The Painter's Body, the Body Painted: Jenny Saville at NPG: EXHIBITION CHINWAG

How do artists paint the body nowadays? And why does Jenny Saville produce monumental images of it?

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

The artist: Jenny Saville and her solo exhibition The Anatomy of Painting. National Portrait Gallery - 20 June - 7 September 2025.

+ Susie's candid questions about the art market!

Check out images referred to in the episode ⁠here⁠.

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Key themes:

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

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Here we are, beginning of season three 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 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 Suzy Riddell, who was a joy 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 water when it comes to podcasts. Susie is one half of the award-winning podcast Limited Time Only, which she co-hosts with Esther Stanford. I actually watched Suzy and Esther receive their award live at the Independent Women Podcast Awards at the BBC Studios a few 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 it really, really cracked me up. But don't be fooled by their humble attitudes, because since we recorded this episode, Limited Time only received a second award, the Women Who Podcast Award 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 had won the Nobel Prize and seemed utterly unfazed, even a bit bored.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

You've won the Nobel Prize for Literature. How do you feel?

SPEAKER_03 2:31

It's been going on now for 30 years. I can get more excited. Right. Well I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks of some kind. Any kind of remarks. Just tell me uh what this prize means to you. Well, you've been doing it, 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.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yes. This is all I wish for all of us, all of you out there, and for myself, to just have the Doris Lessing level of no fucks 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, you didn't have time, but she did share some insights into her voice work. You'll even learn how to do the best Liverpool accent. The only question is, should you? Okay, just kidding. Another thing I have to mention is that because we talk about a calimocho, and if you don't know what that is, we'll you'll soon find out. Susie mentioned a snake bite in black, which is, I can confirm, because we had a few doubts, an alcoholic beverage made of equal parts, lager, cider, and black currant cordial. Yum. I also mentioned cy twombly, and it occurs to me now that I was so intent on making a point that I didn't get to mention how some of Jenny Saville's drawings and paintings in the exhibition bear twombly-like scribbles, which add another layer to the work. And you also get to witness Susie discovering Psy Twombly. It really is what Exhibition Chin Wag is for, and I am so here for it. I'm so grateful that I got to experience that with someone as special as Suzy. So, another heads up for those of you who have been following exhibitionistas out there. In this season I am more relaxed about the exhibition visits because the more I invite people 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 were I not talking to someone outside of my little art bubble. And so we really wander off sometimes into very specific areas of the contemporary art field or even the artist's work. And I want the episode to make space for that. I do advise you to follow us on Instagram, or better yet, to sign up to the Exhibitionist's Files through the description notes of the episode, because I will have images of the show there, as well as useful links, such as, for example, the New Yorker article that I refer to in the episode written by Rebecca Meade about Jenny Savile. So, all of this said and done, this is Exhibitionistus. I am your host, Joanna Pierre Nevis, contemporary arts 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 joining us today. We are talking about Jenny Savile's exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The title of the exhibition is The Anatomy of Painting, and you have exactly two days to visit it if you're in London. Rush to the National Portrait Gallery. I'm really, really chuffed today because I have a new guest co-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, a writer, and a presenter. And you probably will recognize her voice from the world's longest-running drama, The Archers, on BBC. Her character's name is Tracy Horribin. So it really is an immense pleasure to have you here, Susie. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this crazy experiment.

SPEAKER_07 7:25

Thank you very much for having me, Joanne. I feel like I kind of foisted myself upon you actually. I sort of was like, please have me as a guest on your podcast. So you didn't really have much choice, did you? Could all podcasts be a bit like that, you know, to take your guests somewhere different and interesting and um spark off other different thoughts and avenues, um, especially something creative like that. I I was delighted to be asked and delighted to go to this particular exhibition as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Before we went in, I said, listen, let's take a selfie so that we have a before and after. We didn't do an after, did we? We have we were so exhausted by the end of it that we completely forgot.

SPEAKER_07 8:02

I was very, very tired yesterday afternoon. And and I was remembering you saying that you get tired at exhibitions and taking it all in. I think we'd done about an hour and a half, hadn't we? An hour forty or whatever at 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 get exhausted when I go to exhibitions, it really made me think when I got home, God, I am dog tired.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

I had to sort of I think I had a nap. Did knowing that you were going to do the episodes have an impact on that? Did you visit it differently? Um were you more tired than usual when you see an exhibition?

SPEAKER_07 8:40

Maybe, because I think I I spent a lot longer in there than I probably would have done if I'd been on my own. Because obviously we were discussing things. I was able to ask you questions, so I was taking that in. Um I suppose I was really trying to really look. I do often read the little uh, you know, bits of blurb by the sides of pictures, which I think is quite exhausting in itself, trying to do the text and then get what you can initially from the picture, read the text, go back to the picture. 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 d I did approach it with more of a sense of purpose that uh that I I needed 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 give 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 the is is you know, is the play and you're following the story 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 I mean it's funny when you go to see a play with somebody, you know, you've you've met up at the theatre, you go you you you have a chat, you go to see the play, chat about the play in the interval a bit, go to see the end, you come out, and then you're like, okay, then yeah, uh, what are you doing next week? It could have been something really life-changing. But you but it it's hard to kind of get the words and to to pro 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. Um, and as you say, it's ever every part of you is involved in in in stud in looking at the picture.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

I enjoy this idea that I have to carve my own space and I have to look around and be mindful of what other people are doing. The the this experience we have in the 19th century, you 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, it's like, oh, I'm doing Thailand. Oh yeah, I'm doing Thailand. And they're like, no, Thailand should do you. Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh that just have some reverence, have some some sense of- I completely agree.

SPEAKER_07 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And I enjoy that museums, I loved your description because I love that museums make you feel first that you have this space where you don't quite know how to behave, and then you have to measure your at your your movement in space and uh your attention and your focus and your intention. That was such a lovely experience to have together. As a first 3D encounter. Yes. It was really we're not gonna forget that.

SPEAKER_07 11:38

I felt a little bit like I was a student and you were my tutor.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Oh no, don't say that.

SPEAKER_07 11:44

Not in a bad way. It's not a negative at all to say that. It was it was a gr I felt like it was a great opportunity to be able to ask those questions that I thought per perhaps were a bit silly, but you maybe feel comfortable enough that I didn't worry about asking.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

How big was the paintbrush? No, they were really good questions. But before we move on, do you want to talk about your award-winning podcast, Limited Time Only, which I must say is the most endearing podcast out there, because not only are you colleagues with Esther, but you're also great friends. Such a lovely thing to listen to because it just gives you energy and it makes you believe in 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 Gromage. And that that was I I I didn't even have a word for it. I love Wallace and Gromit, do you? I didn't. 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 we talk enough about it.

SPEAKER_07 13:07

Yes, limited time only, award-winning. 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 um we're looking positively. We were in a youth drama group together from the age of 12 um and are now slightly several decades older. But we, you know, we we we know each other really well and are very similar people, um, 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 podcast. I wouldn't have the motivation to do a podcast on my own. Um I would give up after about two. Um, but having original. That's what it is. You boss yourself around. Yeah. Um so we have chats between us, um, we have comedy sketches that are all original um and to do with the topic of the episode, and we interview interesting people um like Ben Whitehead, who's the voice of Wallace and Wallace and Gromit. Um, and we've had pop stars and broadcasters and uh sports people and all sorts of um and actors, uh comedians and artists as well. We had an artist, uh Nadia Oratoro came on. Um so uh I mean I we believe everyone is interesting, everyone's got an interesting um story to tell. But voice work, I mean, yeah, talking to Ben's really interesting because it doesn't sound remotely like Wallace in Not at all. That's what was so peculiar. But this is the first time we've had a bona fide Hollywood superstar on the show. Who's that? Because who's that? It's you, Ben. I've just been at the Oscars.

SPEAKER_06 14:53

I've just been at Hollywood.

SPEAKER_07 14:54

It's amazing what the human voice is capable of, isn't it? And what Ben does in the way of changing his voice is is just phenomenal. And I loved hearing how he described um getting into the voice, and that's something that's quite common. Like people often have a f uh 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 the all these things. So I I think everyone's capable of doing most things really, if we just concentrated. I was recording an audiobook actually.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

And do you have other directives? Like do you have to have a certain speech pattern? Do you have to have a certain because in England the accents are quite a thing. There's so many of them. And I always wondered, is there a sort of a BBC speak that you have to do for audiobooks?

SPEAKER_07 15:42

No. I mean what what will happen with an audiobook is they will ask so if they if they wanted me So my my criteria, you know, my voice would be either RP, received pronunciation, which is kind of no discernible uh British accent. It is just quite a pla uh I I'm not How can you what so what It's called RP and it's there So for example I suppose it is like a BB in all BBC speak of the past would have been very much like that. That would have been the RP accent from 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 that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

It's a Judy then shortly.

SPEAKER_07 16:27

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 of them. Um but now if you want something quite plain, you I'm not discernibly from the north of England, I'm not discernibly I suppose people you would say I'm from the south of England, I suppose, but I could be from the north, I just haven't got an accent. Um but you or I or I often get cast as for Scottish um narration as well. I'm I was born in Scotland, I'm of Scottish heritage, and I can do a very good Scottish accent, so sometimes I have to do that. Um but you know, sometimes they want a n 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, believe it or not. I've got no links with Liverpool whatsoever. I can just do a quite a good Liverpool accent.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

My sincerest apologies. Do you hate the Liverpool accent? Horrifying. What's wrong with it? It's absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_07 17:24

That wasn't a great accent.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

And if isn't it the accent of the that that series adolescent? Is it the Yeah, Stephen Graham, yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 17:34

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 to in your mouth. If I watch myself on the screen, my mouth's going really wide. Because they don't they don't they're not going down like that. It's right out of the side. So that's how I that's how I would get that 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 gonna do. But that would be uh my I suppose, I don't know, Aberdeen um fife side of Scotland. But yes, pouty. And then the Liverpool, like you see, it's much more open like that. It's I just I think it's fascinating. Fascinating. Because what and you know what really fascinates me, and I need to find more about is when people have uh 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 uh white English women who wake up and start speaking 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. Amaz and I think there's something there's something weird going on there. There's a cross soul. Very weird. There's something going on in the ether when they've they're out of it. That they've just someone else's voice has gone into them.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

They collected someone's soul.

