EXHIBITION CHINWAG: The Painter's Body, the Body in Paint: Jenny Saville at The National Portrait Gallery

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Exhibition Chinwag is the original segment of the podcast where Joana invites professionals from other fields to visit and discuss the work of an artist through their solo exhibition. 

Guest: Susie Ridell Co-Producer and co-Host of the Podcast Limited Time Only

Exhibition discussed: Jenny Saville, The Anatomy of Painting at the National Portrait Gallery, from 20 June until 7 September 2025.

Check out images referred to in the episode here.

Key themes:

Painting; children in art; painting the body; the representation of the body, Jenny Saville

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Here we are beginning of season 3 with a banger of an episode.
Welcome back. The season is full of surprises
new episode formats such as art,travelogues and art topics, but
this one changed in name only. The segment exhibition Chinwag

(00:24):
is more or less the same as the whole of the first season where
I was the dusty specialist and my Co host.
The wonderful Emily Harding who is back in the next episode of
this segment was the novice exhibition goer.
My new Art Outsider guest today is Susie Riddell who was a joy

(00:48):
to have over for many many reasons.
It was really fascinating to chat with her because although
we both work in creative fields,the rules are so so different.
You must be wondering in what field exactly Susie works in or
you are recognizing her name because she is no fish out of

(01:09):
water. When it comes to podcasts.
Susie is 1/2 of the award-winning podcast Limited
Time Only, which she Co hosts with Esther Stanford.
I actually watched Susie and Esther receive their award live
at the Independent Women PodcastAwards at the BBC studios a few

(01:33):
months ago and they completely won me over.
Susie jumped up and down like a kid, and Esther had such an air
of utter confusion that they really, really cracked me up.
But don't be fooled by their humble attitudes because since
we've recorded this episode, Limited Time only received a

(01:56):
second award, the Women Who Podcast Awards, in the category
Laughter and cheer. So listen, all I wish for them
is for this streak to continue to the point where they'll do
their best. Doris Lessing when she learned
through a reporter stalking her outside of her home, that she

(02:17):
had won the Nobel Prize and seemed utterly unfazed, even a
bit bored. You've won the Nobel Prize for
Literature. How do you feel it's been going
on now for 30 years. I can't get more excited, right?

(02:38):
Well, I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks of some kind.
There are other people here. So any kind of remarks, just
just tell me what this prize means to you.
Well, the beginning, I say. For 30 years, one can get more
excited than one gets, you know.But this is a recognition of
your life's work, yes? This is all I wish for all of

(03:00):
us, all of you out there and formyself to just have the Doris
Lessing level of Norfolk's given.
So back to Susie who is a multi hyphenated professional.
She is the Co director of the theatre company Idiot Child,
which we did not get to talk about it, didn't have time, but

(03:21):
she did share some insights intoher voice work.
You'll even learn how to do the best Liverpool accent.
The only question is should you?OK, just kidding.
Another thing I have to mention is that because we talk about a
Cali mucho and if you don't knowwhat that is, we'll you'll soon

(03:44):
find out. Susie mentioned a snake bite in
black, which is I can confirm because we had a few doubts.
And alcoholic beverage made of equal parts lager, cider and
black currant cordial. Yum.
I also mentioned Sight Wombley, and it occurs to me now that I

(04:05):
was so intent on making a point that I didn't get to mention how
some of Jenny Savile's drawings and paintings in the exhibition
bear twombley like scribbles, which add another layer to the
work. And you'll also get to witness
Susie discovering site Wombley. It really is what exhibition

(04:29):
Chinwag is for and I am so here for it.
I'm so grateful that I got to experience that with someone as
special as Susie. So another heads up for those of
you who have been following exhibitionists out there.
In this season, I am more relaxed about the exhibition

(04:50):
visits because the more I invitepeople who have questions and
who are fascinating and have curious, inquisitive minds, the
more we get to address certain questions that may not have been
obvious to me where I'm not talking to someone outside of my
little art bubble. And so we really wander off

(05:14):
sometimes into very specific areas of the contemporary art
field or even the artist's work.And I want the episodes to make
space for that. I do advise you to follow us on
Instagram or better yet, to signup to The Exhibitionist as files
through the description notes ofthe episode because I will have

(05:36):
images of the show there as wellas useful links such As for
example, The New Yorker article that I referred to in the
episode written by Rebecca Mead about Jenny Savile.
So all of this said and done, this is Exhibitionist, this I am

(05:57):
your host, Joanna Pianevis, contemporary art writer and
curator. And don't forget, we visit
exhibitions so that you have to.And now on with the episode.
Enjoy. Hi there and thank you for

(06:19):
joining us. Today we are talking about Jenny
Savile exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in
London. The title of the exhibition is
The Anatomy of Painting and you have exactly 2 days to visit it.
If you're in London, rush to theNational Portrait Gallery.
I'm really, really chuffed todaybecause I have a new guest Co

(06:42):
host and she is a fellow colleague podcaster.
It's none other than Susie Riddell from the award-winning
podcast Limited Time Only. She is not only a podcaster, but
also an actor, a voice artist, awriter and a presenter.

(07:02):
And you probably will recognize her voice from the world's
longest running drama, The Archers on BBC.
Her character's name is Tracy Horbin.
So it really is an immense pleasure to have you here.
Susie, thank you so much for agreeing to do this, this crazy

(07:25):
experiment. Thank you very much for having
me, Joel. I feel like I kind of foisted
myself upon you. Actually.
I sort of was like, please have me as a guest podcast.
So you didn't really have much choice, did you?
Could all podcasts be a bit likethat?
You know, to take take your guests somewhere different and
interesting and spark off other different thoughts and avenues,

(07:46):
especially something creative like that.
I I was delighted to be asked and delighted to go to this
particular exhibition as well. Before we went in, I said
listen, let's take a selfie so that we have a before and after.
We didn't do and after. Did we have?
We were so exhausted by the end of it and we completely forgot.
I was very, very tired yesterdayafternoon and and I was

(08:06):
remembering you saying that you get tired at exhibitions and
taking it all in. I think we've done about an hour
and a half and we an hour and 40or whatever the exhibition and I
said that is that's me done. That's that's my I'm exhibited
out because you said, yes, I getexhausted when I go to
exhibitions. It really made me think when I
got home, God, I am dog tired. I had to sort of, I think I had

(08:28):
a nap. I did, knowing that you were
going to Do the episodes have animpact on that?
Did you visit it differently? Were you more tired than usual
when you see an exhibition? Maybe because I think I, I would
spend a lot longer in there thanI probably would have done if
I'd been on my own. Because obviously we were

(08:49):
discussing things, I was able toask you questions.
So I was taking that in. I suppose I was really trying to
really look, I do often read thelittle, you know, bits of blurb
by the sides of pictures, which I think is quite exhausting in
itself trying to do the text andthen get what you can initially
from the picture, read the text,go back to the bit.

(09:10):
But I probably wouldn't have spent that long in that one with
that one artist, even though it was a special exhibition.
I think I would have probably been an hour tops and and moved
on a bit. But yeah, so I think I, I did
approach it with more of a senseof purpose that that I I needed

(09:32):
to remember. But it, but it wasn't arduous.
It wasn't, it was quite nice actually.
I think in a way it would be great to record a podcast after
every time I went to an art exhibition because I think that
gives it a focus that sometimes I feel I don't have when I go to
an exhibition. When I see a play, your focus is
that is, you know, is the play and you're following the story

(09:53):
from the beginning to end. I still find that exhausting.
And I actually often can't discuss a play straight
afterwards. I I have to go away.
I mean, it's funny when you go see a play with somebody, you
know, you've you've messed up atthe theatre, you go, you have a
chat, you go to see the play, chat about the play in the
interval a bit, go to the end, you come out and then you're
like, OK, then yeah, what are you doing next week?

(10:15):
It could have been something really life changing.
But but it's hard to kind of getthe words and to, to you need to
process it, don't you? And I think that's what we were
doing as we were going along, which is why it's so exhausting.
And as you say, it's every part of you is involved in in instead
in looking at the picture. I enjoy this idea that I have to

(10:37):
carve my own space and I have tolook around and be mindful of
what other people are doing. The the this experience we have
in the 19th century had this idea we must travel.
We must go to the sea to heal and to, you know, encounter the
elements and, and, and be a better person.
But now a century later is like,oh, I'm doing Thailand.

(10:59):
Oh yeah. I'm doing and.
They're like, no, Thailand should do you.
Yeah, no, just have some reverence, have some some sense.
I. Completely agree.
Yeah. And I enjoy that museums, I
loved your description because Ilove that museums make you feel
first that you have this space where you don't quite know how

(11:20):
to behave. And then you have to measure
your, your, your movement in space and your attention and
your focus and your intention. That was such a lovely
experience to have together as afirst 3D encounter.
Yes, it was really. We're not going to forget that.
I felt a little bit like I was astudent and you were my tutor.

(11:42):
Oh no, don't say that. Not in a bad way.
There's not a negative at all. To say that it was it was AI
felt like it was a great opportunity to be able to ask
those questions that I thought perhaps were a bit silly, but
you made me feel comfortable enough that I didn't worry about
asking. How big was the paintbrush?
No, there were really good questions.
But before we move on, do you want to talk about your

(12:04):
award-winning podcast, Limited Time Only?
Which I must say is the most endearing podcasts out there
because not only are you colleagues with Esther, but also
great friends. Such a lovely thing to listen to
because it just gives you energyand it makes you believe in

(12:24):
humanity again. But also you do sketches because
you're both wonderful professionals and you also
interview people. And one of the best interviews
out there, a very uncanny experience, is when you
interviewed the person who does the voice of Wallace in Wallace
and Gromit. And that was I.

(12:47):
I I didn't even have a word for it, 'cause I love Wallace and
grown. Do you and?
It was just so funny to see and also to see the work of the
voice. So firstly, I'm gonna ask you to
quickly introduce the podcast and also maybe talk about voice
acting, because I don't think wetalk enough about it.
Yes, limits time only award-winning.

(13:08):
We just won an international women's podcast award for comedy
gold. Our little tagline, if I could
sum it up, is it's a pick me up in podcast form.
So our aim is to brighten your day and we do that through a mix
of chat between myself and Esther, who we've known each
other for over 36 years. I know we don't look that old,
but we. Positively.

(13:31):
We were in a youth drama group together from the age of 12 and
are now several decades older. But we, you know, we, we, we
know each other really well and a very similar people.
And we do genuinely love each other so.
And our chemistry is completely natural and it's just a joy.
I really admire what you do, Joanna.
Because I couldn't do a pocket. I wouldn't have the motivation

(13:51):
to do a podcast on my own. I would give up after about two,
but having. I'm just bossy that that's what
it is. You boss.
Yourself around. So we have chats between us, we
have comedy sketches that are all original and to do with the
topic of the episode. And we interview interesting
people like Ben Whitehead, who'sthe voice of Wallace and Wallace

(14:13):
and Gromit. And we've had pop stars and
broadcasters and sports people and all sorts of and actors,
comedians and artists as well. We had an artist, Nadia Otura
came on. So I mean, I, we believe
everyone is interesting. Everyone's got an interesting
story to tell, that voice work. I mean, yeah, talking to Ben's

(14:34):
really interesting because it doesn't sound remotely like
Wallace in real. Life, that's what was so
peculiar. This is the first time we've had
a bona fide Hollywood superstar on the show.
Who's there? Because who's there?
It's you, Ben, you've just been at the Oscars and the, it's
amazing what the human voice is capable of, isn't it?

(14:57):
What Ben does in the way of changing his voice is, is just
phenomenal. And I loved hearing how he
described getting into the voice.
And that's something that's quite common.
Like people often have a, a phrase or a certain word or
something they have to say to get into a certain accent or
whatever. But we, I think everyone is
capable of doing all these things.

(15:20):
It's like I think everyone's capable of doing most things
really, if we just concentrated.I was recording an audio book
actually. And do you have other
directives? Like do you have to have a
certain speech pattern? Do you have to have a?
Because in England the accents are quite a thing.
There's so many of them. And I always wondered, is there
a sort of ABBC speak that you have to do for audio?

(15:41):
Books, no, I mean what what willhappen with an audio book is
they will ask so if they if theywanted me so my my criteria, you
know, my voice would be either RP received pronunciation, which
is kind of no discernible British accent.
It is just quite a play. I'm not.

(16:02):
How can you? It's called RP and it's there.
So for example, suppose it is like ABB in all BBC speak of the
past would have been very much like that.
That would have been the RP accent from the, you know, the
1930s, forties, etcetera. That's how they would speak and
everyone would speak like that and you'd go to drama school and
you'd learn to speak like that. Of course, we don't speak like

(16:24):
that anymore. It's a Judi Dench.
Yes, it's got yes. And I think a lot of actors of
that generation didn't speak like that, went to drama school,
had their accents knocked out ofthem.
But now, if you want something quite plain, I'm not discernibly
from the north of England. I'm not discernibly, I suppose,
people you would tell from the South of England, I suppose, but
I could be from the north. I just haven't got an accent but

(16:48):
or I or I often get cast As for Scottish narration as well.
I'm born in Scotland, I'm of Scottish heritage and I can do a
very good Scottish accent. So sometimes I have to do that.
But you know, sometimes they want a northern voice or a
specific part of the of the UK. It depends what the book is.
I've done a lot of books for Liverpool.

(17:08):
Believe it or not, I've got no links with Liverpool whatsoever.
I can just do a quite a good Liverpool.
Apologies, my sincerest apology.Do you hate the Liverpool
accent? Horrifying.
What's wrong with it? It's absolutely fine.
That wasn't a great accent. So sorry.
It was great. And if isn't it the accent of

(17:29):
the that that series adolescent?Is it the?
Yeah, Stephen Graham. Yeah.
Yes. It's quite abrasive at times.
It depends which part you're doing.
I quite like it though, because it's really exciting to do.
It's like interesting in your mouth.
If I watch myself on the screen,my mouse going really wide
because they don't, they don't, they're not going down like
that. It's right out to the side.

(17:51):
So that's how I that's how I would get that accent.
And then Scottish is a bit more forward, so I've got a bit more
of a pout. And it also, I mean, obviously
there's so many different accents in the country and
different dialects. So it depends what, which part
of Scotland you're going to do. But that would be my, I suppose
I don't know Aberdeen, Fife sideof Scotland, but yes, Potey and

(18:13):
then the Liverpool, like you see, it's much more open like
that. It's I just, I think it's
fascinating. It's fascinating because what
you know, what really fascinatesme and I need to find more about
is when people have go into a coma, they have something, they
wake up and they have what's called foreign accent syndrome
and they start speaking with a completely different accent.
I have seen white English women who wake up and start speaking

(18:38):
with a Jamaican accent or Italian or Chinese.
It's hilarious, but it's like they're not taking the pee and
they're not doing a mock up. They are absolutely.
If you dropped her into Jamaica,she would sound like everybody
around her amazed. And I think there's something,
there's something weird going onthere.

