ISelf Collection: Self-Portrait as the Billy Goat
27 Apr – 20 Aug 2017
Large Print Guide
Gallery 7
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1
This display from the ISelf Collection brings together physical, psychological and imaginary self-portraits by fourteen international artists, who bring different approaches to the subject of the construction of personal identity. It is titled after a key work by Pawel Althamer (b.1967, Poland) in which the artist depicts himself as a melancholic, flayed billy goat in the guise of Auguste Rodin’s famous ‘Thinker’.
A series of photo strips by Andre Breton (1896-1966, France) and his Surrealist colleagues opens the display. Taken in 1929, they experimented with a new form of instantaneous self-portraiture – the photobooth. They look sideways, away from the camera, and play with different poses – smoking, thinking of laughing, showing themselves as complex and multi-faceted individuals.
By staging their own portraits, artists unpack the mechanisms of how we present ourselves to the world. In her ‘Untitled’ (1977/2010) photographs, Cindy Sherman
(Continues on next page) (b.1954, USA) poses as four theatrical figures taking a curtain call. Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010, France), who addressed the psychology of the artist and the role of women in her influential work, presents herself as mother and vessel in ‘Untitled’ (2005).
The relationship between body and feeling is developed by Gabriel Kuri (b.1970, Mexico) through his work ‘Self portrait as chart with loopinh volume’ (2012) in which he reflects on notions of unity and disembodiment. Meanwhile, Yayoi Kusama’s (b.1929, Japan) ‘Infinity Nets YSOR’ (2011), from an ongoing series of delicate, abstract white paintings, explores the landscape of her mind.
Works by Enrico David, Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, Linder, Aditya Mandayam, Raqs Media Collective and Prem Sahib reveal how artists convey the complex dynamics beneath surface appearances.
The series of four displays from the ISelf Collection are accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue entitled ‘Creating Ourselves’, edited by Emily Butler and Candy Stobbs. With contributions by Glenn Adamson, Frances Borzello, Emily Butler, Nicholas Cullinan, Amelia Jones, Prue O’Day and Lydia Yee, as well as an interview between Iwona Blazwick and collector Maria Sukkar.
No Photography.
2
Continuing the Whitechapel Gallery’s programme of presenting rarely seen collections, this display is drawn from the ISelf Collection, a UK-based collection which focuses on identity and the human condition. Established in 2009, the collection includes painting, sculpture and photography where the themes of birth, death, sexuality, love, pain and joy are all rigorously represented. Many of the works examine the existential dilemma that is inherent to human nature. Figuration plays a major part, and many of the artists represented are women.
An exhibition in four chapters: 27 April 2017 – 12 August 2018
The series of exhibitions will look at the self in art through four displays, aiming to reveal artists’ attempts to understand how we build our sense of identity as an individual, in relation to others, to society and to the wider world. The four chapters are each named after a key work in the display.
‘ISelf Collection: Self-Portrait as the Billy Goat’
27 April – 20 August 2017
‘ISelf Collection: The End of Love’
30 August – 26 November 2017 (Continues on next page)
‘ISelf Collection: The Upset Bucket’
5 December 2017 – 1 April 2018
‘ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies’ 10 April – 12 August 2018
Clockwise, from Left:
3. André Breton (1896-1966, Tinchebray, France)
André Breton, Pierre Prévert, Albert Valentin,
Suzanne Muzard, Unidentified Man, Marcel Duhamel circa 1929
Unique Photomaton, silver gelatin prints
These early photo strips by André Breton (1896-1966, France) and his Surrealist colleagues were taken in the first photobooths of Paris. They experimented with a new form of instantaneous, automatic self-portraiture and looking sideways or away from the camera, playing with
different poses - smoking, thinking or laughing-, depicting themselves as complex and multi-faceted individuals.
(Continues on next page)
Members include Pierre Prévert (film director and brother of poet Jacques Prévert); Albert Valentin (screenwriter, film director); Suzanne Muzard (Breton’s lover) and Marcel
Duhamel (actor, screenwriter, editor, translator). Images drawn from the series were reproduced in the group’s La
Révolution surréaliste no. 12 journal (1929).
4 Louise Bourgeois
Untitled 1947-49
Bronze painted white and blue, stainless steel
173.4 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
5
Linder (b.1954, Liverpool, UK) You search but do not see, 1981-2010
Digital print from original negative on photographic paper
This image of Linder veiled in a plastic shroud was taken by the photographer Christine Birrer. It was originally one of a series of images and texts included in a booklet accompanying Pickpocket: SheShe (1981), a cassette recording by the Manchester post-punk band Ludus of which she was a leading member.