SPEAKER_07 19:08

Yes, that's what I think. Something because it's too weird.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

I know they're somewhere talking to someone else for so long. Yes and they acquired the accent. Yeah, or they've time travel back to someone and become somebody else.

SPEAKER_07 19:22

It's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_07 19:25

Yeah, it's really weird. Really weird.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Fascinating, all of this. Yes, and not Jenny Savile. Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge. She moved across the UK quite a bit because her mum was an elementary school teacher, but her dad was a school administrator. So she was in the kind 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 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. Yes, yeah, and it also changes you, and I'm quoting her here, and it's so interesting that she was doing the same thing, looking at the same thing in a huge span of time, especially for a child, because he was a child back then. But another thing that he did that was quite interesting is that they traveled a lot, and they traveled not only to go to museums, but also to visit 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's studio, and she says that when she went in, it's now a museum actually. I think in the beginning of the 2000s it became a museum, and she says that looking at the light 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, and she would imagine he would go to the butcher and buy a piece of meat and then put it in the 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 aspects of it, so much so that he even advocated drinking red wine and Coca-Cola at nine a.m. in the morning. Which is a bizarre mix, isn't it? You don't know what you're saying. It's delicious. Is it? And it has a name. Okay. It's Spanish and it's called a calimocho.

SPEAKER_07 22:24

I'm gonna 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 hang on the wrong thing. Is it beer and blackcurrant? And cider? I can't remember the snake bite and black can't remember what it is. Do you know that one? I don't know diesel no no that well diesel sounds I mean it's the same as snake bite and black but it's the northern version. Uh the northern one I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Oh my god so right okay so red wine and coke well I'm gonna give it a go because I'm well think of a shandy shandy I do love a shandy that's true lemonade lemonade and beer well fizzy fizzy lemonade and beer something about the red wine well cherry coke exists it could it could I'm gonna try it.

SPEAKER_07 23:09

I'm going on holiday on Friday I'm gonna have a what's it called again?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Calimocho I'm gonna have a calimocho yep and it's really 9 a.m thanks very much kids move over anywho she said it she wouldn't recommend it and not at 9am at the very least and um 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 so in 1988 she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art where quote everybody had a Freud catalogue 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 the time because in the art field 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 lot of abstract minimalist art and so the teachers at the time were teaching that that's what they were bringing into the art school and so painting when you look at Jenny Saville's work you kind of draw 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 a UK painting history or art history and then there's the whole of Europe in 1988 so when she goes into school and starts painting uh Gerhard Richter who we did an episode about who was this German really important painting like real reference in the art world um was painting a series called October 8 18 1977 which um takes as its subject the Bader Meinhof group 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 um West Germany to live in Berlin undercover hiding out leaving his family not seeing them for many many years and so there was another kind of painting being done Richter is known for copying photography very faithfully the glitches the blurs um 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 had I think his first exhibition in London and Athony at Anthony Daufe's gallery so there was a presence of painting but a very specific kind of painting like Gerard Richter was not picking sides he was doing abstract painting as much as realist painting and taking in technology so photography in his own painting whereas in the UK we are going to relate Jenny Savile much more with Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucian 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 does something which was not happening in Glasgow at the time women's gender and sexuality studies and so she reads a lot of Julie Christeva, Hélène Sixou, uh Luce Irrigare, so all these feminists uh French uh most of them that kind of open up something for her in terms of 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?

SPEAKER_07 27:18

Drama it is dis it's discussed and and all the time. You know we s we have there's moments where I'm in a scene with somebody and a woman. In fact it was one of our guests recently in access called Lucy Speed and we had a scene together in The Archers and um 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 um I don't know d they 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 we need to stick together. But but yeah I mean there are a lot of there's a lot of female form in in art isn't there from from right from the beginning. A lot of naked women around the walls of many galleries around the world. Yeah I mean so many. When you not surprising at all when you see a boob or um whatever when you walk walk into a gallery expect it expect to see a boob in paint and sculpture form.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

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 assault. Yes yeah it's constantly women being dra dragged or pierced. I think what is very strange about Jenny Savile and we'll probably talk about it is that 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 b very well noted as we were coming in dear listeners Susie told me I know nothing about art. I mean I do love a Titian and I was thinking wow you know the reference for Jenny Savile bit. I can believe that when I 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 know anything else I just needed I know everything I know one thing which is everything yeah and so uh she quotes um so Tisha exactly and there's more oh really de Kooning yes Michelangelo Leonardo Twombly Monet Soutine and Matisse and they're all not Cooning what era is he?

SPEAKER_06 30:01

Oh he's uh alive is he?

SPEAKER_02 30:03

No de Kooning is 20th century so he's abstract beginning of the abstract expressionist movement Sae Twombly she actually was friends with him for a while so Sai Twombly is this painter who has a very strong relationship with classic literature Dante you know all of those references like really classical references as Jenny Savile does and his paintings on the other hand are quite um childish in the sense of the line they look like scribbles they look like doodles I am going to send you on the chat.

SPEAKER_07 30:45

Gosh yeah crikey I mean this is fascinating because I look at that and go I'm sorry what what that's just that is literally squiggles and it is and I can't I can't um oh but it's massive is it always massive they were quite sizable paintings a little bit like you know three by two metres for example sometimes much bigger that's that it's fascinating I would love to learn learn more about that and the the but there's one there's one further down my my son 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 seven the other day he said the best drawing he's ever done and he drew he draw he drawn what he said was a waterfall and it was squiggles all the way up up um because I really saw the waterfall in it but it's literally just him with a black pen. Squiggle and he's so so proud of it but it it kind of reminds me of that. So I I yeah this is this is where I struggle slightly and I expect a 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 a tiny box entirely different to standing as I can see. I mean it's it's twice the height of a human that is going to have a different effect.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Yes I think seeing them in the flesh is really interesting and quite an impact on you because someone is taking so seriously the first marks that you're gonna 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.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

No.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

The question of good and bad is absolutely irrelevant 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 the origin of the word graphic comes from graphane 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 close to mark making and close to a dimension of relation with reality that is almost unmediated by knowledge.

SPEAKER_07 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 sci twombly partly because it's a what a great name. I mean that's one of the best names I've ever heard. I'd love to be called Susie Twombly but that that scale the scale of a work to what I like feeling is small. I think it's very healthy Yeah I think it's really a 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 of human emotion.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

But don't you think that it's interesting that he's giving so much importance to those squiggles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 34:16

And to that compulsive mark making it's a but it's it's it's humanness in 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 it excessively.

SPEAKER_06 34:32

But of course but with but it is as well.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

But yes well yeah because it's inherent it's in his inherent gift I suppose and um 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 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 who's just deconstructing voice and some of her work is really like stutterings in in singing form and you listen to that and you think why is she not singing properly?

SPEAKER_00 35:34

So I felt this very strong power of the voice to be a universal kind of instrument.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

I just knew that I was onto something that was had truth there was just no question about it and and I felt that I was meant to be in the 20th century there was this idea of let's get to that creative impulse and let's 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 of sense of authenticity although we do edit to the bone well I don't realize it's like 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 um yeah being been either scripted or absolutely explained to anything.

SPEAKER_07 36:50

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? I don't get it but in a way I'll get something from it.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

But so to finish on this there is this really strange shift in uh her work whereby she goes to the United States she goes to gender studies which um didn't exist in Glasgow School of Art and she later on befriended Linda Knockling who in the contemporary art world is quite an important reference because in 1971 she wrote an article provocatively titled Why have there been no great women artists to and you can imagine this is the 70s so bringing it home that we don't have female artists in museums and we will never say this enough like when um Savile was born a year later Linda Nockland was writing this so this is all very recent and the conversations we're having now you know in cinema in contemporary art they're all very recent. Because how can it be it's all it's almost impossible to redress in that you know you think of the centuries of centuries of work it's gonna be another it's gonna have to be another sort of 600 years before but then then you've still got those other extra six hundred years of all the for the male artists it's Tintoretto had a a um a daughter he was a painter and the King of Spain actually wanted to hire her and he didn't let her and the lot of women who painted were the daughters of painters and so they remained in the studio and you can be sure that a lot of paintings that you see in the National Gallery have some brush tricks of a lot of women who were just not historicized. And it's interesting because I heard this expression uh I just did an interview um well when this episode comes out the interview will have come out uh with EJ Scott who is this trans curator um and and trans trans activist 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 uh a person who identifies as a woman you go into a museum and 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.

SPEAKER_07 39:32

Yeah and well it's it's it's the question of representation um uh across across um yeah gender and sexuality and race uh within all everything isn't it it's a it's a huge huge issue um 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 well certainly as a as a young person and I look back at the things I liked and the women it's like well there's not very many women there. But I didn't know I never I sort of identified with the male characters or whatever or people that I'd like to be but and then you think back well actually but that's not quite there's not quite get 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 uh it gets to to narrower and narrower when you get to you know trans um people that is yeah I I think that hope the idea of homelessness is is um i it's an awful th thought but it's completely completely true um and I hope the museum as a home yeah you know the museum is a home and it's and it's for for everybody. Um for everybody but it's you know when they when they aren't when there isn't a representation there it's not because you because you still and it's like that with theatre and it's you know and classical music um and opera and but they but I know that institutions are trying to trying to change that. But if you n but the if you can't see yourself you're not going to want to do that as a for a living and then it's just perpetuates isn't it studio look around you.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

There is a computer a good mic the software in the computer which is a sort of virtual space through 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 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 twenty five pounds a year which means that you pay two pounds a month twenty five pounds for a whole year. When you buy a catalogue that's the average price for one single book with two texts. If you become a member of Exhibitionists through a platform called Substack you not only get to support Exhibitionists but you also receive on average about eighteen 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 added which is getting to ask me questions. If you have a question about contemporary arts 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 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. If you have one pound to spare you can just donate one time very very small amounts 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 decent proposal. On with the episode. So she comes back 1992, okay? So she's 22 years old, right? Putting that into perspective and talking about the strong-wheeled character of Jenny Savile. She makes this paint this painting called Propt 1992. It's seven by six foot. It's uh so about 180 by 210 uh meters, and she writes on it. It's quite um a massive presence, let's say, in the in the exhibition.