(18:59):
There's a cross soul. There's something going on in
the ether. When they've they're out of it,
they've just someone else's voice has got into them.
They collected someone's soul. Yes, that's what I think.
Something because it's too weird.
I know there was somewhere talking to someone else for so
long and they acquired the accent.
Yeah, well, they time travelled back.

(19:21):
Become somebody. It's it's amazing.
I didn't know that. Yeah, it's really weird.
Really weird. Fascinating.
All of this? Yes, but not in a way.
Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge.
She moved across the UK quite a bit because her mum was an

(19:43):
elementary school teacher, but her dad was a school
administrator, so she was in thekind of education environment
and she's very well read. She also had an uncle who was a
really important influence in her life, Paul Savile.
He was an artist. He was also an arts teacher in a
private school. And he took her passion for arts

(20:05):
seriously, so seriously that he taught her a lot of techniques.
And apparently it was so obsessive that he made her draw
a hedge every day for a single for a whole year.
And she said it was really interesting because the hedge
changes across the year and it also changes you.

(20:28):
And I'm quoting her here, and it's so interesting that she was
doing the same thing, looking atthe same thing in a huge span of
time, especially for a child, because she was a child back
then. But another thing that he did
that was quite interesting is that they travelled a lot.
And they travelled not only to go to museums, but also to visit

(20:51):
the places where Rembrandt painted, like a bridge in
Venice, where Titian painted a certain painting or did a
certain drawing. And so they would go to the
exact places, and they also would go to the studio.
So she went to Rembrandt Studio.And she says that when she went
in, it's not a museum. Actually, I think in the

(21:14):
beginning of the 2000s, it became a museum.
And she says that looking at thelights made her understand the
difference between the light coming through the window and
the fire, you know, in the corner in the fireplace.
And she observed that space so much.
And also then they went out and they would go to the butcher.

(21:34):
And she would imagine he would go to the butcher and buy a
piece of meat and then put it inthe studio.
And she says that she became fascinated with artist studios
much more than with artists. And so in some ways, her uncle
didn't romanticize being an artist.
He kind of went through the nitty gritty and the technical

(21:57):
aspects of it. So much so that he even
advocated drinking red wine and Coca-Cola at 9:00 AM in the
morning. Which is.
A bizarre mix, isn't it? No.
Don't, Susie. You don't know what you're
saying. It's delicious, is it?

(22:18):
And it has a name. OK.
It's Spanish and it's called a Cali Mucho.
I'm going. To have to try this.
I mean, I've no, I know. I mean there's there's there's
mixes that we have here like beer and cider.
No bit Pims. No, no, I know I'm talking the
wrong thing. Is it beer and black Current and

(22:38):
cider? I can't remember the snake bite
and black can't remember what itis.
Do you know that one? I don't know diesel.
No, no. Well, diesel sounds.
I mean, it's the same as snake bite and black, but it's the
northern version. The northern.
Oh my God. So, right, OK, so red wine and
well, I'm going to give it a go because I'm.
Well, think of a shandy, Shandy I.
Do love a shandy That's. True lemonade, lemonade and

(23:00):
beer. Fizzy fizzy lemonade and beer
something. About the red wine, well, Cherry
Coke exists. It could, it could.
I'm going to try it. I'm going on holiday on Friday.
I'm going to have a. What's it called again?
Cali Mucho. I'm going to have a Cali mucho.
Yeah, and it's really 9. AM Thanks very much, kids.
Yes, move over. Any who she said she wouldn't

(23:23):
recommend it and but at 9:00 AM at the very least, and and so
she says quote. It made me feel like the things
I was doing making paintings in my room was the way I could
live. So very early on she had this
idea that she could be an artist.
Artists work in studios. They have a space.

(23:44):
So in 1988, she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art where
quote, everybody had a Freud catalog at their feet when they
were painting. But weirdly, you almost, and I'm
quoting her here. She also said you almost had to
apologize to be a painter at thetime because in the art field

(24:06):
and also in art schools at the time, we were coming.
So it was the 80s and we were coming off a moment where there
was a lot of performance, 60s and 70s, there was a lot of
conceptual arts, there was a lotof abstract minimalist art.
And so the teachers at the time were teaching that.
That's what they were bringing into the art school.

(24:28):
And so painting, when you look at Jenny Savile's work, you kind
of drew a Direct Line to Freud, to Lucian Freud.
But when she was at school, it was not a given at all.
But to contextualize this because there's Auk painting
history or art history and then there's the whole of Europe in

(24:50):
1988. So when she goes into school and
starts painting Gerhard Hector, who we did an episode about was
this German really important painting like real reference in
the art world was painting a series called October 8th 18th
1977, which takes as its subjectthe Bader Meinhof group.

(25:15):
So, you know, this terrorist group in in Germany that he took
on, as you know, a decade later as a subject, as a German artist
who grew up in eastern Germany, had to flee eastern Germany to
West Germany to live in Berlin undercover, hiding out, leaving

(25:38):
his family, not seeing them for many, many years.
And so there was another kind ofpainting being done.
History is known for copying photography very faithfully, the
glitches, the blurs, and also doing abstract painting, like
having a sort of a very broad take on painting.
So this was what was happening and in the same year, 1988, he

(26:01):
had I think his first exhibitionin London and Anthony at Anthony
Duvey's gallery. So there was a presence of
painting, but a very specific kind of painting.
Like Garrett Hister was not picking sides, he was doing
abstract painting as much as realist painting and taking in
technology, so photography in his own painting.

(26:22):
Whereas in the UK we are going to relate Jenny Savile much more
with Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud, you know
what is called the London School.
So in 1991 there's a huge shift for her.
She goes to the University of Cincinnati in the US and she

(26:43):
does something which was not happening in Glasgow at the
time, women's gender and sexuality studies.
And so she reads a lot of Julia Christeva, Ilan Siksu, Luz
Irigaray. So all these feminists, French,
most of them that kind of open up something for her in terms of

(27:04):
painting. So there's this real
relationship with female bodies in painting, right?
Do you talk about the representation of women, for
example, in your own craft and, and, and are you aware of how
it's talked about in in contemporary art?
Drama, it is just it's discussedand, and all the time, you know,
we, we have those moments where I'm in a scene with somebody, a

(27:29):
woman. In fact, it was one of our
guests recently, an actress called Lucy Speed and we had a
scene together in The Archers and she was very conscious that
the scene was these two women sort of being quite bitchy and
arguing. And often that's how, you know,
women get portrayed as these kind of, I don't know, they

(27:51):
don't like other women. It's when other women women
don't like other women. And and that's that is something
we try and avoid in a way, because I don't think it's help.
It's not helpful in the wider context of everything else.
We need to kind of need to sticktogether.
But but yeah, I mean, there werea lot of there's a lot of female
form in in art, isn't there? From from right from the

(28:13):
beginning, a lot of naked women on the walls of many galleries
around the world. Yeah.
I mean, so many. It's almost not surprising,
isn't it, when you not surprising at all.
We see a boob or whatever. When you walk walk into a
gallery, it was expected expect to see a boob in paint and

(28:35):
sculpture form. Yeah, it's interesting.
One of the things that we're becoming really aware of, for
example, is in Greek mythology, there's a lot of sexual
assaults. Yes, yeah, it's constantly women
being dragged or pierced. I think what is very strange
about Jenny Savile and who'll probably talk about it, is that

(28:55):
her upbringing is quite patriarchal.
So you have her uncle and when she talks about what she calls
her team of artists, so her family of artists, she quotes
Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian, who you but very well noted.
As we were coming in, dear listeners, Susie told me I know

(29:16):
nothing about art. I mean, I do love Artician.
And I was thinking, wow, yeah, the reference for Jenny Savile,
but she nailed it. I couldn't.
Believe that would have saw the first thing on the the chart on
the wall of her sort of yeah, going to see this this piece and
I thought, oh God. Well, you know, there you are
then. I didn't need to do anything
else. I just I know everything.

(29:40):
I know one thing, which is everything, yeah.
And so she quotes. So she's a Picasso.
Exactly. And there's more.
Oh really? The Kooning.
Yes. Michelangelo, Leonardo,
Twombley, Monet, Sutin, and Matisse.
And they're all and CUNY. What era is he?

(30:01):
Oh, he's so alive, is he? No, de Kooning is 20th century,
so he's abstract, beginning of the Abstract Expressionist
movement. Sai, Sai Twombley, she actually
was friends with him for a while.
So Sai Twombley is this painter who has a very strong
relationship with classic literature, Dante.

(30:25):
You know, all of those references like really classical
references as Jenny Savile does.And his paintings on the other
hand, are quite childish in the sense of the line.
They look like scribbles, They look like doodles.
I am going to send you on the chat.
Gosh, yeah, crikey. I mean, this is fascinating

(30:48):
because I look at that and go, I'm sorry, what?
That's just, that is literally squiggles and and I can't, I
can't. Oh, but it's massive.
Is it always massive? They were quite sizable
paintings, a little bit like, you know, 3 by 2 meters for

(31:09):
example, sometimes much bigger. That's that it's fascinating.
I would love to learn, learn more about that.
And there's, there's one furtherdown my my son on the other day.
It's the black, it's black squiggles starting quite small
and they get quite big. It's almost filling the page.
My son, who's 7, the other day, he said the best drawing he's

(31:31):
ever done and he drew, he drawn what he said was a waterfall.
And it was squiggles all the wayup up because they really saw
the waterfall in it. But it's literally just him with
a black pen. And he's so, so proud of it.
But it, it kind of reminds me ofthat.
So yeah, this is this is where Istruggle slightly and I expect a

(31:54):
lot of people struggle, but I, but I can see that that's
enormous. So I think the effect of seeing
it on this little page here in atiny box entirely different to
standing, as I can see. I mean, it's it's twice the
height of a human, that is goingto have a different effect.
Yes, I think seeing them in the flesh is really interesting and

(32:14):
quite an impact on you because someone is taking so seriously
the first marks that you're going to do on a page and really
studying how when a child draws,and if you look at children's
drawings, there's no bad drawing.
No, the question of good and badis absolutely irrelevant.

(32:40):
And that's what he's interested in.
He's interested in that sweet spot where you're just marking
your mark making and you are going beyond what is good, what
is bad, and you're entering a territory where there's no
difference between writing, drawing and painting, which is

(33:03):
the origin of the word graphic comes from graphene and it's in
Greek. It was inscribing and it was as
much writing as it was drawing. It really was this idea of being
and close to mark making and close to a dimension of relation
with reality that is almost unmediated by knowledge.

(33:24):
I enjoy, I enjoy work that is quite immersive, I suppose.
I mean, I'd, I'd really enjoy going to see the side Twombley,
partly because it's what a greatname.
I mean, that's one of the best names I've ever heard.
I'd love to be called Susie Twombley, but that that scale,
the scale of a work to what I like feeling is small.

(33:48):
I think it's very healthy. You do.
Yeah, I think it's really healthy experience to feel to,
to have a sense of your own unimportance in a way against
something and and I suppose in the face of the entirety of
humanity or whatever's being depicted.

(34:10):
Why don't you think that it's interesting that he's giving so
much importance to those squiggles?
Yeah, and to that compulsive mark making.
Yes, it's and it's a it's, it's,it's humanness and it's a human,
it's creativity in its purest form, isn't it?
Because it's it's just happening.
I mean, it's not obviously with him because he's thought about

(34:31):
it excessively, but of course, but with.
But it is as well but. Yes.
Well, yeah, because it's inherent.
It's in his inherent gift, I suppose.
And yeah. And that's the thing about
contemporary art. I think in the whole of the 20th
century, there's been this move into a kind of authenticity of
gesture in the performance pieces that you sometimes see on

(34:56):
video and you think, what is going on?
What are they doing? And you know, artists, voice
artists like Meredith Monk, who's a composer, but like a lot
in relation to the minimalist movement, he's just
deconstructing voice. And some of her work is really

(35:16):
like stutterings in in singing form.
And you listen to that and you think, why is she not singing
properly? Is the first instrument and that
it's a direct connection to the deepest level of energies and
feelings for which we don't havewords.
So I felt this very strong powerof the voice to be a universal

(35:39):
kind of instrument. I just knew that I was on to
something that was had truth. There's just no question about
it and and I felt that I was. Meant in the 20th century there
was this idea of let's get to that creative impulse and let's

(36:00):
also have this appreciation for the glitch, for the error, for
the meandering, for the and for the not good for the this, this
kind of fixation on good painting, on good sculpture, on
technically, why do people listen to podcasts?
Because there's a lot of mistakes and there's this kind

(36:20):
of sense of authenticity. Although we do edit to the bone.
Well, I don't, we don't realise.It I do, but yeah, there is a
lot of editing. But yes, it's more it's because
you're listening to a conversation, isn't it, rather
than something that's, yeah, been been either scripted or
absolutely. And it's safe and self
exploration in podcasting where you, you, you are vulnerable and

(36:44):
you risk an idea that may not beyours at the end of the day now
that you've tested it. Yeah.
So we've got to go back to that,to the embracing the
imperfection. And I think that idea of those
pieces where I go round an an art gallery and I go, Oh my God.
I mean, that is that's, I don't what what is that?

(37:06):
I don't get it. But in a way I'll get something
from it. But so to finish on this, there
is this really strange shift in her work whereby she goes to the
United States, she goes to gender studies, which didn't
exist in Glasgow School of Art. And she later on befriended
Linda Knockling, who in the contemporary art world is quite

(37:28):
an important reference because in 1971 she wrote an article
provocatively titled Why Have there been no Great Women
Artists to? And you can this is the 70s.
So bringing it home that we don't have female artists in
museums and we will never say this enough.

(37:49):
Like when Saville was born a year later, Linda Knocklin was
writing this. So this is a very recent and the
conversations we're having now, you know, in cinema, in
contemporary art, they're all very recent.
Because how could it be? It's it's almost impossible to
address redress in that, you know, you think of the
centuries, centuries of work, It's going to be another, it's

(38:12):
going to have to be another sortof 600 years before.
But then then you've still got those are the extra 600 years of
all the male artists. It's.
Tintoretto had a daughter, he was a painter, and the king of
Spain actually wanted to hire her and he didn't let her.
And the Lord of Women who painted were the daughters of

(38:34):
painters. And so they remained in the
studio. And you can be sure that a lot
of paintings that you see in theNational Gallery have some brush
tricks of a lot of women who were just not historicized.
And it's interesting 'cause I heard this expression, I just
did an interview. Well, when this episode comes
out, the interview will have come out with EJ Scott, who is

(38:57):
this trans curator and and transactivist who was talking about,
he created something called the Museum of Transology and he was
talking about how trans people are historically homeless.
And I love that expression. You don't have a home and as a a
person who identifies as a woman, you go into a museum and

(39:20):
you don't see authorship associated with the gender you
feel that you are, that you identify with.
And that is that has a massive impact.
Absolutely. And it's so big that you can't
see it. And well, it's, it's, it's the
question of representation across, across, yeah, gender and
sexuality and race within all everything, isn't it?

(39:45):
It's a, it's a huge, huge issue and that you can see steps being
taken, but it's, and it's something you're not even, I
don't know, aware when you're not even aware of it in a way.
Certainly as a, as a young person and I look back at the
things I liked and the wimp, it's like, well, there's not

(40:06):
very many women there. But I didn't, I never, I sort of
identified with the male. Characters or whatever people
that I'd like to be but and thenyou think back well, actually,
but that's not quite that's not quite good.
It's not quite it is it Because there's no, there's not there's
not a me. And obviously when you you you
funnel, you funnel it gets to narrower and narrower when you

(40:28):
get to, you know, trans people that is.
Yeah. Like I think that the idea of
homelessness is is it's an awfulthought, but it's completely,
completely true. And I hope.
That the museum as a home. Yeah.
You know the museum is a home. And it's and it's for, for

(40:49):
everybody, for. Everybody but it's should.
Be, you know, when they, when they aren't, when there isn't a
representation there, it's not because you because you used to.
And it's like that with theatre and it's, you know, and
classical music, an opera and but they, but I know that
institutions are trying to trying to change that.
But if you, if you can't see yourself, you're not going to

(41:11):
want to do that as a for a living.
And then it's just perpetuates, isn't it?
Time for a short break to let you into the exhibitionist
studio. Look around you.
There is a computer, a good mic,the software in the computer,

(41:32):
which is a sort of virtual spacethrough which you and I meet
with a time and space delay. Then there are my books and two
perfectly round Flintstones. All the magic happens here.
I've been talking to a university whose students need
placements and I could use some assistance with production and

(41:57):
research while also mentoring the future professionals of the
field. But for that, I have to pay
them. And that's where you come in.
Do you know how much a membership costs?
A mere £25 a year. Which means that you pay £2 a

(42:20):
month. 25 lbs for a whole year. When you'd buy a catalog, that's
the average price for one singlebook with two texts.
If you become a member of exhibition esters through a
platform called Sub Stack, you not only get to support

(42:41):
exhibition esters, but you also receive on average about 18 more
texts minimum that I will have written about many, many, many
fascinating topics of contemporary arts, philosophy of
art, and many other subjects. There's a little bonus that I

(43:02):
added, which is getting to ask me questions.
If you have a question about contemporary art, about the
field, about the market, about studies in contemporary art, I'm
very, very happy to do the research for you or to dig into
my little well of knowledge and put the information out there

(43:22):
for you. I can name you or you can be
anonymous, so you get to put me to work as long as the questions
and the prompts you give me are within my abilities and the
research material available to me.
Otherwise, you can go to donor books in the description notes.

(43:43):
If you have 1 LB to spare, you can just donate one time.
It's very very small amount. That's what I do with Wikipedia
once in a while. I put some money in there
because I use it almost daily and I want to reward people who
nourish me. Thank you for spending some time
with me here in my studio. Thank you for considering this

(44:07):
decent proposal. On with the episode.
So she comes back 1992. OK, so she's 22 years old,
right? Putting that into perspective
and talking about the strong willed character of Jenny
Savile, she makes these paint this painting called Propt 1992.

(44:32):
It's 7 by 6 foot. It's so about 180 by 210 meters
and she writes on it. It's quite a massive presence,
let's say in in the exhibition. Yeah, there's a huge portrait of
a naked woman with from an angle, we're already looking up

(44:58):
at it, but it's painted from an angle where the, the the
foreground is very much her, the, the, the woman's legs, her
thighs. And it kind of gets gets smaller
up to her head, which is is actually slightly off the top of
the the picture and sort of raised, but you can't see her
face totally clearly. But she's definitely gazing up

(45:20):
at this person. But she's sitting on a very
uncomfortable stool. I mean, I thought it looked like
it's digging into her legs. It was almost tree like.
I thought like, which might be relevant, I suppose, but that
that's sticking into her, her, her calf, and then and also very

(45:40):
uncomfortably. You're very polite.
Because I think for me, she's being impaled to be awfully,
awfully polite. Yeah, impaled.
Looks like she it's basically making her.
Well, that's yes, but there's another bit that looks like the
the bit that looked more uncomfortable to me was the bit
digging into a leg. But then yes, the the central
post. A straight.

(46:01):
No, it's a. It's not a straight leg.
It's like a kind of a an old classical.
Stool or a bit of trunk or something.
But yes, it looks like it's impaling her vaginally, which is
not very comfortable. And yeah, but kind of a lot of
flesh a lot. It looks, it's sort of spilling

(46:25):
over really on on on this stool and her and her her knuckles are
digging into fingers digging into her thighs and very
uncomfortable. It looks very it's it there's a
great amount of discomfort. It it's not it doesn't look like
pain in a way it's more. It's a bit pre pain.

(46:50):
Pre pain maybe? It's, it's, yeah.
It's she's. I don't know she's.
Interesting. She's it's like a almost I
almost hurting herself that gripping the digging your nails
into yourself is is almost a self preservation.

(47:11):
I think when you're you're hurting yourself to avoid
feeling the rest of it, I think something there, but yeah.
And then this back this, this text, which is as if you're
looking through, yeah, as if it's in front of you.
You're looking through a a window that it's written on on

(47:32):
the other side. So it's kind of backwards, which
is. And it's kind of like a Zen,
like as a as if she had taken her finger and written yeah,
with the paint, like putting a finger into the paint.
Yes, 'cause it reflects exactly the same colours as the as the
image in front. So yes, it's.
It's an indentation. Yeah.

(47:53):
Exactly. And the text says if we continue
to speak in the sameness speakers, men have spoken for
centuries, we will fail each other.
And it's this idea that failing each other speaks of the
sisterhood like the community. And then, you know, it's it's a
sentence by Luce Uruguay, who's Irigaray, who's this feminist

(48:17):
philosopher. And she does talk about
community. So it props is a self-portrait.
I mean, she doesn't like to talkabout portraits, but she did use
her own image. She did use her own body and she
talks about and so it's described as being this kind of
fat BLOB of a woman, of an ugly woman and also an affiliation

(48:38):
very specifically to Lucian Freud's painting.
And Lucian Freud was known and and almost kind of like infamous
for working with models that he kind of took extracted the truth
from, right. He was rather this truth teller
about people. And there's this painting that's

(49:00):
quite famous of his with this very, very plump woman on this
on the couch, lying down on the couch.
And this definitely is her quoting that operation of
looking at someone else, but she's reverting the situation.
So the reverted text kind of tells you that here is the woman

(49:23):
painting herself. So looking at herself, and she
said I liked painting a nude body, which was very frowned on
in feminist studies. Where's the gaze or that kind of
debate? That conflict is what made that
painting work. So of of course she's
conflicted. So her reference is a male.
She is going straight into body and soul, into the most

(49:50):
patriarchal tradition of portraiture, painting huge
dimensions. So her paintings are all very,
very big S large scale paintingsand she is very upfront about
it. And she said I went to Venice, I
went to Florence, I went everywhere.
The paintings were huge and I wanted to do that.

