"These garments have a history, they have touched my body, and they hold memories of people and places. They are chapters from the story of a life." - Louise Bougois
I found this survey of late works by Louise Bourgeois to be equally as powerful and every bit as disturbing as some of the works experienced in the recent Francis Bacon: Man and Beast exhibition (here), perhaps even more so considering that these sculptures are constructed mainly from fabrics. Bourgeois started working with fabric late in life when she was in her eighties. Fabric was in the blood nevertheless as her parents ran an antique tapestry gallery in which Bourgeois would help out with repairs at an early age. There is much weirdness here. Like Bacon, Bourgeois in these works appears to be mainly preoccupied with the body, fashioning bodily forms from a range of textiles. In her late career Bourgois adapted both her own and her mothers clothes and other fabrics into art to tell stories from her personal history which speak of trauma, guilt and the triumphs and burdens of womanhood. Psychologists would have a field day here decoding and deciphering Bourgeois's deep, dark psyche. Bodies are depicted as vessels. Dismembered fabric torsos, are replete with anatomically correct gaping orifices. Heads are decapitated and heavily lined, bearing the deep surgical scarring of facial surgical procedures through Bourgeois' heavy-handed needlwork. There are also large, stacked fabric totems, contrasted with 2D concentrically patterned appliqué designs on a more domestic scale. In much the same way that Bacon demarcates his canvases, isolating figures in geometric constructions, so Bourgeois similarly confines her figures in cages, or presents them like Damian Hirst in medical-style vitrines. One fascinatingly macabre piece houses her clothes hanging from large animal bones, whilst another cabinet/vitrine contains a small stuffed figure, the victim of a nightmarish Frankenstein-style experiment in which the body has undergone the freakish surgical addition of metal spider limbs growing out of her abdomen. Indeed, large, metal spiders sculptures are what Bourgeois is famous for, and this show doesn't disappoint. Upstairs, skulking menacingly in a corner, standing guard over the contents captive in a cage is a huge, perfect arachniod specimen. All black with spindly, knotted legs it's enough to freak anybody out, and the perfect coda to this thought-provoking exhibition.
Louise Bourgois: The Woven Child
until 15th May
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London
SE1
No comments:
Post a Comment