SPEAKER_07 44:46

Yeah, there's a huge um portrait of uh a naked woman um uh with from an angle uh we're already looking up at it, but it's painted from an angle where the the the foreground is very much her the the the the woman's legs, um her thighs, um and it kind of gets uh gets smaller up to her head, which is is actually slightly off the top of the picture, um and sort of up raised, but you can't see her face totally clearly. Um but she's definitely gazing up at this person, but she's sitting on a very uncomfortable stool. I mean, I thought it looked like it was digging into her legs, it was almost tree-like, I thought, like um which might be relevant, I suppose, but that that's sort of sticking into her um her sh her calf, and then and also very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Well very polite, because I think for me she's being impaled.

SPEAKER_07 45:48

Yeah, impaled that looks like she it's basically making her well that's yes, but there's another bit that looks like the bit that looked more uncomfortable to me was the bit digging into her leg. But then yes, the the central pose.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

It's not a straight no, it's a it's not a straight leg. It's kind of a an old classical stool.

SPEAKER_07 46:06

Stool or a bit of a trunk or something, but yes, it looks like it's impaling her um vaginally, um, which is not very comfortable. And um yeah, but uh uh kind of a lot of flesh. A lot of it it looks sort of spilling over, really, of on this stool, and her and her her knuckles are digging into um fingers digging into her thighs and very uncomfortable. It looks very it's it's 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.

SPEAKER_06 46:50

Pre-pain maybe. It's it's yeah, it's she's I don't know, she's interesting.

SPEAKER_07 46:55

She's it's like a almost I th I almost hurting herself. That gripping the digging your nails into yourself is is almost uh a self-preservation, I think, when you're you're hurting yourself to avoid feeling the rest of it, I think. Something there. Um but yeah, and then this back this this um text which is uh uh um as if you're looking through uh yeah, as if it's in front of you, you're looking through a a window that it's written on on the other side, so it's kind of backwards.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Um it's kind of like drawn like as a as if she had taken her finger and written with the paint, like put putting a finger into the paint and yes, because it reflects exactly the same colours as the as the image in front.

SPEAKER_07 47:51

So yes, it's an end to herself, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

Exactly. And the text says if we continue to speak in the sameness, speak as 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 Irigue, who's irrigare, who's um this feminist philosopher, and she does talk about community. So it propped is a self-portrait. I mean, she doesn't like to talk about 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 very specifically to Lucian Freud's painting. And Lucian Freud was known and almost kind of like infamous for working with models that he kind of took, extracted the truth from, right? He was kind of this truth-teller about people, and there's this painting that's quite famous of his um with this very, very plump woman on the couch, lying down on a 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 painting herself, so looking at herself. Um, and she said, I liked painting a nude body, which was very frowned on in feminist studies. Where's the gaze? All that kind of debate. That conflict is what made that painting work. So of course, she's conflicted. So her preference is a male, she is going straight into body and soul, into the most patriarchal tradition of portraiture, painting, huge dimensions. So her paintings are all very, very big, so large-scale paintings, and 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. 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 1993, 94, she's gonna make she's gonna produce another painting which is called Trace, which is also in the exhibition, which are it's a body seen from the back with the lines of a brain 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 white um skin.

SPEAKER_07 50:55

There was something a bit about the s that paint painting uh gave me a bit of a idea of the watery slab, to be honest. That that image uh the trace. Because it was so pale and t tinged, and with the with those the lines and I think because the arms are not visible really, it just gave me a sense of it just being uh almost lifeless, although it's not uh it's not horizontal, but yeah, there was something the idea that we're we're you know, constricted, hide these and contained by these yeah kind of I don't know the trappings of being a woman. Um and all and yeah, and also though how those those parts are so sexualized and and viewed how they are viewed. Um yeah, it's it was I've I found that one very str very striking for that.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