(50:11):
I saw myself making that. I saw myself in that pleasure of
expanding on that big surface. So you could say echoing like
much later feminism saying like you want to take space.
And then in 9394, she's going tomake, she's going to produce
another painting, which is called Trace, which is also in

(50:32):
the exhibition, which are is a abody seen from the back with the
lines of a Bruin, knickers drawn, indenting on onto the
flesh. And the flesh is painted in a
way that pretty much emulates Lucien Freud's painting of the
skin in its grey, green, pinkish, yellowish tones, very

(50:53):
white skin. There was something a bit.
That paint painting gave me a bit of a idea of the Mortuary
slab, to be honest. That that image of the trace
that because it was so pale and tinged and with the with those

(51:14):
the lines and I think because the arms are not visible really,
it just gave me a sense of it just being a almost lifeless,
although it's not, it's not horizontal.
But yeah, there was something, the idea that we're, you know,
constricted and contained by these.
Yeah. That kind of, I don't know, the

(51:36):
trappings of being a woman, you know, And yeah, and also they
have those, those parts are so sexualized and, and viewed how
they're viewed. Yes, it was I I found that one
very, very striking for that. Charles Saatchi bought propped

(52:01):
spots her, supports her for a year and a half, gives her money
to prepare an exhibition in 1994.
She's part of the exhibition Young British Artists Three at
Charles Saatchi Gallery, where he has invested in a lot of
very, very young artists who aregoing to be shown in the famous

(52:25):
or infamous exhibition Sensationat the Royal Academy of Art in
1997. And this is really interesting
because Jenny Savile is doing her little what she's going, you
know, she's journeying into the contemporary art world because
she also has an exhibition in 96at Pace McGill in New York with
a huge gallery. In 99, she will have an

(52:48):
exhibition at Gagosian. At 29 years old, Gagosian is a
huge gallery. Now Gagosian has galleries all
over the world. It's huge.
The the, the gallery represents her, still does.
So she's set for life selling her work and in 97 sensation

(53:08):
happens the UK loses its mind along with the Turner Prize and
discovers contemporaries Tracey Yemen's tent with all the lovers
names that she's had sex with embroidered on a tent on the
tent's sides and and and there'sthis activity of people who seem

(53:29):
to do nothing skilled really andcall it art and sell it for
millions in the BBC your home Susie the most incredible.
It's on YouTube. I've I've talked about this in
Tracy Yemen episode and it's themost astonishing program ever
ever made. The title is is Painting Dead.

(53:53):
And I think in Jenny's Jenny Savile's context is really
interesting because they invite a bunch of people, curators,
David Sylvester, like this revered critic Norman Rosenthal,
Lots of people. Tracy Yemen, drunk as a skunk.

(54:13):
She leaves the show midway, saying they're real people
watching this. And she leaves and they're
debating in the most horrifically jargony terms if
painting, whether painting's dead or not.
And it it's really fascinating to see how Jenny Savile was a

(54:36):
painter, was in the show. There were other painters.
And there's this question that is being asked.
Meanwhile, people keep on painting.
And what's also really funny is that in 1994, Jenny Savile
produces her first cover for manic St.
Preachers album Holy Bible, which is one of those paintings

(55:00):
of these massive bodies seen from the left, from the right
and centred. She becomes a mum at some point
in already in the 21st century. Motherhood shifts her
perspective. She has a magnificent,
magnificent quote about it, saying giving birth is like
being in a Francis Bacon painting, which I thought that's

(55:25):
so. Funny, isn't it?
Yeah, That's so, Yeah. So that's lovely.
That link with. Yeah, I, I'd probably, if I had
to describe it, probably would end up being something, you
know, theatrical in some way. But yes, that, that, that's
wonderful. Yeah.
I wonder if she's experienced itat the time.
I sort of saw that at the time, you know, while.

(55:48):
It's while it's going on, I don't know about you, but it was
not my I didn't have that kind of awareness.
No, but sometimes I do have things where I'm in a situation
I'm like this is like a this is like I'm in line of duty or or
I'm in EastEnders or something and I'll I'll sort of be seeing
myself and this and I'm like, this is just weird.
Is that are there cameras? She started looking at the

(56:12):
figures of the Virgin Mary and how they're depicted in
painting. And so she really is drawing
from motherhood and from her ownphysical experience of
motherhood. And she even says something
really interesting about the umbilical cord.
She says that she saw that as a kind of a rope that connected
her to ancient worlds, and that's why she's going to go

(56:35):
into the ancient history. She loves epic poetry.
She really is a very classical referenced person and I think
you see that in her work. And so later on, I mean, and
this is like at the end of the 90s, there's there's a a
question of Speaking of representation that I wanted to
bring up about her career, whichis the fact that she is very

(56:57):
moved by the body. So the body really is the focus
of her art and she and, and veryshe's very aware and, and she
claims it for herself. And at a certain point she's
going to look into types of bodies and into, she moves away
from that Lucien Freud like skin.
And she, this idea of going intoa plastic surgeon's office and,

(57:21):
and going into the archives and even witnessing some operations
is very much what she's going togo in in search for besides
looking at paintings so precisely and in such detail.
And so she does a painting of Della Gray's volcano, who's a

(57:41):
queer intersex visual artist. And the painting's called
Matrix. And it's the composition is like
Gustav Corbis painting the origin of the world Laurie Jean
du Monde, who's it was a very famous painting that is
permanently at the Muse dos in Paris.

(58:03):
And it's to open legs and in thecenter of the painting you have
the vulva and you have the pubicarea and and it's cut at at mid
level, at waist level. So you only see the legs open
wide, You see the vulva and thenyou see the torso in sort of you

(58:27):
are almost that's vagina level, if I might say so.
And you don't see the rest of the body.
It was the realist movement in France, and it was also this
idea that OK, realism. So let's really paint women.
Let's really paint what we see and what we desire.
And the male gaze here is reallyinteresting because in feminists

(58:51):
rereadings of contemporary art and also of our own relationship
to our own body, there's this discourse about how we don't
know our own bodies, how we're not taught to look at our own
bodies. And here you have painting of a
man who is painting a vulva. And of course, it was a huge
scandal at the time. And she was looking at this

(59:14):
painting and she was looking again at quoting this painting
visually, but also looking at other types of bodies.
And she talks about being fascinated by the fact that
there was there were breasts. And so she continues the body up
to the face. There were breasts and there was
a penis as well. There's an article about Jenny
Savile, a recent article in The New Yorker, who also talks about

(59:38):
the other side of things and touches upon this idea of wire
ISM of the painter. And so they contacted the.
Person who was. In the painting there's there's
a quote of the the model saying that it reproduces the intersex
body as a public spectacle and thereby reinforces the status

(01:00:03):
quo. So there's this difficult
relationship with from the models perspective, which
weirdly enough is what she was trying to subvert in the
beginning of her career. And here she's going into kind
of the exception. What are the visual exceptions

(01:00:23):
to the regularity or the averagevisual condition of the body?
I copy pasted it. Oh yes, OK, so yes.

(01:00:46):
And so there's there's a quote of the the model saying that it
reproduces the intersex body as a public spectacle and thereby
reinforces the status quo. So there's this difficult
relationship with from the models perspective, which
weirdly enough is what she was trying to subvert in the

(01:01:09):
beginning of her career. And he is she's going into kind
of the exception. What are the visual exceptions
to the regularity or the averagevisual condition of the body and
here of gender? I'll leave it at that because I

(01:01:30):
think we'll and and in we'll talk about it in regards to the
exhibition, but just referencingin 2009.
So she does another manic St. St.
Preachers album called Jennifer Play Lovers, where there's this
painting of a boy. It seems to be a boy with a sort

(01:01:53):
of bloodied face that is in the exhibition or a version of which
is in the exhibition. And the CD at the time was
considered inappropriate. And so this is a direct quote
from Sainsbury's representativeswho decided not to show the

(01:02:15):
cover of the CD on sale and thenand so kind of stocked it in, in
plain slip cases. So again, this idea and, and we,
we know the story of this of this kid.
So Speaking of the market context as well.
So her London galleries, so Gagosian says of her, she's
incredibly says of her, so her London galleries says of her,

(01:02:39):
she's incredibly precise about her process.
And there's handsome demand withlimited supply.
Oh. Interesting, In 2018 propped was
sold in auction at Sotheby's in London and it sold for the
equivalent of $12.4 million. So I saw this in The New Yorker

(01:03:03):
article and was too lazy to convert it back to pounds.
But you can. I mean, it gives you an idea of
how expensive it was. And it made her, at the time,
the record price in auction for a work by a living female
artist, now surpassed by Cecily.Brown So when you sell a piece

(01:03:23):
of work, I don't know this. So does she own that work
initially to then sell it or wasit already because Tachi had
presented it? Is that right initially?
And and and and bought it. He bought it.
It was the first. Painting.
What did he buy? He bought.

(01:03:46):
I don't know is the answer. I don't know how much it was at
the time, couldn't find the price, but it certainly wasn't
12 million, I can tell you that.And what happens and that's a a
very good question and a a thingthat makes it incredibly
difficult to evaluate the market.
So if you are represented by a commercial gallery, as Jenny

(01:04:07):
Savile is by Gagosian, they listyour work, they have a price
list, and when you're a collector, you go there and they
present you the prices. And so it is a sort of
management as well that you get when you're represented by a
commercial gallery. That said, there's a lot of
secrecy around prices. And so the only perception you

(01:04:30):
have of prices is when you have auctions.
And so as you very rightly asked, what happens is that
Saatchi sold his collection, someone bought it.
What happens when you're a living artist, which is you're
represented by a gallery gallery, so sells your work and

(01:04:50):
then it's in a collection. Now it's in an auction house, so
completely disconnected, unaffiliated with both the
gallery that represents the artist and the artist.
So when an artwork and I worked in commercial galleries goes
into auction of one of the artists you represent as a

(01:05:11):
commercial gallery, panic mode. Huge panic.
Because what can happen? There's 2 possibilities. 3
there's a possibility of magically it's selling for the
exact price that you have. It's priced in your own gallery,
or horrifyingly, it sells for less.

(01:05:33):
Or befuddlingly, it sells fur a shit load of money 100 times
more expensive than what you're selling it for in your gallery,
which is not great either. And this is completely
disconnected from both the artist and the person who
represents them. Right to the to the artist.

(01:05:56):
This is what I I've never actually thought about before.
So Jenny Savile's painting sellsfor $12 million.
Does she, she doesn't. That's terrible.
That goes to the owner because it's a question of ownership.
You own something. So thus the speculative markets.
I think it's kind of. Scrabble if it feels very dirty

(01:06:17):
to me, this whole thing. It you heard it here first.
And I'm then I'm then assuming that, you know, if, if this
painting first sold for 12 million, then her stock goes up.
Like she, you know, if, if you want a Jenny Savile painting,
you're going to have to pay a lot for it.
Does she then get commissions? And how does she make money?

(01:06:42):
I mean, I've never ever thought about this before and it's
really interesting. Question the value increases
because you think, oh, I want tobuy a new one because then it's
going to go up. It's going to take her five
years to paint it. And she's like, shit, it takes
me two years to make painting you.
Know better? Do.

(01:07:02):
Some small ones going on and there's another angle for it
which is auction prices. Also tells you where we are in
terms of the gender gap. So you will notice that I said
at the time record price paid atauction for work by a living
female artists. To give you an idea, in 2018 the

(01:07:26):
painting Portrait of an Artist'sPool with two figures from 1972
by David Hockney was sold by approximately $90,000,000 as
opposed to the 12 million of herown work.
And in 2008, Mian Hearst's Golden calf of also 2008.

(01:07:51):
No, that can't be right. Same year production sold in
auction for 16,000,000. About 16,000,000. 10 years
before. So more than 10 years before
Jenny Savile. I suppose you see props in the
distance, but the first picture that was the the very first one

(01:08:13):
as you go in was the I don't know what it was called
unfortunately, but the two the 2girls faces very close together,
1 peeking over the other shoulder.
Huge, huge canvas, massive paint.
I was really taken by the the texture of it and being that

(01:08:35):
close. How kind of close to the this
huge amount of paint and the flesh and these these bright
faces, girls faces that her workis very well, not all of it
actually, but those certainly this first room, the fleshiness
of it. I really and the really got a

(01:08:56):
sense of the texture of of the paint, but also of the of the
feeling of flesh and and and I love under her eyes.
I I'm really struck by the all the eyes, huge eyes.
They're very realistic as opposed to all the other
impressionistic or gestural likereal big brush strokes like she

(01:09:19):
uses these big brushes blobs like very.
Big that are that are sort of part of the picture, obviously,
but they're just huge chunks of paint kind of globs globs of
them. But yes, the eyes are really,
and I and I, I do, I love, I love looking at what I was
saying to you that I like looking at portraits of people's

(01:09:39):
faces because I do like looking at people's eyes.
And we actually had a discussionabout looking into people's
eyes, didn't we, before we even went into the exhibition about
how that's the only way you can,that's how you humanise
somebody. If you, if you're going to have
an argument with someone, swear at someone in the in the car,
you actually look them in the eyes.
It really it stopped it kind of,you know, you can see a cyclist

(01:10:02):
as just as a thing on a piece ofmetal.
But if you see that, if you lookthem in the eye, then they
become real. And I think that that's what's
so wonderful about these huge oversized pieces of art that are
quite clearly not they're not realistic.
They're far too big, but they'rebut they but yet they are
because the eyes are feel real. You know, you can see into

(01:10:24):
their, into them. And I, yeah.
And I, I mean, I immediately thought of my daughter, I
suppose. And that's the youthfulness,
the, the fleshiness of, of youthand the connection between the
two, the 2 heads. It's all, well, it's completely
indiscernible in a way. It's almost like a 2 headed A2

(01:10:47):
headed creature. It's almost like a 2 headed I
was. For a moment I thought it what I
really had to look quite closelyto see that she was actually had
a had a the one behind had her chin on the other's shoulder.
Yeah. That that close, that connection
the between two young people andthat you can be so close and and

(01:11:10):
so physical with another person that's either a sister possibly
or a friend that you might not necessarily have as a.
Grown up, skin to skin connection.
And then in the other room, there's what we talked about
before, which is these 90s paintings where you have again,
an indentation on the painting. You have a body of a, a naked

(01:11:34):
woman. And in this case, it was the
painter's finger that touched the image and made these lines
around inside the body that's kind of outlined the shape of
the body. And she explained that that some
friends of her, so this is the 90s diet culture.
And so she explains that some friends actually drew the drew

(01:11:57):
these lines that as the the the place where they, their bodies,
where they wanted their bodies to lose weight into or to be
reduced to because they were obsessed with being skinny,
because that was kind of the 90ssort of culture.

(01:12:17):
And she talks about not being really touched by that culture
and but but being very aware of it.
And the Manic St. Preaches album, a lot of the
songs talk about anorexia and she was really interested in
being part of it because of that.
Yeah, it's yeah. And the the the lines she draws

(01:12:38):
are quite as circular. I mean, there's no way you
could, I suppose, shrink down towhat the but but in a way
that's, that's what it was like,you know, you can't, you can't,
you can't lop in lop off limbs to become as thin as some as
people wanted to be, I suppose. Yeah, something something about
mapping the body as well. And that, that just being

(01:13:03):
unhappy with everything about your own physicality, it's, it's
very sad. She's in the paintings quite a
bit. She wants to be in that
tradition. I had a hard time understanding
the flipping of the narrative, like Full disclosure and I and

(01:13:25):
I, I was interested in seeing where she was going to take
this. And I, I, I propose that we go
to the Manic St. Preachers image which which is
worth painting, which is not that far away.
So you cross that corridor, you have the one with the knickers
and the bra that we described earlier.
And then we have it was. On its own, wasn't it?
It's on its own in that space. Yes.

(01:13:49):
And so you, I and I remember youbeing really captured by that
image. Yeah, I think because of the
because partly because there wascolour.
And I think her work, it's apartfrom the end, the final images
and the the the most recent images in the the final room
which are very colourful. There isn't a lot of colour.

(01:14:11):
There's, there was a moment whenthere's, there's two, there were
two images in, in another room of, of female.
There was 2 females possibly or female and a male entwined with
lines across them. One of them was quite dark and
used darker colour, I think maybe a darker red and, and, and
the other one has pink, pinkish lines because of coral coloured

(01:14:35):
lines, a little bit of a little bit of blue, not a lot of colour
on either. But I was more drawn to the, the
brighter colour. It made me feel more positive
about it and I thought that's really interesting.
This kind of I, the, the, the, what you use completely affect
how you feel about, about the image.
And I, and I was drawn to this very large portrait.

(01:14:56):
I, I felt it was a young girl, but but it's a boy.
I'm not sure I think. Well, I, I did, I've googled
the, googled the, you know, talkabout the Mannix pitch and how
it was, how that was covered over in shops because it was
deemed offensive in some way, because it could be seen as
blood, you know, blood and pain and lips that have been

(01:15:20):
bloodied. But in fact, it's, it's an image
she took of a, of a, a boy, or presumably it's a boy, but with
a port. Port wine stains a very large
birthmark across their face, which I, which I remarked when
you, when you look, I took a picture of it and I could see
that more clearly through my camera.

(01:15:43):
I could, it was very clearly a port wine mark.
Whereas if you're looking at it with the naked eye, it could be
there's multiple. Yes.
Multiple different ways of reading it, but it's a beautiful
blue behind the image and very it's a.
Sort of electric. Blue and the Blues reflected in
here is it Yeah, it's a it's a very well we sort of talked

(01:16:04):
about it being quite anime and that kind of graphic novel type
image because it was so it's theimage is so strong.
The face is so strong against this very deep colour, which was
reflected in the hair. It's very, I, I really loved, I
loved all the lines of it and the, the, there's so much going

(01:16:29):
on and, and it's and also so many that idea of different
interpretations of the, what's the expression?
The the eyes are very so it's interesting 'cause the colours.
So she collects a lot of imagery.
She says it's a pain to travel with her 'cause she takes
pictures of everything and she loves taking pictures of
graffiti in countries, in foreign countries, because it

(01:16:53):
takes out the political message.And she's only looking at the
colour and the writing. A little bit like the site
Wombley's, as it were. Because now, you know, site
Wombley so you can say a little bit like Saitombley, don't you?
Like Yes, very. Erudite.
Yes, absolutely and. You're referencing them at all
times. No, we don't know what I'm

(01:17:13):
talking about. And Esther will be like, what
the hell are you talking about, Susie?
I've got good knowledge now. And so she's so and so she's got
inspired by those spray colours,but also when she had children,
she started looking at the colours that children wear and
that children are drawn to, likethese neon colours and these

(01:17:35):
fluorescent colours. And so she changed her palette
quite a bit, which is the case of all the portraits at the end.
So the that looked like graffitior?
Street Art. A little bit.
So she went from this fleshy colour to these kinds of
paintings and in this case particularly there's a whole
bunch. So it's the case of the intersex

(01:17:56):
sex worker and there's the case of her looking fur bodies that
are that that are different, butwhich are also uttered because
of their difference. And she's focusing on them and
reducing them to that otherness.So there's this, this criticism,

(01:18:18):
which is I, for me, the limits of the exercise of flipping the
narrative and not really interrogating the language that
you're absorbing from centuries and centuries of paint, of
patriarchal painting with enormous qualities, but also a
very specific point of view and a specific role in history.

(01:18:40):
Because paintings historicized before TV, before photography, I
did not have this impression of motherhood, of physicality, of
the skin. For me, it was all about
painting and this endless research for the masterpiece,
for that, for, for that image that finally strikes you and

(01:19:04):
situates or deconstructs enough.Like you were saying, quite
rightly so. You don't see the port wine
stain, you see blood. You see a hero of an anime
character. You see so many things, and she
does that really well. But there's also this kind of
stigmatization. Well, yes.

(01:19:27):
And I, I also because I was like, well, who is this person?
And it was a picture she found in a book.
And I thought, I don't know if I, if, if I saw, if I, you know,
that was me and I saw myself. I recognise myself.
And of course, having a port wine stain is something people
are going to look at and stare and point at and, and to have it

(01:19:51):
to have, you know, to put it on front of a of an album that then
has to be covered up because it's kind of offensive.
I was like, oh God, it's. That's a sad.
Story for that. Poor.
Child. It looks like a child.
Yeah, it. Does It's definitely a young
person. Yeah.
There is something slightly uncomfortable about that, I

(01:20:12):
think. The motherhood thing.
Just wondering about my own. I, I felt like the, the, the
bitches of her holding the babies and they're saying, yeah,
you know, you do get those the, the, the flashes of the, the

(01:20:34):
virgin holding baby Jesus and these kind of podgy figures.
Baby Jesus is always quite well,quite well behaved, doesn't
really wriggle around very much.I, I got, I did get the sense of
having to grapple with a sort ofthis kind of, oh wait, a
creature. I think they are at that stage

(01:20:56):
of these creatures and that of of having to step, be still and
be the solid. So just to explain, these are
these drawings that you were describing that were in graphite
and then these red crayons and or, or blue.
And it was this woman sitting a little bit like the Virgin Mary

(01:21:19):
holding the baby. And she said she did.
She said that she did a researchand the only painting or drawing
I think she found was a Rembrandt of a Virgin Mary
holding or even not even a Virgin Mary mother trying to
hold the child. And there's a kind of like a
shoe. Flying off.
From the child's foot and because it's it's, it's hard to

(01:21:39):
contain the child, but all the other children in classic
painting, they're just because they're Jesus's, they have the
wisdom. So I don't know.
So she was really trying to revisit that iconography from
the motherhood perspective. So the Virgin Mary's perspective
whereby they're trying to hold the child for a family photo and

(01:22:02):
the children are naked. And there's even one where
there's a kind of this little, this small little penis sticking
out kind of like almost towards you.
It's such a weird Yes, it's. Very it's it's really is is in
your face literally, isn't it? It's.
Yeah, that's the only time whereI was thinking, oh, that brings

(01:22:24):
memories of nappies. I mean, yes, especially the
penis is kind of the little is that it's always the danger when
you're changing a little. Boy's nappy.
Is it going to? Is it going to pee in my face?
Basically, if you've never changed a little boy's nappy,
this is what it's like. You have to be really super
careful. We have to wrap it up because

(01:22:44):
you have to pick up your children, and I think that's the
perfect way to finish it becausethat's motherhood and that's
what parenting is and contemporary life.
I very much, I felt like I've learned.
I've learned things. And I think that's if I go to
see an exhibit, I always want tobe able to learn something about
another perspective or about my own interpretation of something

(01:23:07):
in my own experience, other people's experience.
And actually, I've learnt about art.
I've I have learnt about painting and of course about
Jenny Savile, but other thing, other painters as well.
And I've, it's so enriching. What an enriching experience to
to have been, to be on your podcast.
It's been really fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting

(01:23:29):
me. Thank you and likewise likewise.
It was such a pleasure to have you over and I hope you come.
Back. I will definitely come back.
I'd love to go to another exhibition with you.
Thanks, Joanne. Take.
Care bye bye. Exhibition This is is an
independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre

(01:23:50):
Nevers. We have episodes every two weeks
and this season, season 3 is a bit of a turning point.
We have 5 new episode types, from more experimental art
travel logs or art stories to conversational formats about
solo exhibitions with people whoare not part of the industry.

(01:24:12):
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
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