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The Space Between: Ritual and the Practice of Art

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The Space Between: Ritual and the Practice of Art

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“Routine is the condition of survival.” – Flannery O’Connor
Is ritual necessary to the making of art?

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The Space Between: Ritual and the Practice of Art

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" Routine is the condition of survival." - Flannery O'ConnorIs ritual necessary to the making of art? I hear arguments on both sides. While I have recently heard several writers I respect more or less say that for them writing rituals are anathema, the tru

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You may make your own proposal for this project, however here is a brief you may wish to use.

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***GOOD STARTING POINT***                        Art Student Guide to Rituals

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***GOOD STARTING POINT***                        Art Student Guide to Rituals

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What is a ritual? Discover how ritual has been used as a theme in art and decide what it means to you

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What is a ritual? Rituals can be religious, ceremonial or personal; they can be represented directly or referred to symbolically using imagery, objects or abstract shapes and patterns.

What is a ritual?

A ritual is a an activity that usually sticks to a set pattern and typically involves a set of actions, words, and objects. Rituals are often repeated at intervals (whether daily, weekly, annually - or on certain special occasions). The word ritual often has associations of serious formal or religious ceremonies - like graduations, christenings or processions - but a ritual can also relate to cultural activities or traditions that happen in everyday life such as Christmas shopping or carnivals...or even fish and chips on a Friday. A ritual can also be highly personal: Do you always play football or swim on a Saturday morning or have tea at your grannies every Sunday? These could be considered your personal rituals.

Ceremonies, processions and celebrations

Some artists choose to capture the traditional solemnity of ritual. William Blake's funeral procession has a moving simplicity in its rhythmic repetition of figures. Sonia Boyce in her painting Missionary Position II uses the ritual of prayer to symbolize conflicting opinions about religious beliefs across different generations and cultures in British society. Other artists have explored the often eerie or magical quality of ritual. Paula Rego's dancers on a beach seem to be taking part in some mysterious, secret ceremonial dance. Edward Burra often combines macabre imagery with humour. There is a certain carnival spirit to his Dancing Skeletons which perhaps reference the Mexican Day of the Dead festival when families and friends gather to remember and celebrate the lives of relatives who have died.

Personal and everyday rituals

Ritual ceremonies don't have to be big grand statements or involve lots of people. They can be personal and private. In Fikret Atay's video Rebels of the Dance two boys dance in a small lobby housing an ATM. They perform their version of traditional Kurdish dances in their own personal ritual. Everyday habits can become ritualistic if the same actions, words, and objects are involved. Cecil Collins depicts the ritual of daily afternoon tea in The Artist and His Wife 'sitting opposite each other like high priests'. In fact tea drinking generally is often presented by British artists with ritualistic significance. Serving and drinking tea - out of a souped up tea urn - becomes an art happening in artist Jeremy Deller's hands; while Sarah Lucas photographs herself drinking tea in one of early her self-portraits exploring her identity.

Objects

Ritual as a theme in art doesn't always show a ritual actually happening. Artists often reference ritual through objects or materials.

The brightly coloured powder that gives Anish Kapoor 's sculptures their mysterious mystical quality is pure pigment - a substance associated with ritual ceremonies in India. Rasheed Araeen's explores his identity as a Muslim in British society through photographs which reference Islamic ritual.

Masks are also objects often associated with ritual. Henry Moore's has an ancient tribal quality; while Rebecca Horn 's masks, headdresses and costumes look as if they are made for an elaborate ritualistic performance.

Cornelia Parker's installation Thirty Pieces of Silver is made up of silver objects often associated with commemorative rituals marking important events in people's lives - such as christenings, weddings or turning twenty-one. But Parker has systematically crushed the objects using a steamroller and suspended them from the gallery ceiling to create a striking installation. As well as the silver itself having ritualistic associations, the act of crushing the objects is something Parker returns to again and again in her works - making this act in itself rather like a ritualistic performance. By flattening the objects she questions and changes their meaning.

Shapes and patterns

Shapes and patterns associated with ritual are also found in art. Many people have Celtic tattoos based on patterns found on ceremonial objects from ancient Celtic culture and religion. Richard Wright's Untitled Figure 3 is an abstract pattern inspired by tattoo and biker-jacket motifs, patterns found on medieval manuscripts, and gothic and baroque religious architectural decoration. Artist Alan Davie created a whole language of abstract symbols and shapes which he derived from emblems and signs associated with Zen Buddhism and magic.

Performance art as ritual

Artists' performance often has a ritualistic quality - as artists create and use their own personal mythologies in order to explore their identity and wider society. Mona Hatoumused her own body as a site for exploring the fragility and strength of the human condition under duress. For the 1985 Roadworks exhibition organised by the Brixton Artists Collective, Hatoum walked barefoot through the streets of Brixton in London for nearly an hour with Doc Marten boots, usually worn by both police and skinheads, attached to her ankles by their laces. This act, captured in Performance Still 1985, is reminiscent of religious pilgrimages where pilgrims endure extreme hardship to demonstrate their belief and faith. Artist Joseph Beuys 's interest in mythology, botany and zoology led him to evolve a rich and complex personal symbolism. To Beuys fat and felt were important symbols of life and survival and he often incorporated these into his performances.

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Ritual Exam Help - Student Resource | Tate

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What is a ritual? Rituals can be religious, ceremonial or personal; they can be represented directly or referred to symbolically using imagery, objects or abstract shapes and patterns. A ritual is a an activity that usually sticks to a set pattern and typically involves a set of actions, words, and objects.

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Channel 4 documentary series exploring our relationships with major life events and how ritual is used to mark them.

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Grayson's Art Club

Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip

Jimmy Carr Destroys Art

The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty

Grayson's Art Club

Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip

Jimmy Carr Destroys Art

The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty

By Word of Mouth

Gaming Changed My Life

London's Great Bridges: Lighting the Thames

How to Paint the Mona Lisa

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Grayson's Art Club Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip Jimmy Carr Destroys Art The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty Grayson's Art Club Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip Jimmy Carr Destroys Art The Kardashians: Billion Dollar Dynasty By Word of Mouth Gaming Changed My Life London's Great Bridges: Lighting the Thames How to Paint the Mona Lisa

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Social practices, rituals and festive events

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Social practices, rituals and festive events

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A short overview of the changing nature social and cultural identify through ritual and ceremony.

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Social practices, rituals and festive events are habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups and that are shared by and relevant to many of their members. They are significant because they reaffirm the identity of those who practise them as a group or a society and, whether performed in public or private, are closely linked to important events. Social, ritual and festive practices may help to mark the passing of the seasons, events in the agricultural calendar or the stages of a person's life. They are closely linked to a community's worldview and perception of its own history and memory. They vary from small gatherings to large-scale social celebrations and commemorations. Each of these sub-domains is vast but there is also a great deal of overlap between them.

Carnival of Binche Read more on the element
© Musée International du Carnaval et du Masque de Binche

Rituals and festive events often take place at special times and places and remind a community of aspects of its worldview and history. In some cases, access to rituals may be restricted to certain members of the community; initiation rites and burial ceremonies are two such examples. Some festive events, however, are a key part of public life and are open to all members of society; carnivals and events to mark the New Year, beginning of Spring and end of the harvest are inclusive occasions common all over the world.

Social practices shape everyday life and are familiar to all members of the community, even if not everybody participates in them. Distinctive social practices that are specially relevant to a community and help reinforce a sense of identity and continuity with the past are given priority in the 2003 Convention. For example, in many communities greeting ceremonies are informal while in others they are more elaborate and ritualistic, acting as a marker of identity for the society. Similarly, practices of giving andreceiving gifts may range from casual events to formal arrangements with significant political, economic or social meanings.

Royal ancestral ritual in the Jongmyo shrine and its music Read more on the element
© Cultural Properties Administration

Social practices, rituals and festive events involve a dazzling variety of forms: worship rites; rites of passage; birth, wedding and funeral rituals; oaths of allegiance; traditional legal systems; traditional games and sports; kinship and ritual kinship ceremonies; settlement patterns; culinary traditions; seasonal ceremonies; practices specific to men or women only; hunting, fishing and gathering practices and many more. They also include a wide variety of expressions and physical elements: special gestures and words, recitations, songs or dances, special clothing, processions, animal sacrifice, special food.

Social practices, rituals and festive events are strongly affected by the changes communities undergo in modern societies because they depend so much on the broad participation of practitioners and others in the communities themselves. Processes such as migration, individualisation, the general introduction of formal education, the growing influence of major world religions and other effects of globalization have a particularly marked effet on these practices.

Healing Ritual connected to the Vimbuza Healing Dance Read more on the element
© Francois-Xavier Freland/UNESCO

Migration, especially of young people, may draw those who practise forms of intangible cultural heritage away from their communities and endanger some cultural practices. At the same time, however, social practices, rituals and festive events may serve as special occasions on which people return home to celebrate with their family and community, reaffirming their identity and link to the community's traditions.

Many communities find that tourists are increasingly participating in their festive events and while there may be positive aspects to tourist involvement, the festivals often suffer in the same way as traditional performing arts. The viability of social practices, rituals and especially festive events may also depend quite heavily on general socio-economic conditions. The preparations, the production of costumes andmasks and providing for the participants is often very expensive and may not be sustainable in times of economic downturn.

Ensuring the continuity of social practices, rituals or festive events often requires the mobilization of large numbers of individuals and the social, political and legal institutions and mechanisms of a society. While respecting customary practices that might limit participation to certain groups, it may also be desirable to encourage the broadest public participation possible. In some cases, legal and formal measures need to be taken to guarantee the access rights of the community to its sacred places, crucial objects, or natural resources necessary for the performance of social practices, rituals and festive events.

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UNESCO - Social practices, rituals and festive events

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Social practices, rituals and festive events are habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups and that are shared by and relevant to many of their members. They are significant because they reaffirm the identity of those who practise them as a group or a society and, whether performed in public or private, are closely linked to important events.

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What is the relation between ritual and art?

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What is the relation between ritual and art?

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Blog entry giving one opinion on the ideas in Cynthia Freeland's book But is it Art?

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In her introductory book So what is the theory, and what might it be? Freeland's imagined proponent probably does not intend to hold that all works of art are rituals or parts of rituals. Probably the claim would be something like this: "There is a continuity between art and ritual. Ritual and art are essentially connected, and art plays a similar function today to that which ritual played in the past." Also it might mean that the best way to understand the nature of art is to understand its connections to ritual. These, by implication, are more important than art's connection to, say, self-expression. For there to be a ritual theory of art it has to be trying to do what previous theories tried to do. For there to be a I have more to say about this But is it Art? Cynthia Freeland suggests that there is a theory of art called the ritual theory of art. She even lists it along with such better-recognized theories as the expression theory and the imitation theory. This is quite surprising since one does not come upon this phrase regularly. Indeed, a google search comes up with only eight uses of the term "ritual theory of art" and Freeland accounts for two of those. She attributes the theory to Thomas McEvilley in his Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (New York: Allworth Press, 1999). I have looked through McEvilley's book and can see no mention of a ritual theory or definition of art, or any definition of art at all. McEvilley does talk about some artworks that reference ritual, including feminist art and performance art, however, and this is probably the source of Freeland's comment. Another surprising fact is the Freeland devotes part of the first chapter of her book, which is probably the most popular introduction to the philosophy of art going, to discussing the ritual theory. That this is surprising is no reason to dismiss it: there might be something valuable and new (and unrecognized) going on here. viable ritual theory of art it has to do those things better, or at least in a way more appropriate to our own time. Another possibility is that Freeland thinks of the ritual theory of art as being the implicit theory held by most societies prior to the imitation theory. It is not that such societies really had a concept of art, but they had certain ritual practices, and whatever explained these practices would also explain the successor-concept which we now call art. (This view, though, would not explain the relation between ritual theory of art and contemporary performance-art practices that are ritual like - a relationship that interests Freeland, although she rejects their identity).

It is plausible that Freeland (or perhaps McEvilley, since Freeland herself does not advocate the ritual theory) believes that contemporary performance art insofar as it seems ritualistic has captured something about the essence of art. Perhaps as the essence of art evolved in the 1990s (when Freeland wrote this book) [I believe that essences change over time] it seemed that the best thing one could say about the inner nature of art was that it was closely connected to ritual, or that it should be.
Certainly there are many differences between what we ordinarily call art and what we ordinarily call ritual. Even when they share the same materials, these are handled quite differently. Although blood may be involved both in Catholic holy communion (symbolically) and in Shakespeare's tragedies (as many bodies pile up on stage), the role blood in each really seems quite different. So too, the literal presence of blood in some works of art is not quite the same as its literal presence in certain religious rituals, say of the Maya. Still, one could argue that what people were trying to do with rituals in ancient times (when such rituals were taken more seriously than today, at least in the secular world) bears some important similarity to what artists are trying to do when they use, for example, blood as a medium today.
Sure, as Freeland observes, ritual is supposed to reinforce the community's proper relation to God, and the ritualized or ritual-like performances of contemporary art are not intended to do this. But it may not be the case that the contemporary artists who use body fluids in their art just want to shock the audience with blood-spattered art. Maybe they want to dig down into something more primordial, something that goes back before civilization as we know it. Maybe what is so disturbing about Hirst, Serrano and Mapplethorpe in their use of body fluids in a ritual-like way is that they are muscling into the territory so long handled by religion. Perhaps art is in competition with religion when it comes to ritual, and this is what is shocking about shocking art. As Freeland says, "It is no accident that this controversial work was about religion as well as body fluids." (7)
The issue may ultimately have to do with whether or not Kantian notions of disinterestedness works for work like that of Hirst. Freeland: even if we find Hirst's work beautiful "its startling content demands consideration."
here and most recently here

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What is the relation between ritual and art?

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In her introductory book So what is the theory, and what might it be? Freeland's imagined proponent probably does not intend to hold that all works of art are rituals or parts of rituals. Probably the claim would be something like this: "There is a continuity between art and ritual.

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ArticleRITUALS AND MODERN SOCIETY by Serge Kahili King 

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ArticleRITUALS AND MODERN SOCIETY by Serge Kahili King 

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Includes a "recipe" for creating a ritual...

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Teaching Hut Village Gate

Article RITUALS AND MODERN SOCIETY
by Serge Kahili King
Copyright by Serge King 1997

A ritual is a well-defined sequence of words and actions designed to focus attention, establish significance, and achieve a beneficial result. Although some people think we have lost our sense of ritual, modern society makes use of many rituals to mark the beginning of significant events (baby showers, grand openings, ship launchings); the ending of life, or ways of life (funerals, bachelor parties, happy hours); the completion of important tasks or performances (graduation ceremonies, toasting successful negotiations, applause); the transition of one state or time period to another (birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, religious ceremonies like baptism/bar mitzvah/confirmation) and the making of connections (marriage ceremonies, church services, flirting).

There exist abundant rituals for every occasion - so why are more and more people in this modern age seeking out rituals different from what they have?

In order for a ritual to be fully effective it must fulfill four requirements:
1. It must be intellectually satisfying.
2. It must be emotionally satisfying.
3. It must have a strong beginning.
4. It must have a strong ending.

To be satisfying intellectually, every word and movement must be filled with meaning which is understood by the participants and the observers. Otherwise the event is just confusing and uninteresting. If you have to ask "Why are we (they) doing this?" the effect of the ritual is lost.

Emotional satisfaction comes from stimulating or pleasing the senses or the ego. Watching a well performed ritual is interesting, but unless you have an emotional bond with a participant (like the mother or father of a bride), just being an observer doesn't affect you much. It's like the difference between being at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and watching it on television.

Falling somewhere between the above two points is the kind of satisfaction that comes from an event with a clearly defined beginning and ending. Part of the power of ritual derives from the fact that, in addition to relating to something significant, it is significant in itself. The more clearly a ritual is set off from all other events, the more impact it has on our psyche and our behavior.

Many of modern society's rituals have lost their satisfaction because their performance is not as effective as it used to be, and because new issues important to people are not being addressed by those traditionally looked to for meaningful rituals. The purpose of a ritual is to impress and influence people, but too many of society's standard rituals are being done for the sake of tradition or dogma or habit alone and those who are leading them are no longer impressed or influenced by them. So people are increasingly seeking out different rituals to meet their needs for significance and enjoyment. This is one reason why such large numbers of people are now interested in shamanism, which includes dance, song, touch, and connections with Nature, as well as joy, meaning and creativity in its rituals. As the people of the world continue to grow in love and confidence they will have more freedom to adapt ancient rituals for modern use, rejuvenate the dead ones of the present society, or create entirely new ones at will. This is exactly what is happening now, and it's a very good sign for the future.

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Teaching Hut Village Gate Article RITUALS AND MODERN SOCIETY by Serge Kahili King Copyright by Serge King 1997 A ritual is a well-defined sequence of words and actions designed to focus attention, establish significance, and achieve a beneficial result.

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Jake Chapman, Dinos Chapman.The Chapman Family Collection2002

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Jake Chapman, Dinos Chapman.The Chapman Family Collection2002

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This sculptural installation makes us think of ritualistic objects, but it becomes obvious that the design of the objects has other meaning...

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The Chapman Family Collection comprises thirty-four wooden carvings, displayed on plinths and dramatically illuminated by pools of light in a darkened room. The work was first exhibited in 2002 at White Cube gallery, London, where the press release for the show heralded it as an extraordinary collection of rare ethnographic and reliquary fetish objects from the former colonial regions of Camgib, Seirf and Ekoc, which the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman's family had amassed over seventy years. The mode of presentation is typical of any Western ethnographic museum. Writing in Artforum, Michael Archer has described its effect as 'sepulchral, reverential, almost holy in a self-consciously contrived and artificial way' (Archer, p.182). This is echoed by the tone of the press release which claimed that the exhibition sought to demonstrate the impact of such artefacts on modern artists, to show how 'ethnographic art was both reconciled and fused with Modernism, creating timeless forms and enabling Global culture to harmonise in a singular poetic language' ( http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/jake_and_dinos_chapman_hoxton_square_2002, accessed 12 May 2009). However, on walking through the installation, the inauthenticity of the objects gradually dawns on the viewer, as the unmistakable face of Ronald McDonald leers out from one of the works. Flame-haired and grinning, the familiar mascot of the world's most famous burger chain forces the visitor to review what has been seen. Closer inspection reveals countless references to McDonald's - various squat fetishes can be re-read as cheeseburgers, while the spiky protruberances on many objects are clearly french fries, and the name McDonald's is carved across the centre of a shield-like object. Indeed the supposed sources of these ethnographic treasures - Camgib, Seirf and Ekoc - can revealingly be read backwards. The catalogue numbers assigned to each object - such as CFC76311561 and CFC77227084 - are the telephone numbers of McDonald's branches in central London.

The Chapman Family Collection also makes overt references to the history of modern art with, among other examples, a miniature version of Endless Column 1938 by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) topped by a red-haired mask. By invoking modern art, the Chapmans make the issue of cultural trespass the broader issue addressed here, rather than any simplistic reference to a fast-food chain. The Chapman Family Collection appears to comment on Modernism's appropriation of so-called 'primitive' art by associating it so strongly with the very face of capitalism. But it also draws attention to the way in which some museums present ethnographic artefacts, draining them of their sociological and religious functions and re-presenting them as aesthetic objects. In Modern Painters, Neal Brown argues that the work is most interested in 'squeezing the maximum value from its pun on "fetish" - relating the Chapman's fetish objects to the Marxist understanding of capitalist economy and "commodity fetishism"' (Neal Brown, 'Burger Fetish', Modern Painters, Spring 2003, p.95). He adds that '[Georges] Bataille's appropriation of economic terminology as a template for social theory was also invoked ... The Chapman's critique was one of mischievous conceptual slipperiness: both excessively silly and eminently sensible' (Brown, p.95).

The Chapman brothers have been working together since the early 1990s. Their art is deliberately confrontational, engaging with such inflammatory subjects and Nazism, the holocaust and religion, while it exploits an aesthetic of obscenity and horror. They appropriate elements from the history of art and philosophical and sociological theory to produce a body of work that derives much of its power from being politically and morally ambiguous, wilfully resisting straightforward interpretation.

The Chapman Family Collection is one of a number of works by the artists that make reference to McDonalds; others include The Rape of Creativity 1999 (private collection), Rhizome 2000 (private collection) and Arbeit McFries 2001 (Tate L03203).

Further reading:
Christoph Grunenberg and Tanya Barson (eds.), Jake and Dinos Chapman: Bad Art for Bad People, exhibition catalogue, Tate Liverpool 2006, p. 85, reproduced pp.86-91.
Michael Archer, 'Jake and Dinos Chapman', ArtForum, May 2003, vol.41, no.9, p.182.

Helen Delaney
May 2009
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'The Chapman Family Collection', Jake Chapman, Dinos Chapman, 2002 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'The Chapman Family Collection', Jake Chapman, Dinos Chapman, 2002 The Chapman Family Collection comprises 34 wooden carvings, allegedly rare ethnographic objects which the Chapman family had amassed over 70 years from former colonial regions. However, the inauthenticity of the objects becomes clear as closer inspection reveals repeated references to the world's most famous burger chain, McDonald's.

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Tracy Emin.  Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95 (1995)

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Tracy Emin.  Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95 (1995)

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Tracy Emin's highly autobiographical work can be seen as ritualistic in it's creation and symbolism.

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Summary of Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is often called the "bad girl of British art" for her raucous public appearances and self-righteous art which are quite contrary to societal norms in England, and previous notions of femininity. She is best known for her deeply personal and confessional artwork that she promotes through her celebrity and use of the popular media. Personal traumatic events such as unreported rape, public humiliation, sexism, botched abortions, alcoholism, and promiscuity have been her topics. The quality of Emin's artwork is often contested, from the critique of expressionism, to the politics of female representation. However, it is this collapse of the identity of the artist and her work that begs for rigorous thought.

Accomplishments

Her work is often referred to as confessional, for she uses her own personal history as the subject for her artwork. She has used her own body as medium in self-portraits and performances. Her artworks enact self-mapping and self-commemorating through the possible healing and spiritual aspect of art.

The fame Emin received was more from press gossip than from critical debate for her artwork and her persona is her own brand of unapologetic artistic commodity that violated social norms (particularly British norms). Before reality television programming became as large of a phenomenon as it is today, Emin was elevated to celebrity status through the contested reception of her public appearances. Her brash unwelcomed commentary and defiant telling of a woman's autobiography fed on the public's love of voyeurist-like television sealed Emin's prominence in the contemporary art world.

She rejected the stereotype of the polite modest Englishwoman, and publicly aired her dirty laundry through her artwork and public appearances. Emin's artwork has a performative quality, and has a function other than mere self-expression in that her persona has been created for her by the public, and she has played the "bad girl" that the public has critically embraced. The societal response is part of her artwork; she encourages critique even if it comes in the form of gossip tabloids.

Although she rejects any notions of her work being for a feminist greater good, her courage to be vulnerable and honest through her artwork collapses the edge between life and art, and has brought attention to the discrepancies between men and women's ability to critically and publicly engage with topics such as alcoholism, gender roles, and, most controversially, sex.

Important Art by Tracey Emin

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95

This piece first brought Tracey Emin to wider fame, both in the art world and among the general public. To create it, Emin appliqued the names of everyone she had ever shared a bed with onto a small tent. The tent was presented with its door open, lit from within and containing a mattress. Interestingly, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With was initially criticized because many people suggested that the list of sexual conquest was more a form of boasting than a work of art. However, Emin's choice of wording in her title adds a degree of nuance to the work. The list of 102 people she has "slept with" refers more generally to people she has shared a bed with, or literally slept next to. Of the many names listed, notably the non-sexual partners, are her grandmother, her twin brother Paul and her two aborted fetuses. This piece is less about sexual intimacy, as it is about general human intimacy. Furthermore, the small size of the tent and the way in which the viewer had to enter the tent to view the names suggests a sense of intimacy and places an emphasis on the emotional connection gained from sleeping side by side, rather than on sexual conquest. The work was one of many which were destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004. The fire was widely covered in the media and some have posed that it was either a publicity stunt or a technique to make the remaining work of the involved artists more valuable. However, as art critic Vincent Katz points out, "Emin later turned down one million pounds (the insurance money) to re-create the piece. This refusal to mythologize her aesthetic past marks a distinction from the artist's continual desire to re-create her biographical past." Emin uses art as a cathartic vehicle for healing through confessional acts. The autobiographical nature of her work and the process of physically creating it required Emin to not repeat the process, but rather to keep the work in a metaphoric space where it can still function as part of her (past) life - somewhat like a memory.

Appliqued tent, mattress and light - [destroyed]

Why I Never Became a Dancer

This video features scenes from Margate, Emin's hometown, including the beach, the games arcade and the "golden mile" which is an area with casinos and bars lit with neon signs. Emin narrates a story from her early teens, explaining what her life was like in Margate and how she began having sex with older men between the ages of 13 and 15. After she turned 15, she says, she wasn't interested in sex any more, and turned to dancing instead. When she was dancing in a competition, a group of men whom she'd slept with began shouting "slag" in the middle of her routine, breaking her concentration and causing her to lose focus and in turn lose the competition. The film ends with the older Emin dancing in an unfurnished room with a smile on her face as a rejection of the group of men from her past. Through this personal experience, Emin explores the double standards men often hold for women; they're willing to sleep with them, but equally willing to call them a "slag" for doing so. Dance critic Sarah Crompton describes the film in the following way: "It simultaneously breaks my heart and makes me want to cheer every time I see it because in it Emin transmutes the details of her life into an experience that anyone who has ever been hurt - and recovered - can identify with." The piece is confessional and cathartic for the artist personally too. The images of her hometown are filmed in a different style, which evoke nostalgia and a touch of romance through faded colors and the amateurish handling of the camera. The style of the cinematography changes and lively disco music picks up where the narrative left off. The cut to Emin dancing in a room alone offers a reprieve to an otherwise unfortunate autobiographical story.

Super 8 film - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

My Bed

The piece is Emin's record of several days spent in bed in the grip of depression. The bed is unmade and the sheets are stained. All around are strewn a variety of items such as condoms, contraceptive pills, underwear stained with menstrual blood, money, and cigarette ends. This object is her actual bed resulting from being bedridden after an end of a personal relationship. She said in an interview from the time, "I got up and took a bath and looked at the bed and thought, 'Christ, I made that'." This is not a sculpture made by molding from the artist's hands, it has more in common with the Duchampian readymade, which can be understood as art making through a process of selecting objects rather than making them. The work was nominated for the Turner prize in 1999 and received a hugely mixed response from the public and press. The piece was a seminal work for Emin and the Turner Prize audience, which introduced art as self-confessional and used biographical items that once belonged to the artist to express a common emotion or state. In this case, the work explores the common experience of depression through a very personal and intimate lens. This artwork draws an important distinction between representation and presentation. This piece is not a representation of an object such as a painting or a sculpture. The art object doesn't refer to another object; it is the object itself. Some have argued that this was the key work in elevating women's experiences to the level of artistic expression. Liz Hoggard claims the work was shocking, and consequently incredibly important, because "it broke so many taboos about the body, sexuality, shame." When the work was exhibited in the Tate for the second time in 2015, Emin commented on how the passing of time has changed the work and its reception: "Back in the 90s, it was all about cool Britannia and the shock factor and now I hope, 15 years later, people will finally see it as a portrait of a younger woman and how time affects all of us."

Box frame, mattress, linens, pillows and various objects - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

I've Got It All

This photographic self-portrait of Emin deals with two key themes of her work: the artists' body and monetary success. Emin sits in front of the camera with her head down and her legs apart. A pile of money (notes and coins) sits between her legs and she seems to be clutching the money to her groin. As author Lauren DiGiulio points out, "it's a delightfully ambiguous gesture. Is she suggesting an appropriation of an exterior material economy into a physical interior in attempting to incorporate the money into her own body, or has she become a human slot machine, transformed into a progenitor of pure liquid capital?" By 2000, Emin had achieved monetary success with her fame. However, this photograph suggests both that she is celebrating her success, and also that she is somehow overwhelmed by it. Knowing Emin's sarcasm in her own work, one can assume that she is mocking her success, and in turn the creative economy, by this depiction. Money and art have always been interdependent, and the objectified and the objectifier are one in this artistic gesture. Money is used as a behavioral element in this image, and can often lead to shame The photograph also explores the artist's use of her body as a source for her art, and consequently as a source of money, as well as the complex associations of prostitution that it brings. Emin is wearing a dress by designer Vivienne Westwood and Emin's signature gold necklaces. The artist has been featured as a model for Westwood in print advertising, and she often wears the brand with pride at public functions. Emin's association with the Westwood brand only supports her being dubbed as "the bad girl of British art" as the designer herself is among a generation of female rebels. Westwood is responsible for bringing punk into the mainstream through fashion, and through this she has had a long career of being an alternative to the norm since the 1970s.

Photographic print

To Meet My Past

In this work, Emin returns to the theme of the intimacies of one's bedroom, but rather than presenting an unmade bed that she herself had slept in, she presents a perfectly made bed with an elaborate metal frame, which is covered with hand-embroidered fabrics. The images and words embroidered into the quilts, pillows, and hangings create a portrait of a young girl: her fears, sexuality, and experiences of abuse. This is one of several works by Emin that use embroidery and applique techniques, traditionally female activities that are typically considered to be a "craft" and therefore distinct from "fine art." However, here she combines sewing with techniques of collage and the concept of the found object, both aspects which place the work in a firm art-historical context as well as elevating an art long considered "feminine" and of secondary importance. Rather than the real menstrual blood exhibited in her earlier work My Bed, here Emin chose to use fabric and thread to represent female bodily functions, but are meant to signify the same concept. It is the symbol of the stain created through needlepoint handicraft that makes this choice significant, for she is referencing previous work while simultaneously reinventing the idea. The cover of the bed reads, "To meet my past," and other phrases adorn the bed sheets and cushions such as: "I cry in a world of sleep," "Please God don't do this to me," "I cannot believe I was afraid of ghosts," and as if signing and simultaneously time stamping the work, ''Tracey Emin 1969-1974''. These highly emotive statements contrast with the soft, warm, and comforting nature of the bed itself.

Embroidered fabric, metal bed frame - Private Collection

You Forgot to Kiss my Soul

In the 2000s, Emin began working extensively with neon lighting. These works feature words and phrases, but unlike the block capitals of iconic neon works by artists such as Bruce Nauman, these are executed in Emin's distinctive handwriting, giving them a personal feel, which is at odds with the mass-produced aesthetic of neon. Emin has commented that, "neon is emotional for everybody." She explained, "the neon and argon gases make us feel positive, that's why you have neon at funfairs, casinos, red-light districts and bars. It's also to do with the way it electronically pulsates around the glass, it's a feel-good factor. Neon can help people who suffer from depression." As columnist and author Vincent Katz argues, Emin's neon works "channel the visual effect of bar or club signage, with their implications of desire and experimentation." In this work, Emin spells out the phrase you forgot to kiss my soul, which as a statement is an unexpected but whimsical idea that arrests the viewer's attention. It features Emin's signature sense of self-revelation and confession, providing an intimate glimpse into the artist's mind. This work is a departure from her appliqued household soft objects and readymades, but it remains true to the Emin aesthetic. She explains "I realized that there was a greater idea of creativity... the essence of creativity - that moment of conception, the whole importance, being of everything... I realized if I was to make art it couldn't be about a fucking picture... it had to be about where it was really coming from." Her version of artistic authenticity is rooted in her ability to be vulnerable despite her well-known brand of artistic commodity.

Neon light

Biography of Tracey Emin

Childhood

Tracey Emin was born in Surrey, in England. She grew up in Margate, on the coast of Kent, with her twin brother Paul. She lived with her mother in a successful seaside hotel, where she claims she was treated "like a princess." Her Turkish father lived with them for half of the week, spending the other half with his wife and other children. After a few years, Emin's father left and took his money with him, leaving Emin's mother bankrupt.

The family was then forced to live in poverty; Emin later recalled that they had two meters, one for gas and one for electricity, but they could never afford to have them both on at the same time. When she was 13, Emin was raped; something that she later claimed "happened to a lot of girls."

Early Training and Work

Emin left Margate to study fashion at the Medway College of Design between 1980 and 1982. She met the avant-garde personality Billy Childish, who was also a student at the college until he was expelled. Her relationship with the colorful writer, their work at Childish's small press, and her study of printing in Maidstone Art College, are all what Emin considers important artistic experiences in her maturing as an artist.

In 1987, Emin's relationship with Childish ended and she moved to London. She studied for an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, which she received in 1989. However, after leaving the college she went through an emotionally traumatic period in which she had two abortions, and this experience caused her to destroy all the work she had made at the Royal College.

While she was still coming to terms with her own artistic practice, she influenced a reactive movement called Stuckism, which sought to promote figurative painting rather than the sort of conceptual art that Emin was focused on at the time. It was founded in 1999 by Emin's ex-boyfriend Billy Childish. The movement's name was inspired by Emin, when she had told Childish his paintings were "Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!"

In the years after breaking up with Childish, once Emin rose into fame, he became very vocal about Emin's art practice. He opposed the art business and in turn the popularity of her work and said, "Taking cultural things and turning them into mere commerce is very dangerous. Professional football has ruined football and professional art has ruined art. A decadence and superficiality has set in and sometime I wonder if maybe we have got what we deserve. I think it is odd that the Brit artists cite the influence of someone like Duchamp who was involved in anti-art and who was taking the piss out of the pompous pretentious art establishment. The biggest irony is that now they are that pretentious art establishment themselves yet they still put forward this idea that they are undermining something." Childish's own Stuckism movement is more about rejecting the frenzy of conceptual art, and sought to champion the work of figurative painters. The Stuckism movement is still quite active, and is famous for protesting the Turner Prize every year to show their continued opposition. The Stuckism art movement is an action against artists such as Emin, and yet her artistic presence is the basis for their fundamentals, for their movement would not exist without Emin. She inspired the movement not only through her criticism of Childish's work, but also through her artwork and the public acceptance of her work. They may be in opposition to her, but require her particular brand of art fame to continue their plight.

Mature Period

Upon moving to London, Emin become friendly with many of the other artists who would later be called the Young British Artists, which included Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. The group began to exhibit together in 1988, although Emin did not join ranks with them artistically until the early 1990s. The gallerist Charles Saatchi was a supporter and collector of the artists from the beginning of their careers, and is often given credit for "discovering" them. The name of the group was from the title of an exhibition at Saatchi's gallery in March 1992 titled "Young British Artists I" but it was artist and writer Michael Corris who referred to the group of artists with that title in an ArtForum article in May 1992. Often all artists of that generation from Britain are called YBAs as it now holds a historic reference.

In 1993, Emin joined with Sarah Lucas to open a shop called "The Shop" in Bethnal Green, which was in the East End of London. They sold work by both artists, including anything from t-shirts to ash trays, to paper mache sex toys to dresses, adding a previously little-seen commercialism to their artistic practices, which would become a defining feature of Young British Art.

Emin had her first solo exhibition at London's White Cube in the same year. Named My Major Retrospective, Emin drew together a collection of personal items and photographs, creating a part-installation part-archive with a strongly autobiographical slant. This element of autobiography is key to her ongoing practice.

In the middle of the 1990s, Emin began a relationship with curator and art world figure Carl Freedman. Freedman was friendly with Damien Hirst and had worked with him on some of his important early shows that introduced Young British Art to the public. In 1994 the couple traveled in the US together, where Emin paid her way by doing readings. They also spent time in Whitstable on the Kent coast together, often using a beach hut that Emin purchased with her friend Sarah Lucas. She has spoken about how much she enjoyed owning property for the first time saying, "I was completely broke and it was really brilliant, having your own property by the sea." In 1999 she later turned the hut into an artwork by bringing the structure from the beachfront into the Saatchi Gallery and calling the work, The Last Thing I Said to You is Don't Leave Me Here (1999).

In 1995, Freedman curated a show called "Minky Manky" for which he encouraged Emin to make artwork larger and less ephemeral. The result was her well-known work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (1995), which was a tent embroidered with the names of everyone with whom she had shared a bed, sexual or otherwise. This artistic touch through words is a common theme throughout her work. