Head VI was inspired by 17th-century Spanish painter Diego Velazquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X. Francis Bacon has distorted Velazquez’s portrait and the top half of the Pope’s face dissolves into the background, his mouth stretched in a scream suggesting agony. Bacon has enclosed the figure within a cage of straight white lines conveying a sense of claustrophobia. The figure seems unable to escape the confines of his enclosure and appears trapped, suggesting an ongoing and all-consuming psychological battle.

The relationship between inside and outside, private and public, is integral to the work of sculptor Olivia Bax. She is inspired by the distinctive window grilles found in European architecture, as well as the balconies she observed while working in Hong Kong for an artist residency in 2016-17. Bax is drawn to the function of these structures and features as porous public-facing thresholds that offer a glimpse into the personal sphere. Although Grille (landscape) appears protective, even defensive in nature, Bax notes that the terracotta colour is meant to ‘suggest softness’. In this regard, the work also reveals the pull between manufactured and organic forms. 

To read a conversation between Olivia Bax and co-curator, Taylor Zakarin, visit pages 16-19 of the Catalogue. 

In this self-portrait, Shawanda Corbett photographs her face covered by a layer of clay that has been partially scraped away. Clay is a symbolic material for the artist; she describes it as a medium which, like the human condition, can constantly shift and change. Many of her works take inspiration from the feminist sociologist Donna Haraway, and her 1985 essay A Cyborg Manifesto. Haraway’s text explores the relationship and boundaries between the human body and machines. For Corbett, these mechanical cyborg elements could be any technologies that enhance human life, such as the pottery wheel that she uses when working with ceramics.

Now go around the corner and get your brother, 2021

In this self-portrait, Shawanda Corbett photographs her face covered by a layer of clay that has been partially scraped away. Clay is a symbolic material for the artist; she describes it as a medium which, like the human condition, can constantly shift and change. Many of her works take inspiration from the feminist sociologist Donna Haraway, and her 1985 essay A Cyborg Manifesto. Haraway’s text explores the relationship and boundaries between the human body and machines. For Corbett, these mechanical cyborg elements could be any technologies that enhance human life, such as the pottery wheel that she uses when working with ceramics. 

Lucas Cranach, a major painter of the Northern Renaissance, was recognised for his detailed paintings of religious subjects. Here, he depicts Adam and Eve, the first man and woman of many Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Cranach portrays a moment of great tension that will lead to catastrophic consequences. They are shown standing beneath the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Their hands meet as Eve offers Adam an apple which, once bitten, will trigger their permanent expulsion from Paradise. The serpent, entwined in the branches above, watches the couple on the brink of crossing a threshold of no return. 

Click here to listen to an atmospheric soundscape produced by sound artist Michele Bianchin to accompany the viewing of 'Other World' by M.C. Escher.

M.C. Escher’s Other World creates a space that sits between reality and imagination. Grounded in mathematical principles and theorems, this print shows an impossible structure, combining illusionistic architecture and fantastical birds set against an interstellar landscape. Escher’s work bridges maths and art, logic and creativity – disciplines and approaches that are often considered as separate, or even opposing. As the title suggests, this woodcut explores the concept of parallel and alternative worlds. 

Soundscape: ‘Other World’ by M.C. Escher by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Click here to listen to a conversation between the artist and co-curator Giulia Calvi on the artwork’s materiality, queerness, and representation of Black women in the media and in the history of art.

Miranda Forrester uses her practice to address the invisibility of women of colour in art history, challenging conventional and heteronormative narratives that are traditionally oriented towards the male gaze. In these three paintings, she portrays a queer Black body in a safe space of intimate relaxation. The Three Graces is a triptych of the same woman in different poses. Instead of using traditional canvas, the artist has painted onto a layer of PVC stretched over a wooden frame. Forrester has said of her work that she hopes this transparency encourages viewers to ‘step into the painting and really identify with that body’.

Click here to listen to a conversation between the artist and co-curator Giulia Calvi on the artwork’s materiality, queerness, and representation of Black women in the media and in the history of art

Conversation: Miranda Forrester and Giulia Calvi by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Giulia Calvi: Hi, I'm Giulia, I'm one of the curators of 'Both sides of Here'.  I'm here with Miranda Forrester, who has very kindly agreed to a brief interview.  So, let’s get into it. One of the artworks in our show is 'The Three Graces', which is also one of the new acquisitions of the ACC, very excitingly. 
 I was wondering, Miranda, if you could talk a bit about your approach to art, in particular, the materials that you use, as we were all quite intrigued by the use of PVC in The Three Graces, and how it creates this transparency, that lets you look through the bodies in your paintings? 

Miranda Forrester: I'm really interested in using transparent materials and use materials that allow me to play around with layering and exploring that kind of three-dimensional space. From painting on these materials, then when I move them into different spaces, they look completely different, and I can really put them into any kind of context, and it'll really change the meaning of the piece or the way that it feels and how it communicates with the viewer. I started painting on glass initially, and Perspex, and then discovered this PVC material, which is quite supple, and allows me to stretch it in the same way that I would with canvas. I really liked the flexibility of the material and the delicacy of it. It's quite fragile, but I really loved that nature and that sometimes, maybe, especially from a photo, you're not quite sure what you're looking at and where the surface is and how the layers kind of interact with each other.

GC: Thank you so much. That's so true, and I guess it really spoke to us of almost a threshold to, through this body, and as our exhibition is about thresholds in general, it is about those pivotal and transitory spaces, where things change and are transformed. 
 As a queer woman myself, sometimes I find that there is an intrinsic freedom, almost, in deliberately staying neither here, nor there, and in carving out all these alternative spaces for ourselves and to thrive and survive - and that is pretty much how the queer community in general has existed and thrived for so long. All these queer subcultures are sort of emerging for grids of our cities and the gaps about history, particularly also thanks to the people of color, mainly. So, I was wondering how do queerness and blackness intersect in your art and practice? 

MF: In my work I'm really trying to look at exploring these intersections, particularly because I feel like it's so, so hugely underrepresented everywhere: in the media, in the arts, in painting. I'm exploring those kinds of dual aspects of being part of minority groups and this grasping for representation. I feel like, as queers growing up, you sort of learn to grab hold of any kind of semblance that you can relate to, that’s maybe even not intended for a queer audience. It’s drawing out all these perspectives and trying to combine them into one, one visual aspect that people can really relate to, and feel like they understand and empathize with the sitters, and with these communities, which just seem to have been ignored historically and erased from history. I like what you were saying about the inclusivity of the word ‘queer’, and the idea of these identities being as [having] room to fluctuate. I think it's important that, as a community, it’s less divided. I think sometimes, when you have the categories and the labels, it becomes a bit more exclusive and there are certain ideas and feelings about certain types of identities, that I feel like ‘queer’ is, is a nice way of encompassing all that. 

GC: For sure. I think there's all that fluidity that one can explore, and definitely in terms of representation and looking at, as you say, trying to find representation everywhere you can find it. Is that something that you've always been interested in and in your practices, has it developed through the years? 

MF: That’s something I've always been interested in my work. It's funny, my subject matter has pretty much been the same for years, it’s just the way that I've been painting, my technique that's obviously changed and buying different things. But that's always going to be a main priority of mine, with painting. 

GC: I think talking about thresholds is also talking about access, and access to space and ownership of space and narratives. A thing that we've been trying to address in our exhibition is this idea of being in charge of one's own narrative, in a way. Clearly, there's such an invisibility of history of people of color, but especially women of color within art history, so I was wondering: in your art and your practice, what does it mean to explore Blackness in that sense as you sort of try and target that invisibility?

MF: My main priority with making these images it to represent these communities from their own perspective, as historically, lots of these images come from images of Black women in the Western history of art. It's often coming from colonial imagery, and situations where the Black women are not the author of the image. So, it was important to me to just represent myself and people I know, and the communities that I've been a part of from a genuine, authentic, point of view, trying to avoid this kind of male gaze, this white, cisgender, straight viewpoint. That's really my main priority with making these paintings.

GC: I think looking at The Three Graces, it really feels looking into this intimate space, that is the space of the woman represented in the paintings. It's not your space as a viewer, but you're almost looking into it, as peeking into a window in someone’s home. You definitely don't feel like you're taking charge of a space that is not yours, which is something I really appreciate in that painting. These were my questions and, as I said, it was going to be a very sort of brief interview, but thank you so much. 

MF: Perfect. No, that was no worries at all. Thanks so much.

Paul Graham’s Beyond Caring series documents the waiting rooms of Social security and unemployment offices across the UK in the mid-1980s. Following the severe recession of 1981, the UK suffered record rates of unemployment. The crowded waiting rooms highlight an overburdened welfare system in which many people faced long waiting times without any guarantee of progress. Graham captures these waiting rooms as in-between-liminal spaces, his photographs foregrounding the powerlessness of those stuck in the system. 

Individual artwork titles from left to right: 

Waiting Room, Highgate Office, North London, 1984

Baby and interview cubicles, Brixton DHSS, South London, 1984

Two works from the Beyond Caring series, 1984-86

In 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon while the Beirut-born Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum was on a short visit to the UK. While she was stranded in London and separated from her family in Beirut, the letters between Hatoum and her mother were the means of communication that bridge the physical and emotional distance between them. In this video, still images of the artist’s mother showering are superimposed with her handwritten letters in Arabic. On the soundtrack, an animated conversation between Hatoum and her mother, overlaid with Hatoum's voice reading a translation of the letters into English, can be heard.

[Video ID: This film begins with text stating the title and the artist of the work. It fades into a fuzzy image with Arabic text overlaid on the top. This then cuts to clearer footage of a woman showering, with Arabic text overlaid on the top. Different photographs of the same woman showering and Arabic text changes throughout the video. End of ID]

Mona Hatoum

Click here to watch a short film about the sculptures by Rachel Whiteread, Mandy Havers and Barbara Hepworth in the Arts Council’s storage facility at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, presented by co-curators Tamsin Golding Yee and Alice Acland

Mother (Motherhood) depicts a pregnant woman with a baby that sits very literally on the threshold between the womb and the outside world. The artist Mandy Havers looks beyond the barrier of skin to visualise a foetus floating in its mother’s body – a sculptural interpretation of an ultrasound scan. Stitched together from panels of leather, Mother highlights the malleability of the pregnant body as it accommodates the growth of new life. Pregnancy is shown as a liminal period, and the work records a space of creation and the threshold that we all cross at the beginning of our lives.  

To read an essay written by co-curator Alice Acland on ‘Mother’, visit pages 29-31 of the Catalogue. 

Hepworth, Havers and Whiteread - Both Sides of Here

Spring expresses Barbara Hepworth’s fascination with the duality of positive and negative space. The sculpture’s bronze shell reveals an ovoid opening, across which the artist has threaded taut white strings, diagonally positioned from the exterior rim to the interior cavity. Its form lays bare the relationship between interior and exterior in every natural form, from a skeleton contained within flesh to a seed within a fruit. The title points to cycles of nature and the promise of rebirth, a moment of transition from one state to another. 

Click here to watch a short film showing the various installation shots of Damien Hirst’s work 'Relationships'.

This work by Damien Hirst features a piece of paper, a glass of water and a ping pong ball. The ball floating in the clear liquid has a minimalist quality. The diagram drawn on the paper shows multiple ways for the ping pong ball, the glass and the water to interact, suggesting that the installation can exist in a number of forms. By exploring the differing physical appearance that occurs through small adjustments to the paper, glass, water levels and ball, this work explores the potential for change that different interactions might effect, embracing the transformative potential of our own world and relationships. 

Damien Hirst - ‘Relationships’

Click here to listen to a recording of poet and novelist Michael Rosen reading an extract from his book 'Many Different Kinds of Love: A story of life, death and the NHS, (2021), which recounts his convalescence from COVID-19 and the sense he had, while in an induced coma, of the threshold of his body.

Following the reading is another audio recording of a conversation between the artist and co-curator Alice Acland on the artist’s relationship to his wife Judith and on the making of this painting.

This painting is a portrait of the artist Timothy Hyman’s wife, Judith, as she lies in a hospital bed, her face divided by an intravenous drip that runs vertically across the paper. The painting itself also reveals a split between the interior view of a hospital room and the outside world seen through a large window. It delineates the contrast between spaces that are associated with health and those that revolve around a condition of sickness. Hyman appears to capture his wife somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, sickness and health, occupying a state of transition. 

Conversation: Timothy Hyman and Alice Acland by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Michael Rosen reading an extract from his book 'Many Different Kinds of Love' by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

My name is Michael Rosen, and this is an extract from my book Many Different Kinds of Love, recorded to accompany Timothy Hyman’s painting, Judith In Hospital, for the Courtauld’s MA Curating the Arts Museum exhibition, Both Sides of Here.

at university we talked about how portals 

in fantasy stories are ‘liminal’, a space or moment ‘in between worlds’

 or on the edge of one world but not quite in another, 

 or it can be a moment of anxiety or danger: 

Or sitting in the waiting area at an airport. 

I think of a train journey to a summer camping 

I start to believe the edges of my body are liminal, 

sheets, blankets, the bed, the ‘fence’ on the side of the bed, the pillows 

and it is all this that stops me sleeping: 

It feels like I’ve found myself something that’s not on an edge 

Courtauld MA Interview Timothy Hyman transcript

Alice Acland: Could you tell us about this painting?

Timothy Hyman: Yes. We were both people who married relatively late, we had lived our twenties in a way that we wouldn't want to live. I mean, for many people, the twenties aren't necessarily the happiest time. And, neither of us had found the right partner or anything like it. So, meeting was rather a miracle, we married quite rapidly. I was very lucky, I had a cheap rent in Soho and, quite soon, it became clear that fibroids were going to need serious action. In fact, she'd had a hysterectomy, so that ruled out children, unless we adopted, which we weren't really in a position to do. So, that was Soho Women’s Hospital, which is a very interesting place. It's still there, but it isn’t used really. It’s very good, actually. It was a warm hospital; it didn't have a sort of various institutional feel to it. I would go in and visit her, but it was pretty serious [having] hysterectomy in those days. And, she was obviously spending a lot of time on the drip, sleeping. She wasn't going to die, but nevertheless, you know, [it was] the first time I'd really witnessed someone I loved in extremis. So that's what it's about. Plus, I, to this day, [am] very interested in the way that the landmarks do their dance across London and unexpected things are seen from unexpected ways. So, the post office tower was still relatively unfamiliar. And it looked different from Soho Women’s Hospital, so that comes into it too. Both of us are Londoners. 

AA: Many of your paintings have these sorts of assemblages of the city. Would it be right to say that they're drawn from memory?

TH : I mean, I do draw in the streets and I believe in drawing this feature and I try and get other people to draw in the street. 

AA: We were struck by how much of the painting is of Judith in the hospital bed, but it's the big, expansive window looking out on the square -

AA: - and the kind of symbolic comfort of those spaces as well. Also, the very visible threshold: the window acting between the space of a hospital, which is a space of health and illness, and then the outside world. 

TH: I think it's about thirty-seven years ago. I was still at a relatively early stage, it almost felt like a transgression to put oneself within the space, but I felt I had to, and I certainly wasn't expecting it to go red, as it were.

AA: Do you use that profile of yourself into many other of your paintings? 

TH: Yes, I do. Well, I mean, each time it's in a way I'm reluctant to do, but the only way I can get the space to wrap around, it has to wrap around something: it just looks vacant to me, if I don't. 

AA: Do you see your work as a way to explore your different selves, or would you not place it or place that kind of meaning on your work? 

TH: Well, the problem of making a painting and then standing back from it and seeing what you've done 10 years later, is quite different really. But maybe there's something of that. 

AA: Do you think you look at Judith in Hospital, the painting, differently now?

TH: The only thing I had to hang on in a way was a little drawing I had done of the way that the cord of the drip sliced through her face. That was really the starting point, and from that one could, as it were, move outwards. So, I didn't know where I was going, and that's one of the things I liked about working on paper, that one didn't have the stretcher to contend with. 

AA: What does Judith think of you painting her? 

TH: I think, the whole the thing is that she just tries not to worry about the question. She regards it as something other than herself, my representation is not the same thing as her. So, there isn't a conflict. 

Click here to listen to an atmospheric soundscape produced by sound artist Michele Bianchin to accompany the viewing of 'Not titled' by Bob Jardine.

Bob Jardine’s series of photographs documents a one-off drag show at the nightclub The Joint, offering a glimpse into the queer scene in Milton Keynes in the 1980s. Queer spaces have always existed, though they have not always been officially recognised or recorded, often found away from the public eye or forced to go underground. Jardine’s photographs record these marginalised spaces as rich sites of creativity, safety and acceptance. Outside of heteronormative and binary conventions, the subjects of these images defiantly reveal the communities that exist, and thrive, in the spaces of the in-between. 

To read an essay by co-curator Giulia Calvi about Queer Spaces, visit pages 35-39 of the Catalogue.

Soundscape: ‘Untitled’ by Bob Jardine by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Click above to view a studio visit of artist Linda Karshan and co-curators Katherine George, Nina Ledwoch and Margherita Dosi Delfini. 

Linda Karshan’s abstract compositions reveal the process of their making. Slow Learner is a series of 32 prints that marks the joys and frustrations of the creative process. The artist creates these etchings by balancing on one foot, slowly shifting her centre of gravity forward to draw a line. Viewed sequentially, they register a journey that follows Karshan’s marks on paper. The series reveals the moment she begins to gain creative control. As such it mediates the space between experimentation and finished artwork.  

Individual titles from left to right: N. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32

Both Sides of Here: Linda Karshan Studio Visit

Eight works from the 'Slow Learner' series, 2007

Produced in London during the 1980s, Karen Knorr’s series Gentleman visualises an enclave of patriarchal privilege. Taken in private gentlemen’s clubs, her photographs explore constructs of power as they relate to race, class and gender, and how these are maintained in these exclusive environments. Both men wear smart suits, but one is dressed for leisure while the other’s uniform implies service. While the Black server is standing straight, the White club member leans against the railing - their body language indicates their different roles, status and sense of ease in the space. Knorr highlights how race, class and gender intersect to influence access to power. 

Individual titles as seen from left to right: 

Men are interested in Power. Women are more interested in Service 

Whatever a Man’s Social origin, once he has been elected he is looked upon as an Equal by his 

This photograph was taken by Long during a trip from Bristol to St Martin’s and records his movement across a field in Wiltshire, as he walked back and forth along a linear trajectory. It permanently captures the ephemeral trace of the artist's tracks. Long’s intervention was created in the context of the Land Art movement, which emerged in the 1960s, aiming to highlight the natural world as both artistic medium and subject. This work invites questions around the traces that we leave behind on our environments. 

To read an essay on urbanism and the future of cities in relation to microcosm and macrocosm, by co-curator Margherita Dosi Delfini, visit pages 44-48 of the Catalogue.

