EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT

Galleries (and oh so much cake)

Above the doors to Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art large neon letters read EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT. This comforting affirmation is by artist Martin Creed, whose work can also be found on the walls of Tate Modern stating, the whole world + the work = the whole world. Art is the whole world: it is how we understand it, how we express it, how we survive it. Or, as Cornelia Parker puts it in her exhibit at Tate Britain, ‘We need art more than ever because it is like a digestive system, a way of processing.’

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, Martin Creed

Over my week in Edinburgh and London I managed to visit an amazing seven galleries and museums, some housing old favourites and others with new friends waiting to be made, all interspersed with an epic amount of cake. Kim and I went to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery so that Kim could introduce me to her favourite portraits, and to the Scottish National Gallery where I discovered a gorgeous portrait by Ethel Walker, The Spanish Shawl. I love visiting galleries with Kim, particularly portrait galleries, which aren’t a space I naturally gravitate towards. Kim however sees them differently that I do, all those faces looking out at her, names and stories caught in paint. It is as though they talk to her, filling her mind with characters and ideas. Standing in front of a portrait that has held her attention, Kim is so clear about what she sees, what draws her in, what questions of narrative and life the paintings prompt. This way of seeing is one I don’t have but adore sharing in. I am sure any one of her fans would love standing there with her, getting this glimpse into her writing process, and I feel blessed that I get to.

The Spanish Shawl, Ethel Walker

While Kim was working, I took myself off to Edinburgh’s photography centre, where I met the haunting photographs of Ishiuchi Miyako for the first time, and to the National Museum of Scotland, a space in which tartan swatch books and a sperm whale jaw, lighthouse lamps and big cat skulls all nestle under one roof. Among it all the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh & Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh called out to me, their familiar lines and history deeply beloved.

Left; The National Museum of Scotland, Right: Mackintosh.

Passing under Martin Creeds work and into the rooms of Modern One I was met with new and old friends, from the Future Library and Alberto Giacometti’s Woman With Her Throat Cut which seems to writhe in agony and never fails to stop me in my tracks, to my favourite new discovery, Saturn by Helen Frankenthaler, whose bright colours, energy and movement was irresistible.

Left: Woman with her Throat Cut, Giacometti, Right: Saturn, Helen Frankenthaler

Maria Bartuszová, Tate Modern

In London I had the pleasure of two Tate exhibits, Cornelia Parker in Tate Britain and Maria Bartuszová at Tate Modern. Parker I know, but it turns out not that well, so much of her work was new to me and utterly mind expanding. The woman is a genius, and the straightforward way in which she writes about her ideas and process was almost as much of a revelation as the work itself. At Tate Modern the incredible plaster sculptures Bartuszová were strangers to me, though the techniques she pioneered have become common place in art schools around the world. There is something about the marks an artist leaves in plaster that make it a captivating material, from Giacometti’s fingerprints to the lines from Rodin’s moulds. Bartuszová plaster works are equally as captivating, perhaps more so as she saw them as an end point of their own rather than a road to a more traditional material.

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Cornelia Parker

Island, Cornelia Parker

I shared Cornelia Parker with Lauren, who is among my favourite people in the world to visit a gallery with. Every exhibition we see together is made better for the others company. The chance to see art through the eyes of someone whose interests interlock with mine but whose expertise is different. It is a profound way to share my world with someone I love, and I am grateful every time it happens.

Tate has become an increasingly more exciting gallery over the last decade, and Tate Modern is one of the spaces I feel most comfortable in anywhere in the world. Ending my gallery tour within its walls made complete sense, though it wasn’t planned. Throughout this letter I have used words like friend, beloved, meeting, and strangers. This choice was an intentional one with purposeful meaning. Art that gets to me, that finds a way deep inside and helps me see the whole world feels like being with a dear friend, one who knows a fundamental part of me. Meeting new art for the first time feels like the chance to make new friends, to see and be seen in a new way. This is part of what pulls me into galleries time and again, the friends awaiting me within the gallery walls, offering ways of looking inwards and outwards, ways of believing that EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT. I certainly feel steadier within myself after so many rooms filled with so much work, filled with so much of the world, filled with so much of me.

A note on some changes to A Nomadic Rose

I am changing the publishing schedule. Your free weekly updates will now come on Wednesdays and paid subscribers will receive their additional treats on Sundays. To subscribe or upgrade to paid click the button below! I will return with a Photo from the Archives on Sunday, and tales from the van build next week.