Katy Norris on 'Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds'

Interview Rupert White

Can you say something about how the exhibition came about, and how long you've been working on it?

We've been working on it for about two and a half years. There's also been a PhD student, Emma Sharples, who's been working on it too, so I actually came into the job and took it on with her. She'd done a bit more spade-work before we started working together.

It's come about, from Tate's point of view, because we acquired the National Trust portion of her archive, which came over to join the archive that we already had. So it really was the first time that everything was brought together, and you could really build a picture of Colquhoun from this trace of her in the archive.

Also, because of the time we're living in, and the interest that's happening anyway. There's a kind of momentum at the moment. She's been included in things like the Venice Biennale, and there's been this big interest in magic and Surrealism through different exhibitions and a rediscovery of women artists in general.

There's also been lots of other people that have been building this incrementally. So people like Richard Shillitoe, for many years, have kept this possibility alive.

Yes. And Richard was, in fact, one of the first contributors to artcornwall.org in 2006. He's contributed much more since.

I really like the 'Between Worlds' subtitle for the show. Do you want to say what, to you, that means?

There's a very simple kind of opening framework to the show, that allows people to enter into it, and that is that Colquhoun is holding together these worlds: the art-world scene and the magical, occult scene. This is something that you can see intertwining through her art, creative practice, and her career as she's moving forward. You're always seeing this dynamic playing out, and unfolding.

So it seemed like a really good way to understand someone who's quite hard to define, who doesn't really want to stick to ordinary boundaries, in terms of their identity. There's so many things that are actually complex about Colquhoun.

And then there's imagery that really speaks to it, things like 'Scylla', the double-image painting. Colquhoun just didn't see herself in one place. She's always kind of slipping somewhere else. She's in this world, and then she's out of it. So people who know a lot about Colquhoun probably can recognize that. But for people who are entering at a point of not really understanding who she is, it brings together those two fundamental parts of what she's doing.

I suppose one other thing to say, is that when I spoke to people about the show at the very early stages, they would say, 'she seems like such a liminal person, like she's never really into one thing or another', and that's a problem. But actually when you start to really look at her work as a collective whole, you actually find she's completely consistent and on her own path. And it's wonderful to see. She's not between one thing or another, so much as holding those things together in a really successful way.

That first room, which covers her early career, is interesting (picture above). I've not seen those big paintings before, like 'The Death of the Virgin' (picture below). Do you think it's probably a self portrait? It looks like it might be.

You can see her incorporating a self-portrait into lots of the works in one way or another, like in the 'Bird of Hermes' costume designs you can see a very clear-cut bob and this is her. And the 'Death of Lucretia' has that same little bob too. So she's definitely putting herself into them, I think, and experimenting with that.

One of the things that we wanted to show in that first room were the theatre designs, because the paintings there are also very theatrical. The paintings are like stage sets where she's almost performing these roles, and trying to find empowerment, asking, for example, 'what would it look like if I as a woman, I was empowered and holding up someone's head' you know? (cf 'Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes', 1929).

So I think, yes, she's playing or performing by putting herself into them.

Another thing that's interesting about that room is the written piece called 'The Lesbian Shore'. It's a bit of writing describing how she came infatuated with a woman that she met on her travels. And, of course, that's another way in which she's quite a liminal figure, because we don't know that much about her sexual orientation.

I think it's not to be necessarily pinned down. In every way that Colquhoun lived her life, those kinds of conventional boundaries and borders didn't really exist for her. I think 'The Lesbian Shore' is really the only time that you see her actually connecting with her own desire. So that's personal. She's talking about her own feelings, and it's very clear that she's talking about same sex desire for this woman, and naming it as 'The Lesbian Shore' - but even that has mythological connotations too.

I think that's probably the strongest example where we see same sex desire, which at that point in her life is obviously there. At other times ideas about genders coming together, and different kinds of sexual relationships come out, particularly in the alchemical material, which is to more to do with the magical, as opposed to herself.

The idea of the Androgyne.

Yeah, exactly.

Another thing that I liked was the pairing of 'Scylla' and 'Geoffres Amers', both painted just before WW2 (picture below). I think you highlight the fact that they complement each other, and again there's a subtext about sexuality in them too.

Yes. I think perhaps more than anything it's the importance of female sexuality that you're seeing more than anything else. Even with the 'Diagrams of Love', where you might see a female figure, the person they're partnering with is more ambiguous.

And really, it's about the fact that there's a very strong female sexuality that's present, and its engulfing and empowering, and then disempowering for the other figure. It's obviously quite a radical thing that you're seeing female sexuality on display. It actually still feels quite unusual today to actually see that playing out visually, and it's really daring for the 30s or 40s.

It's ironic that Colquhoun is getting a big retrospective here in St Ives, because she doesn't seem to have had much of a relationship with the artists here on this side of Cornwall. What's your understanding of this? And incidentally I've noticed she was almost exactly the same age as Barbara Hepworth.

It's interesting to think about these two presences in Cornwall. For Tate too, to think that we've got these collections now: substantial works by Hepworth that have come through the estate and through the museum, and now this Colquhoun archive. So you've got these two formidable women who are operating in Cornwall, together with a lot of the works that we can we can use to understand them better.

I think she did exhibit with the Penwith Society, actually. There are certain artworks that are listed in catalogues.

What sort of date would that have been? All the way through the 50, 60, and 70s?

50s, definitely. I'm not sure about later, actually. But there's definitely one work. She also went to the Penwith ball, and she met Hepworth at the Penwith ball. So there are fleeting moments of maybe meeting them, as well as this engagement with the Penwith Society.

Beyond that, may be she was just absorbed in other places. Her attention was going to other places. You know, around Lamorna, and the communities in Lamorna. She obviously knew them much better, and was much more familiar with those dynamics.

But yes, it seems like there's a bit of a geographical disjunct between Lamorna and St Ives, which is kind of interesting.

Maybe one of the explanations is that she wasn't so focused on her painting and her art later in the 60s and 70s. She was doing other kinds of projects.

Maybe that's part of it, yes. I think the she's definitely focusing on her writings from the mid 50s onwards, and that takes a priority.

I think there's a balance there all the time, though. There's an interweaving of the art and the occult, and the balance shifts and changes at different points in her life. But yes, I don't think there's any kind of major big paintings when she is focusing on articulating herself through writing.

Thinking of 'The Living Stones', and other written works from that period, as well as the occult, they're celebrating Celticity and the Celtic periphery. And I think people like Barbara Hepworth were sympathetic to those kind of ideas, but not not obsessed with them in quite the same way.

I think it needs more thought, more writing around it, and more investigation.

I think artists like Hepworth, and publications like Circle that had her sculptures pictured alongside Stonehenge, they were absolutely thinking about that, and investing it into their works and their sculptures. And, you know, Hepworth talked about the dark earth and its spirituality. So they're not miles apart, but they're not the same.

Whereas Hepworth was maybe more symbolic and metaphorical about things, Colquhoun had a belief system, and really, she was living it and believed it. She could actually access, and use and practice ceremonial magic. That obviously wasn't Hepworth.

I think it's really worth, at this point, thinking 'what are the dynamics in Cornwall? How can artists come here and and work with these ideas in different ways?' That's actually really interesting.

Katy Norris is Exhibitions and Displays Curator at Tate St Ives

See 'exhibitions' for installation photos of 'Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds' at Tate St Ives.

For more Ithell Colquhoun on artcornwall.org see writings by Richard Shillitoe:

https://www.artcornwall.org/profile%20ithell%20colquhoun.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Richard_Shillitoe/Ithell_Colquhoun_and_Synaesthesia.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Richard_Shillitoe/Dreams_and_Destination_Limbo_Richard_Shillitoe.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Richard_Shillitoe/Amy_Hale_Genius_Of_The_Fern_Loved_Gully.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Richard_Shillitoe/Lost_and_Found_Ithell_Colquhoun.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Ithell_Colquhoun_Taking_stock_Richard_Shillitoe.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/Ithell_Colquhoun_Writings.htm

https://www.artcornwall.org/features/The%20Occult%20Surrealist_Ithell_Colquhoun_%20and_Automatism.htm

Photos of the archive held by the National Trust at Lanhydrock: