IN CONVERSATION: Penny Goring - with Alexandra Rauscher

Jon Bonfiglio speaks to writer Alexandra Rauscher about the work of Penny Goring as part of the Unloving Love exhibition at the Colegio de San Ildelfonso in Mexico City.

Rauscher's review on the exhibition is available here:

https://artinsanmiguel.com/unloving-love-inside-penny-gorings-radically-vulnerable-universe

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to Less Time Than Ideas. Where today, as part of a discussion, I'm delighted to say that I'm joined by Alexandra Rauscher, who is uh who's a writer on a variety of different things, but um today we're going to just be talking about art specifically uh a really interesting exhibition in Mexico City at the uh Colegio de Tanil del Fonso, this amazing old colonial building right in the heart of the colonial centre of Mexico City. And it features work. One of the exhibitions in place there is a show by British artist Penny Goring, um, that um Alex has recently written a review of for both uh art uh websites artinsanmiguel.com and also the San Miguel Times, and we'll link to the review in the in the show notes. But we just wanted to take uh just wanted to take the a moment to sort of discuss Penny Goring's work a little bit as well, because Penny is I think it's fair to say an outsider artist in the sense that she didn't formally study art and sort of comes at it from a from a pretty distinct uh perspective, and she's in her 60s now and has only sort of really come into um broad recognition in the last few years with her first solo show uh a couple of years ago, and um how she approaches not just uh art and processes around art and but also sort of trauma and therapy and healing are I think pretty pretty interesting. Um welcome to the podcast, Alex.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Thanks, John. Very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Um Alex, maybe you can just sort of describe to us a little bit Penny's work, uh what it what it looks like, what it sort of focuses on, um, and also your how you read it and your reaction when you sort of first um came across it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yes, sure. So when I first entered the exhibition, I didn't really know what to expect because I hadn't touched base with Penny Goring a lot before, but the exhibition immediately drew me in. Uh, one aspect to mention is that it's extremely versatile, so her art is very yeah, like flowy, it flows between different styles: paintings, drawings, she writes poems as well, she does her own sculptures. So um there's a lot to discover in this exhibition, um, but it's also a lot to take in because it's a very deep exhibition. So you notice quite soon when you enter the first rooms that it's a very personal style of art Penny Goring's uh is doing. Um it doesn't remain at the surface, but it takes you right into her emotional universe. And after passing out of the gallery rooms, you definitely leave with with a lot of food for thought.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah, it's it's it is as you say, really sort of versatile and shape-shifting. In the early rooms, there's um there's a lot of work around her dolls, which we'll maybe we'll come to in a minute. Um, dolls which she's made personally more as companions for herself than as objects of art, in a sense. And then we move into sort of photography, collage, video, in which there's a sort of a juxtaposition of a lot of touchstones from British history and pop and resistance and punk activity mixed in with gender violence. I think that it's one of the things which struck me actually that she sort of drew together the a uh neoliberal history um of the United Kingdom, specifically from uh Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s onwards, and the violence imposed, enacted on the landscape of the United Kingdom with the violence enacted on the landscape of the female form. Um, and then beyond that, you then enter this really amazing huge room where I don't really know how you best describe these huge colourful um sculptures that uh I don't know, resemble lots of different forms, but they're sort of they're asymmetrical, they're help me out, Alex. How would you describe that last room with all these standalone sculptures?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

They are as individual as Penny Goring is as a person, I would say they are raw, they have some radicality to them, and you can't compare them with anything else, so um they are kind of unexpected, and you can really tell that they come from a very like yeah, I would say unfiltered view of of the world, of society, but also an unfiltered look inside that Penny Goring um gives us into her own um yeah emotional world.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, I wouldn't want to pin it down overly, but some of those shapes in these significant multicolored sculptures are resemble parts of the female form. Some of them resemble they come almost from science fiction, others seem to resemble oversized sort of sex toys. Um it's a really difficult uh it's it I don't want to say that it's obtuse, but it is just incredibly surprising, and especially given the the really sort of grounded um visceral nature, especially with a lot of the pain that we've seen up until that point, that last room, it is a really surprising finish to the exhibition.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

It is definitely so there is a series that um has one striking motive, it's called the Amelia series, and uh characteristic is that Penny Goring draws two women, two women that are almost like twins, they are interchangeable, and only later you learn why or where this came from, and that yeah, you get a a very personal insight into Goring's grief because one of the women is Gring's ex-partner who died of an overdose, and she used her art to process all of the these emotions, and by putting these two women into different shapes, different forms, different colors, but always very um like abstract draw and and blurring lines between a love relationship but also violence at the same time cruelty. Um yeah, she gives a very uh very direct view into her way of processing emotions, which is her art.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

And can we just come to the the dolls, Penny Goring's dolls, that she um makes that they're almost life size, but they're life size all kind of to the size of a child rather than to the size of an to the size of an adult, and they're sort of pieces which she's made as part of her own sort of self-therapy, um almost sort of personal uh accompaniments, life forces that she brings into being with a sort of parallel id, which she through the making process, through the generation, through the genesis of these figures and their presence, um seem to give her a grounding. And I've not really of course dolls have a particular significance, especially for for kids, and you can use them to sort of ascribe lots of project lots of emotions, but uh they they don't have a voice, interestingly, they're sort of quiet, mute carriers of the weight that you ascribe to them, but it's not uh yeah, I I had just hadn't quite come across the the the working through the notion of dolls in the way that the Penny Goring does, and I thought that was a really interesting um distinct point of entry for me at least.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, so dolls definitely take on different roles for goring. They offer her some kind of comfort, it seems like, but they are also a symbol of resistance that you can see in her art. Um, for example, there's wrong doll. Wrong doll um yeah, is maybe around one meter, and her limbs are um basically signed with big letters saying wrong head, wrong feeling, things like that. And in Goring's world that resembles the struggles that take place in our bodies on a physical level as well as on an emotional level. So it seems almost as her dolls um help her come to terms with the world, come to terms with emotions, and also bring what's inside her to the outside world.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, in a very physical sense, the sort of the stuffing of a doll, not just the shaping of a doll, but also what you both literally and metaphorically, emotionally put into a doll uh are clearly of importance, both to Penny Goring and now I realise, which I hadn't really considered before, but also in a much in a much broader way. So it almost is in if we think about mass-produced dolls, there's a sort of an incoherence to that that actually dolls to achieve their most essential sense need to be sort of handmade by real people, potentially even by um the person who whose doll it is themselves. And it's just reminded me as well of the about the sort of the Guatemalan worry dolls that people have, we're just very small dolls where you you you wish away your worries the night before to these to these dolls. And again, it's um but that those are handmade, those are handmade by Guatemalan artisans, and again that almost that it's it's it's essential for dolls to be able to take on that weight for them to have been actually made by real human hands.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, and and if you see the dolls that that Goring stitches herself herself, uh stuffs herself, you can tell that they they are all different, they all resemble different things, um, but they are all um yeah, something that has a very significant place in her own individual world. And I think that's something that can yeah be quite universal for all of us. We may all have our different dolls and and we hold on to them in the dark maybe. Um but the meaning we attach to them is something that's very individual, and in her exhibition, Goring gives us a glimpse into the meaning dolls take on in her own world, which is yeah, um putting into shape something that can hardly be put into shape because it's something that deep, that emotional, and often also linked to uh yeah, a strong uh feeling of grief.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Um thanks Alex. That was Alexandra uh Rauscher, and as I say, we're gonna we'll link to the um uh reviews in the show notes. Um thank you very much and talk soon.