This series of photographs by Markéta Luskačová documents the women and children living at Chiswick Women’s Aid in London, in 1976 and 1977. The refuge was one of the first shelters in the world for women escaping domestic violence, and its opening was a pivotal moment in the development of women’s rights.The overcrowded scenes emphasise the widespread prevalence of this problem, and confirms the founders’ belief that no women or children seeking shelter should ever be turned away. At Chiswick Women’s Aid, victims and survivors found safety in the liminal space between their violent pasts and the hope of a stable and secure future. 

To read an essay on Markéta Luskačová and this series of photographs by co-curator Anna Bonsink, visit pages 49-53 of the Catalogue.

Individual artwork titles as seen from left to right:

Children looking behind the door of Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1977 

Newly Arrived Woman with Children, Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1976 

Four Women and a Boy, Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1977

Women and Children Sleeping on the Floor, Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1977

Erin Pizzey with Child in Mask, Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1977

Children kissing, Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1977

Child in Chiswick Womens Aid, London, 1976

Seven works from the series The First House for Battered Women and Children, 1976-1977

Click here to watch a video of a studio visit of John Maine's studio in Wiltshire.

John Maine is a British artist whose site-specific public sculptures can be found across the world. Located in front of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, Arena both responds to and is embedded within its surrounding environment. Its structure echoes the curve of nearby Waterloo Bridge and the sculpture is made out of the same Portland stone as many of the city’s historic buildings. Arena’s broken circular form encourages passers-by to enter the sculpture’s centre, breaching the boundary between viewer and artwork. It highlights public art’s ability to become part of the architectural fabric of a community’s environment. 

Individual photo captions and credits as seen from left to right:

Photograph of a performance at Arena, c. 1980. Photo © The Artist

Photograph of Arena being made out of a block of Portland stone, c. 1980. Photo © The Artist

Preparatory Sketch for Arena, pencil on paper, dimension unknown. © The Artist

Both Sides of Here: John Maine Studio Visit

Click here to listen to an audio commentary on the technical analysis of 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère', in which co-curator Katherine George describes how the X-radiograph has informed the interpretation of Manet’s masterpiece.

The Folies-Bergère, a music-hall in Paris, was renowned in the 19th century as a venue where different social groups could mingle. Edouard Manet places the barmaid as the central subject of this painting. She is cut off from the customers’ revelry by a marble counter, demarcating the space of labour that she occupies from the room beyond, brimming with leisure. The raucous activity and entertainment of the venue are reflected in the mirror behind her, though they are not the main subject of the work. This physical and metaphorical divide of the bar invites us to question who has access to these spaces. 

Press next to see an X-Radiograph of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Used primarily for conservation purposes, the image shows the layers of paint, the artist’s workings and the sketched outlines of the painting. It presents a visible record of Manet’s creative process, revealing how the painting was conceived. 

To read an analysis of this X-Radiograph, by Alice Sherwood (PGDIP Conservation of Easel Paintings student at The Courtauld 2019-22) visit pages 56-59 of the Catalogue. 

Individual image captions as seen from left to right:

Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

X-Radiograph of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Audio description: Technical analysis of A Bar at the Foliès Bergère read by Katherine George by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

'Digital exhibitions offer the rare chance to view conservation material alongside finished artworks. How does this change the way we view the artwork?' 

We have also been provided with an X-radiograph image of Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, taken by Robert Bruce-Gardner at the Courtauld in the 1980s. It reveals the underdrawings and brushstrokes underneath the visible paint surface, all in black and white. The result is a ghost-like figure of the woman behind the bar. Her eyes are dark and swollen, and the outlines and contours around her body are diffused, as she blends more into the background. 

Technical shots of paintings like this one allow us to learn more about the artist’s style and process of working - the method behind the masterpiece, so to speak. One of the most fascinating aspects of this particular X-ray is the second pair of hands visible at the barmaid’s waist - which are way above the position of the final pair of hands that we see in the finished painting. 

The barmaid’s reflection in the mirror behind her, shows us how Manet changed her painted reflection at least three times. This reveals that his future audience was kept as a major consideration throughout the making of this piece. This alternative view of the work reveals more about the workings of the artist’s mind and his planned versus spontaneous choices. 

Metalworker (Mamluk, Syria), name of maker not held by the institution

Click here to watch a short film about the incense burner, in which co-curator Margherita Dosi Delfini discusses the object with Sussan Babaie, Professor in Islamic and Iranian Arts at The Courtauld Institute of Art.

This is half of what was once a spherical metal incense burner. Aromatic incense would have been placed inside and burned, the fragrance diffusing through perforated holes in the object’s surface and permeating its surroundings. Incense burners like this one were made in the Mamluk Sultanate, which in the Middle Ages included parts of North Africa and the Middle East. They were traded across continental Europe. Still used today in both personal and religious settings, incense activates and aids a sensorial crossing, taking us beyond our immediate environments and into an altered state of consciousness. 

Hemispherical half of incense burner - Both Sides of Here: Artistic Encounters at the Threshold

Hemispherical half of incense burner of engraved brass inlaid with silver and pierced, Late 15th to early 16th century

Click above to view a short film of co-curators Katherine George, Nina Ledwoch and Margherita Dosi Delfini and artist Linda Karshan in her studio in London discussing her work in relation to Henri Michaux's 'Mescaline Drawing'.


Henri Michaux drew these hypnotising patterns while he was under the influence of mescaline, a psychedelic drug derived from the San Pedro cactus which causes visual hallucinations. Michaux’s drawing looks like a map of the artist’s mind as he enters into a new altered state of consciousness. The artist used mescaline to broaden his senses and explore his unconscious mind in the hope of accessing new forms of artistic expression. 

To read an essay on automatism, freedom, poetry and drawing in relation to Michaux’s mescaline drawings by co-curator Nina Ledwoch, visit pages 60-63 of the Catalogue. 

Both Sides of Here: Linda Karshan on Henri Michaux

Click here to listen to an audio description of 'Berthe Morisot drawing, with her daughter', in which co-curator Katherine George captures the details and atmosphere of the artwork.

This is a self-portrait of the artist with her daughter Julie. Morisot was a leading member of the Impressionists, a group of French 19th-century artists who sought to capture the fleeting moments of everyday, modern life. Berthe Morisot was a woman belonging to the upper classes, and as such, it was not socially acceptable for her to visit public places without a chaperone. Male Impressionist artists often depicted people drinking, chatting and dancing in Paris’ public spaces –environments that Morisot did not have access to as a woman. Rather than allowing these social conventions to limit her artistic practice, she embraced the spaces she had access to, using her private, domestic environment as the setting of much of her work. 

To read an essay about the social and cultural thresholds in 19th-century Paris by co-curator Katherine George, visit pages 64-67 on the Catalogue. 

Audio description: ‘Berthe Morisot drawing’ read by Katherine George by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Berthe Morisot dessinant, avec sa fille (Berthe Morisot drawing, with her daughter),1889

As a woman belonging to the upper classes in nineteenth-century Paris, Berthe Morisot was not allowed to visit public places without a male chaperone, let alone paint in the open air. Morisot instead chose to capture something the other male artists at the time often didn’t; domestic scenes of the lives of women and children that were often unseen in art, let alone celebrated. 

In the centre of this image, a mother and daughter lean closely together, their heads gently touching. The scene depicts Morisot drawing, staring seemingly straight at us. Or, is she looking in a mirror, her hand skimming across the surface of the plate to capture this fleeting moment before it’s gone? Peeking over Morisot’s shoulder is her eleven-year-old daughter Julie, who balances on the arm of the sofa, craning her neck to catch a glimpse at the very drawing we ourselves are perhaps looking at now. 

Morisot’s loose, scratchy marks give the scene a sense of spontaneous informality. During Morisot’s life, prints such as this one were only shared between family and close friends, just as the images that capture us with our loved ones are often our most valued. 

Outside of Morisot’s arresting gaze, all else seems to fade away into our peripheral vision. The domestic interior is only hinted at with the faintest lines highlighting how Morisot was not so much interested in capturing the domestic space, as the relationships that took place there. It’s up to our own imagination to fill in the space surrounding these figures, even relating it to our own spaces of comfort, wherever they may be.

As a result, this etching feels like a visual diary entry of what it was like to be both a female artist and mother in nineteenth-century Paris. After a year of separation and remaining indoors for many, Morisot’s celebration of everyday moments at home with family feels even more poignant. 

15 Days is a video composed of computer-generated images and footage taken by the artist at refugee camps in Calais, a town in northern France on the edge of mainland Europe. The title of the work refers to the nickname of a refugee whom Imran Perretta befriended while in Calais. The reason for the nickname can be traced back either to the time that has passed from the demolition of his latest camp, or to the number of days he has spent in a limbo, waiting. This highlights the temporary nature of these settlements and the authorities’ role in disbanding them. 15 Days highlights the precarity of statelessness and the uncertainty associated with refugee status, as refugees navigate both physical and political borders to try and cross into a place of safety. 

To read an essay about ‘15 Days’ by co-curator Angelica Jopling, visit pages 68-73 of the Catalogue. 

[Video ID: The video shows the ground of a forest, filmed by a hand-held camera in motion. After three minutes and twenty two seconds, the view changes to a view of a tent on the right of the screen and three dead trees in the foreground, with a video recording playing in the background. End of ID]

15DAYS_REMASTER_NO CREDITS viewing file.mp4

Click here to listen to short extracts from Susanna Clarke’s novel 'Piranesi' (2020) read by co-curator Margherita Dosi Delfini, and a commentary on how the novel informed the curators’ understanding of Piranesi’s 'Smoking Fire'.

This etching visualises a dizzying and monumental prison made up of arches, platforms and bridges. While the depth and precision of the tonal details trick the eye into perceiving a convincingly real space, the building is a fictitious structure, a product of the artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s imagination. Piranesi was an architectural draughtsman, renowned for his series of architectural fantasies, Invenzioni Capricci di Carceri (Imaginary Prisons). In this drawing from this series, Piranesi plays with the possibilities and limits of architecture, and pushes our understanding of construction and perspective in this transformative, labyrinthine structure.

[Reading of ‘Piranesi’ and commentary on ‘Smoking Fire’ by Margherita Dosi Delfini by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

“I am determined to explore as much of the World as I can in my lifetime. To this end, I have travelled as far as the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North and the Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South….In all these places, I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead. I have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End, but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the Far Distance. [...] Outside the House there are only the Celestial Objects: Sun, Moon and Stars.” 

Taken from Susanna Clark’s book Piranesi, these are the words of a character called Piranesi, speaking about his solitary existence in an abandoned and labyrinthine house. This house is, in fact, an impossible space, and it is informed by the 18teenth Century Italian draughtsman, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the artist of the etching Smoking Fire. The author has said that the artist’s series ‘Imaginary Prisons’, of which Smoking Fire is part of, have haunted her since she was a young woman. Clarke’s words in the book Piranesi therefore breathe new life into the artist’s etchings, revealing their rich atmospheric quality. The etching can be understood as a testament to the boundless nature of human imagination and is an image that traverses time. It shows how we can travel through the thresholds of our mind, moving from our reality into deeper realms of our imagination into otherworldly dimensions.

Click here to listen to an atmospheric soundscape produced by sound artist Michele Bianchin to accompany the viewing of 'No.9' by David Redfern.

David Redfern aims to create art that relates to people’s lives, an aspiration materialised in No. 9. The painting depicts a solitary figure, gazing out of a steamed-up window on a bus. The traveller seems to be lost in a daydream. For many, commuting is an unremarkable part of daily life, yet these journeys can reveal surprising insights on surrounding environments and unexpected relationships with fellow commuters. While travelling connects us to one another, it can also offer a moment of mental respite from the demands of day-to-day life. 

Soundscape: ‘No.9’ by David Redfern by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead (b.1969/1971)

Click here to listen to a conversation between the artists and co-curator Lorenz Ecker on the making of 'Short Films about Flying #1', its reception and the durability of time-based media.

Initially presented as an installation, Short Films About Flying #1 is shown here as a video work. Jon Thomson and Alison Craighhead use video footage taken from a camera set up at Boston’s Logan Airport. Visitors to a dedicated website could control the camera’s movements. The artists used a selection of this footage which they spliced together with text taken from online message boards. Combining a variety of internet content, this work is a portal that plays with the boundaries between internet and art. It forms an archive that documents how we navigate the world via flight and the technologies that enable us to flit between the real and the virtual.

To read more about the ephemerality of internet based art by co-curator Lorenz Ecker, visit pages 81-85 of the Catalogue.

[Video ID: Film footage of green lines of text on the right side of the screen, alongside footage of aeroplanes taking off and landing at an airport. This footage is interspersed by text. End of ID]

Short Films about Flying

Conversation: Jon Thompson, Alison Craighead and Lorenz Ecker by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

[00:00:00] Lorenz Ecker: I was wondering if you could,  talk to me a little bit about how you see,  the internet asset thresholds and how it enables,  physical and digital exchange. 

Alison Craighead: That's quite difficult question because,  the internet it's changed so much there's a historical threshold as well when we're looking at it, I'm thinking about, that point historically with technology. And now because of the pandemic, we've had another kind of speed up of technology. And,  how we communicate. 

Jon Thomson: When we made this work, it was just, after the.com bubble had burst. So it was a very different time. It was before the advent of social media even.  So if you're thinking about thresholds, there was still this sense at that point. That the internet was like a place that was virtual. It was less like a geographical layer, which it is now because really, I think it's the advent of 3g technology and mobile phones that started to pen us onto a map. So the internet transformed from this virtual space [00:01:00] to a digital layer. that maps around the planet. So when we made short films about flying, we were thinking about how this digital layer was coming into being. And, but it was actually surprising for a lot of people when we made that work, to think about the geographical relationship to the digital,  information sources. Whereas of course, today it's something quite familiar. 

Lorenz Ecker: How much do you see The work as a space in which collaboration comes to be as somewhat a threshold in itself, So that's someone directing the cameras at Logan airport,  which is now no longer live that website, I believe.

Jon Thomson: interestingly, that camera,  was taken down because,  one of the planes that took off for the nine 11 attack,  took off from there. And so in a shift in the idea of what,  presents a security risk or not, the camera was removed. 

Alison Craighead: So collaboration, that's something we think about a lot in our work and  that comes from working online because you  have a very different relationship with you user slash viewer. [00:02:00] And. I really value it and we think about it a lot, and we still think about it a lot. We started off collaborating as artists, but then actually we realized that what excites us the most is  working with. other people sometimes unwittingly, you know, that will happen often in a gallery where maybe you have an installation and in order to access it, viewer starts to perform you create a stage for them.  And so there's something really lovely in that work, where there was an option for that camera.

To be able to control that and there will be cues of people,   lining up online to, try and land the plane. I think people were trying to feel that they were landing or catching it in the camera 

Lorenz Ecker: in the sense of using live content and  the internet with all its users as a, as a collaborative. Do you ever think. That you intend to, or wish to create a work is eternal. They just can exist on the internet in that form, or is that always that sense of is time basis? [00:03:00] 

Jon Thomson: I think quite the opposite in a way. Our interest in use of life information is about  highlighting the past the transitional nature of almost any artwork actually. And, I think the performative aspects of it is part of it. it's life span is interesting, to select works that yeah. Exists possessed and then die I think to go back to short films about flying, it can persist in two ways. It has the ephemera and traces  of its first deceration.

 But also it's the kind of work that can be expressed as a service of instructions and okay. The Boston airport camera.  No longer exists, but you could set a camera up there again, if you wanted, or you could use a different kind of location.  And so actually it's an instructional work in that sense.

 And it could be recreated as long as the instructions are written well enough.  

This sculpture comprises six resin casts of the space underneath chairs. As a child, Rachel Whiteread would hide under chairs, finding a sense of safety and protection. In filling these voids with resin, she memorialises the spaces she has now outgrown, marking the irreversible progression from childhood to adulthood. Whiteread’s work invites us to consider the relationship between our bodies and the surrounding environment.  These translucent yet impermeable forms capture the tension between emptiness and fullness, positive and negative, usefulness and uselessness.

In these works, Stephen Willats superimposes text on top of photographs of houses, buildings and industrial structures. These three images tell the stories of four neighbours. In what appears to be a group game, each person is given a role to navigate a scenario. The flow charts which outline the participants’ responses to these past, present and future situations give an eerie sense of a prescribed destiny. Using art to reflect on sociological structures, Willats shows the way in which the personal and socio-economic backgrounds of the inhabitants impact their ability to cross thresholds leading to – or preventing – future opportunities in life. 

Can you find a way to get us out of this place, 1976

Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger  (ca. 1580-1649)

Dutch painter Hendrick van Steenwijck presents the theologian and scholar Saint Jerome, seen from the perspective of a library’s entrance, absorbed in the act of translating the Biblical Old Testament from Greek and Hebrew to Latin. Although Saint Jerome is shown here in isolation, his translation, completed in 405 AD, widened access to the Scriptures, breaking down barriers of engagement and opened a door to religious engagement for new audiences.

To read a comparative essay of ‘St Jerome in his Study’ and Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Huis Clos’ by co-curator Tamsin Golding Yee, visit pages 76-80 of the Catalogue.

Beyond the threshold

Thresholds can be portals into other dimensions. The works in this thread represent and invoke transitions from everyday realities to other-worldly realms. They reveal the potential of human imagination and art’s ability to map the mind’s transition through creative states of consciousness. Between them, they depict fantastical worlds, activate our senses, and take their creator and their audiences beyond immediate environments into new and unimagined dimensions. 

Crossing the threshold

These works explore movement and the act of crossing from one physical space to another. They focus on the thresholds that we encounter in everyday life as we look through windows, commute across a city or catch a plane. Whether recording an individual’s movements through a landscape, or looking at how we collectively navigate our environments, the works in this grouping record the transitions of our day-to-day lives. 

Embodying the threshold

Carrying us across physical and psychological thresholds, connecting us both to the outer world and our inner selves, our bodies are complex sites of change and transition. The artworks in this thread explore our relationship with ourselves, as well as the ways in which we interact with others and our environments. Whether directly referencing the figure, or implying its presence, these works highlight how our bodies are shaped by – and in turn shape – the world that surrounds us. As such, they acknowledge that the personal is always political. 

Embracing the threshold

In this grouping, the artists and artworks exist – whether by choice or by accident – suspended between two different dimensions. Rather than understanding the threshold as something to move through, these works embrace thresholds as spaces of freedom and even as a refuge from structures of oppression, such as heteronormative conventions and patriarchal systems. Some works arise out of a need to negotiate limitations, restrictions or exclusions. In these instances, existing in the in-between offers an opportunity to embrace a multiplicity of identities and build relationships with others who seek the same.

Held at the threshold

While thresholds can be spaces of transition, they can also be prohibitive boundaries. The works in this thread address issues of race, class and gender, exploring the spaces of transition which some are unable to cross. Whether as a result of the destructive nature of war, the closing of geographic borders or socio-economic barriers, these artworks visualise people who are stuck or held at the threshold. They point to how the ability to move through space can be highly subjective, the product of socially coded and biased systems.  

Exhibition