#345: Conversation Piece

A conversation with a work of art.  Imagined or otherwise.

#277: It is always New Year

Oil on canvas.  A view from behind of a naked person walking towards an open door (one of several in a wall).  Through these doors can be seen further doors and more beyond them.

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Hessel, Katy (@thegreatwomenartists) (2024b) “As 2025 approaches, I'm thinking about Dorothea Tanning, and in particular her painting "Birthday" (1942 – image 1)...” [Instagram] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DECl8YnILOU/?img_index=1 (Accessed: 26th December 2024).

Tanning, Dorothea (1942) Birthday [Oil on canvas]. Philadelphia Museum of Art. See: https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/93232

#275: Another Christmas Scene

The scene we have been brought up to avoid and not think about: the discomfort, pain and mess of giving birth in a stable.  

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Hessel, Katy (2024) The great women's art bulletin: There’s nothing meek or mild about childbirth: why have male artists sanitised the Virgin Mary? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/dec/20/virgin-mary-sanitised-paula-rego-esther-strauss (Accessed: 20th December 2024).

#194: Support (An Exhibition of Prescribed Experiences to Help Visitors Understand How They Feel)

A leaflet and poster campaign is launched throughout the country.  Both include the following quote:

“Whatever you might be feeling, make a bookshelf of the writers who speak to you most, compile your favourite poems, go to your local gallery to experience art in the flesh or curate your own mini exhibition that will help you get through. Look to art for the answers because across the years, decades, or centuries, in work by someone who lived a completely different existence to you, you’ll find something you instantly recognise. And when you do, you can pass it on to someone else who might need it too.” - Katy Hessel.

as well as details of how to recommend art, literature, music, film, tv, or anything that might help aid people’s passages through different feelings and experiences.

Following on from this is an exhibition of the recommended (or prescribed) “medications” is staged.

At the centre is a sculpture called Support.  It features people crouched down in a circle supporting and raising up someone who is lying on a circular platform curled into a ball.

The exhibition shop only stocks leaflets and books aimed at supporting and helping attendees with their problems.