Exploring themes of hiding, disguise and self-protection, that are also evoked in the work’s title, Linder’s feminist montages and photographs taken from adverts, magazine cut-outs and pornographic images comment on the commodification, expectations and objectification of women.
6 Cindy Sherman Untitled No. 506 1977/2011
Black and white photograph 22.2 x 17.5 cm / 42.5 x 37 x 4 cm framed 11/20 + 4 AP
Cindy Sherman Untitled No. 507 1977/2011
Black and white photograph 22.2 x 17.5 cm / 42.5 x 37 x 4 cm framed 11/20 + 4 AP
Cindy Sherman Untitled No. 508 1977/2011
Black and white photograph 22.2 x 17.5 cm / 42.5 x 37 x 4 cm framed 11/20 + 4 AP
Cindy Sherman Untitled No. 499 1977/2011
Black and white photograph 22.2 x 17.5 cm / 42.5 x 37 x 4 cm framed 11/20 + 4 AP
7 Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010, Paris, France) Untitled, 2005
Pencil, gouache, paper collage and thread on paper
Three Horizontals, 1998
Fabric and steel
Described as ‘dolls of mortality and loss’, Bourgeois’s soft, scarred figures are laid out on what appears as the hard surfaces of mortuary trays. They represent three cycles of life from the unformed and undeveloped to the fully embodied and lived in. Bourgeois often worked with found materials including here a metal money box alluding to women as sexual vessels. She famously said ‘her body is her sculpture’ drawing on the psychological complexities of her role as mother, daughter, lover and artist.
8 Tracey Emin I’m here
2014
Gouache on canvas 20.3 x 30.5 cm / Framed 22.4 x 31.4 x 3.2 cm
Tracey Emin Fist Clasped 2014
Gouache on paper 40.5 x 51 cm / Framed 66.5 c 76.5 x 3.2 cm
9 Enrico David Untitled (consciousness as a dirty secret) 2013
Acrylic on canvas 85 x 78 cm
Enrico David Untitled
2014
Gouache on paper 50.5 x 40 cm
10 Yayoi Kusama Infinity Nets YSOR 2011
Acrylic on canvas 130 x 162 cm
11
Pawel Althamer (b.1967, Warsaw, Poland)
Self-portrait as the Billy-Goat, 2011
Glazed ceramic, plastic, metal, resin cast, goat fur, used shoe, painted Styrofoam plinth
Althamer has been making introspective life-size sculptural self-portraits throughout his career. The figure of the billy goat is inspired by the Polish cartoon Koziołek Matołek (Matolek the Billy-Goat), by Kornel Makuszyński, whom Althamer has often disguised himself as in performance actions.
Adopting an existential pose, his body reduced to its bare bones with only remnants of skin and apparel, the figure appears to contemplate the human condition and to bear the weight of the world on its shoulders, recalling Auguste Rodin’s monumental bronze sculpture The Thinker (1903).
12 Prem Sahib (b.1982, London, UK) Undetectable, 2013
Aluminium, paint, acrylic
Prem Sahib’s work displays an elegant minimalism, however he is interested in how situations may not be so simple or clear-cut, and how this then shifts our initial understanding.
This work refers to the hypothetical result of a rapid HIV- test. Thanks to awareness of the AIDS crisis and artworks made during the 1980s and 90s, the public knows about being seropositive and seronegative, yet with antiretroviral therapy today, an HIV-positive person's viral load can be so low that the virus is undetectable. The title of this work references an undetectable HIV status through formal ideas around presence and non-presence, and how this precarious balance can affect our sense of self and relations with others. The two dots also look like eyes offering an alternative way of looking at a situation.
13
Aditya Mandayam Self-portrait as a Dandy-Lion 2012
Silkscreen as a Berliner Tabloid approx. 78 x 58 cm
14 Raqs Media Collective A Day in the Life of ______2009
Clock, high gloss aluminium poly-urethane based automotive paint, clear and frosted acrylic, clock movement, LED lights
64.7 diameter x 12.7 cm depth
15 Gabriel Kuri (b.1970, Mexico City, Mexico) Self -portrait as chart with looping volume, 2012
Insulating material, string, concrete cast
Kuri is a sculptor who employs alternative and everyday materials drawing on the visual vocabulary of minimalism. This work is part of a series of self-portraits that explore the formal use of insulation material, a product of globalisation, which is used to insulate houses but also people in the form of blankets for refugees.
In this series he explored the use of balance and equilibrium in sculptural form, exploring the relationship between geometry, historical data and human rationality. This work reflects on unity and disembodiment as a string holds together but bisects the insulation material and a concrete cast of a can.
16 Gilbert & George Down Among the Dustbins 2008
Photo piece in nine panels 226 x 190 cm
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