Charles Satchi bought a prop, 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 3 at Charles Satchi Gallery, where he has invested in a lot of very, very young artists who are going to be shown in the famous or infamous exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Art in 1997. And this is really interesting because Jenny Savile is doing her little work. She's going, you know, she's journeying into the contemporary art world because she also has an exhibition in 96 at Pace McGill in New York, which is a huge gallery. In 1999, she will have an exhibition at Gagosian at 29 years old. Gagosian is a huge gallery. Now Gargosian has galleries all over the world. It's huge. The gallery represents her, still does. So she's set for life, selling her work, and in 1997, sensation happens. The UK loses its mind, along with the Turner Prize, and discovers contemporary art. Tracy Emmin's tent with all the lovers' names that she's had sex with, embroidered on a tent, on the tent's um sides. And and there's this activity of people who seem to do nothing skilled really and call it art and sell it for millions. In the BBC, Your Home, um, Susie. The most incredible it's on YouTube. I've I've uh talked about this in the Tracy Emin episode, and it's the most astonishing uh program ever, ever made. The title is Is Painting Dead? And I think in Jenny's Jenny Savile's context, it's really interesting because they invite a bunch of people, curators, David Sylvester, like this revered critic, uh, Norman Rosenthal, lots of people, Tracy Yemen, drunk as a skunk, she leaves the show midway, saying, are there real people watching this? And she leaves, and they are 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 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 um in 1994, Jenny Savile produces her first cover for Mannox Street Preacher's album, Holy Bible, which is one of those paintings of these massive bodies seen from the left, from the right, and centered. She becomes a mum at some point um 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 was very accurate.

SPEAKER_07 55:26

Yeah, that's so um, but yeah, so that's lovely that link with her uh 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. Exactly. Yeah. I wonder if she's experienced it at the time, or sort of saw that at the time, you know, while what adjuring While it's while it's going on.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

I don't know about you, but it was not my um I didn't have that kind of awareness.

SPEAKER_07 55:55

No, but sometimes I do have things where I'm in a situation, I'm like, this is like a pla this is like um I'm in line of duty or or I'm in East Enders or something. And I'll I'll I'll sort of be seeing myself and this and I'm like, this is just weird. Is that are there a cameras?

SPEAKER_02 56:10

She started looking at the figures of the Virgin Mary and how they're depicted in painting, and so she really is drawing from motherhood and from her own physical experience of motherhood, and she even says something really interesting about the umbilical chord. 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 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 question of speaking of representation that I wanted to bring up about um her career, which is the fact that she is very moved by the body. So the body really is the focus of her art, and she and and very she's very aware and she claims it for herself. And at a certain point, she's gonna look into types of bodies and into she moves away from that Lucien Freud-like skin, and she this idea of going into a plastic surgeon's office and and going into the archives and even witnessing some operations is very much what she's gonna go uh in in search for, besides looking at paintings so um precisely and in such detail. And so she does a painting of um Delagrace Volcano, who's a queer intersex visual artist, and the painting's called Matrix, and it's the composition is like Gustave Courbet's painting The Origin of the World, L'Origine du Monde, who's it was a very famous painting uh that is um permanently at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and it's two um open legs, and in the centre of the painting you have the vulva and you have the pubic area, and and it's cut um at at um mid-level at waist level, so you only see the legs open wide, you see the vulva, and then you see the torso in sort of you're almost at 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 okay, realism, so let's really paint women, let's really paint what we see and what we desire. And the male gaze here is really interesting because in feminist 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 a 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 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 the other side of things and um touches upon this idea of wirism of the painter. And so they contacted the uh 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 quo. So there's this difficult relationship with from the model's 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 to the regularity or the average visual condition of the body? Oh yes. Okay, so yes, 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 model's 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 to the regularity or the average visual condition of the body? And here of gender. I'll leave it at that because I think we'll and and the in we'll talk about it in regards to the exhibition, but just referencing in 2009, so she does another um Manic Street Street Preacher's album called Journal Who Play Lovers, where there's this painting of a boy, it seems to be a boy with a sort 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 um so this is a direct quote from Sainsbury's uh representatives who um decided not to show the cover of the CD on sale and then and so kind of stocked it in in plain slipcases. 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 gallerist, so Gagosian, says of her, she's incredibly incredibly says of her so her London gallerist says of her she's incredibly precise about her process, and there's handsome demand with limited supply. Oh. Interesting. In 2018, Propt was sold in auction at Sotheby's in London, and it sold for the equivalent of 12.4 million dollars. So I saw this in the New Yorker 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.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

Now surpassed by Cecily Brown.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:22

So it ha when you sell a piece of work, I don't know this. So did she own that work initially to then sell it, or was it already because Tsarchi had presented it, is that right?

SPEAKER_06 1:03:37

Initially. And pa and and and bought it. He bought it. It was the first painting. What did he buy it?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

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 uh a thing that makes it incredibly difficult to eva evaluate the market. So if you are represented by a commercial gallery, as Jenny Savile is by Gargosian, they list your 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 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 uh sold sells your work and 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 artists. So when an artwork, and I worked in commercial galleries, goes into auction of one of the artists you represent as a commercial gallery, panic mode, yeah, huge panic. Because what can happen? There's two possibilities. Three, there's a possibility of magically it selling for the exact price that you have it priced in your own gallery, or horrifyingly, it sells for less, or befuddlingly, it sells for a shitload of money, a hundred 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.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:54

So they to the artist this is what I I've never actually thought about before. So Jenny Savage. Painting sells for twelve million dollars.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

And she doesn't see a cent. That's terrible. That goes to the owner, because it's a question of ownership. You own something. So thus the speculative market.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:16

It feels very dirty to me, this whole thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:21

You heard it here first, the Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:23

And I'm But I'm then I'm then assuming that, you know, if if this painting of hers sold for twelve million, then her stock goes up. Like she, you know, if if you want a Jenny Savile painting, you're gonna have to pay a lot for it. Does she then get commissions? And how does she make money? I mean, I've I've never ever thought about this before.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:46

And it's really interesting. Good question. The value increases because you think, oh, I want to buy a new one because then it's gonna go up.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:53

It's gonna take her five years to paint it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:56

And she's like, shit, it takes me two years to make a painting. You know, better do some smaller. And there's another angle for it, which is auction prices also tells you where we are in terms of j the gender gap. So you will notice that I said at the time, record price paid at auctions for a work by living female artists. To give you an idea, in 2018, the painting, Portrait of an Artist's Paul with two figures from 1972 by David Hockney was sold by approximately $90 million as opposed to the 12 million of her own work. And in 2008, Golden Calf of also 2008, no, that can't be right. Same year production sold in auction for 16 million, about 16 million.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:01

10 years before.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:02

So more and 10 years before Jenny Saville.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:05

I suppose you see props in the distance. But the first picture that was the very first one as you go in was the I don't know what it was called, unfortunately, but the two the two girls' faces very close together, one peeking over the other's shoulder. Huge um huge canvas. Massive paint. Um I was really taken by the the texture of it and being that close. Kind of close to the this huge amount of paint um and the flesh and these these bright faces, girls' faces, that all her work is very well, not all of it actually, but the the those certainly this first room, the the fleshiness of it, I really uh and the um you really got a sense of the texture of of the paint, but also of the f of the feeling of flesh. And um and and I love and her eyes, I'm really struck by the all the eyes. Huge eyes.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:10

They're very realistic as opposed to all the other impressionistic or gestural, like real big brush strokes. Like she uses these big brushes and very thick.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:22

Blobs 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. Um but yes, the eyes are really and I and I I do I I love I love looking at well, I was saying to you that I like looking at portraits of people's faces because I do like looking at people's eyes. And we actually had a discussion about 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 humanize somebody. If you if you're gonna have an argument with someone, swear at someone uh in the in your car, you actually look them in the eyes. God it really it stops, it kind of you know, you you can see a cyclist as just as a thing on a piece of metal, but if you see them, if you look them in the eye, then they become real. And I think that that's what's so wonderful about these huge oversized um pieces of art that are quite clearly not they're not realistic, they're far too big, but they're but they but yet they are because the eyes are feel real. You know, you can see into their into them. Um and I yeah, and I I mean I immediately thought of my daughter, I suppose, and that's the youthfulness, the fle the fleshiness of of youth, um and the connection between the two the two heads. Uh it's all well, it's completely in in indiscernible in a way. It's almost like a two-headed a two-headed creature.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:47

It's almost like a two-headed thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:48

I was for a moment I thought it what I really had to look quite closely to see that she was actually had a had a the the one behind had her uh chin on the other's shoulder. Um but yeah, that that close, that connection, the um uh uh between two young people, uh, and that you can be so close and and so physical with another person that's either a sister possibly or a friend that's you might not necessarily have a grown-up.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

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 naked woman, and in this case, it was the painter's finger that touched the image and made these lines around inside the body that kind of outlined the shape of the body. And she explained that that some friends of hers, so this is the 90s diet culture, and so she explains that some friends actually drew the drew these lines that as 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 90s sort of um culture, and she talks about not being really touched by that culture, and but but being very aware of it, and the Manic Street Preacher's album, a lot of uh the songs talk about anorexia, and she was really interested in being part of it because of it. Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:33

Yeah. It's uh yeah, and the the yeah, the the lines she draws are quite a circular. I mean that there's no way you could I suppose shrink down to what 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 lob you know lop off limbs to become as thin as some as people wanted to be, I suppose. Um yeah, something something about mapping the body as well and how that that this being unhappy with everything about your own physicality. Um it's it's very sad.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

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 I I was interested in seeing where she was going to take this. And I I I propose that we go to the Manic Street Preacher's image, which which is 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 to space, yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:48

And so you you I now remember you being really captured by that image.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:52

Yeah, I think because of the because partly because there was colour, and I think her work it's apart from the end, the final images, and the the the most recent images um in the final room, um, which are very colourful, there isn't a lot of colour. Um there was a moment when I there's there's two there were two images in in an another room of of um female, I don't know if there was two 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 uh pink, pinkish lines, so coral coloured lines, a little bit of a little bit of blue, not a lot of colour on either, but I was more drawn to the br the brighter colour. It made me feel more positive about it. And I thought that's really interesting. This kind of eye that the the what colour you use completely affects how you feel about uh about the image. And I and I w was drawn to this very large um portrait. I th I felt it was a young girl, but uh but it's a boy. Um I'm not sure. Well I I did go I've Googled the Googled the um Oh did you uh but you know talking about the Mannix pitch and how it was how that was uh covered over in shops because it was deemed offensive in some way, because it could be seen as blood uh you know, uh blood and pain and uh lips that have been bloodied. But in fact it's meant it's m an image she took of a of a a a boy or well, presumably it's a boy, but with a port wine stain, so a very large birthmark across their face. Um 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. I could see it was very clearly a port wine mark. Whereas if you're looking at it uh with the naked eye, it could be there's multiple different ways of reading it. But it's a beautiful blue behind the image and very um It's a sort of electric blue. And the blue's reflected in the hair. It was it's yeah, it's a ri it's a very well, we sort of talked about it being quite anime um and c that kind of graphic novel type image, because it was so it's the image is so strong, the face is so strong against this very deep colour, um, which was reflected in the hair. It's very I I I really loved, I loved all the lines of it and the the um there's so much going on, and it's and also so many di that idea of different interpretations of the fact what's the expression.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

Um the the eyes are very so it's interesting because the colours, so she collects a lot of imagery. She says it's a pain to travel with her because she takes pictures of everything, and she loves taking pictures of graffiti in countries in foreign countries because it takes out the political message and she's only looking at the colour and the writing a little bit like the sidewombly's as it were, because now you know side twombly, so you can say a little bit like sitewombly's and you'd be like, Yes, I'm gonna be able to do very originally excuse.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:08

Absolutely, and you're referencing it at all times. No one don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:14

And Esther will be like, What the hell are you talking about, Susie? I've got the knowledge now, and so she's um 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, like these neon colours and these uh 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 graffitial um street up 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 work um sex worker, and there's the case of her looking for bodies that are that that are different, but which are also othered because of their difference, and she's focusing on them and reducing them to that otherness. So there's this this criticism, 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 painting of patriarchal painting with enormous qualities, but also a very specific point of view and a specific role in history, 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 that image that finally strikes you and situates or deconstructs enough, like you were saying quite rightly so you don't see the port wine stain, you see blood, you see uh 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 of others.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:26

Well yes, and I I also because I was like, Well, who is this person? And it was a picture she'd found in a book, and I thought I don't know, if I if if I saw Oh, you've got to know if that was me and I saw myself, I recognized myself. And of course, having a port win stain it's something people are gonna look at and stare and point at. And and to have it 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.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:58

I was like, oh god, it's that's a sadly sad. It looks like a trying.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:04

Yeah, it does, it's definitely a young person. Um there is something slightly uncomfortable about that, I think. Um the motherhood thing just wondering about my own I I felt like the the images of her holding the babies and they're so yeah, and I you know, you do get those i the the the flashes of the the Virgin holding baby Jesus and these kind of podgy figures. Um baby Jesus is always quite well quite well behaved, doesn't really wriggle around very much. I d I got I did get the sense of having to grapple with a sort of this kind of a creature, as I think they are at that age, these creatures, and that of of having to st be still and be the solid.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:04

So just to explain, these are these drawings that you were describing that were in graphite and then these red uh uh crayons and or or blue, and it was this woman sitting a little bit like the Virgin Mary holding the baby. And she said she did she said that she did a research, and the only painting or drawing I think she found was of Rembrandt of a Virgin Mary holding, or even not even the Virgin Mary, mother trying to hold a child, and there's a kind of like a shoe free flying off from the child's foot, and because it's it's it's hard to 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 so she was really trying to revisit that uh iconography from the motherhood perspective, so the Virgin Mary's perspective, whereby they're trying to hold the child for a family photo, and the children are naked, and there's even one where there's a kind of this little the small little penis sticking out kind of like almost towards you. It's such a weird drawing.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:14

It's very it's it's really isn't is in your face, literally, isn't it? It's um Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

That's the only time where I was thinking, oh, that brings memories of uh nappies.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:26

I mean yes, especially the penis is kind of the little is the it's always the danger when you're changing a little boy's nappy. Is it going to is it gonna 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.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:43

We have to wrap it up because you have to pick up your children, and I think that's the perfect way to finish it, because that's motherhood, and that's what parenting is in contemporary life.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:52

I I've very much I felt like I've learned I've learnt things, and I think that's if I go to see an exhibit I I always want to be able to learn something about another perspective or about my own uh interpretation of something or 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 things, other painters as well. And I've I it's it's so enriching, what an enriching experience to to have been to be on your podcast. It's been really fantastic. Um, thank you so much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:30

Thank you. And likewise, likewise, it was such a pleasure to have you over. And I hope you come back.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:36

I'll definitely come back. I'd love to go to another exhibition with you. Thanks, Joanna.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:40

Take care, bye-bye. Exhibition This is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevis. We have episodes every two weeks, and this season, season three, is a bit of a turning point. We have five new episode types from more experimental art travelogues or art stories to conversational formats about solo exhibitions with people who are not part of the industry. Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life. If you're new here, you have a whole catalogue of episodes to enjoy. Discover them at your own pace.