid in white households in apartheid South Africa [and probably still does, although now an emancipated citizen]

through the years of struggle that culminated in Mandela's presidency

 and now seem again endangered.

in the Terrace Rooms at Somerset House.  Open daily until 5 January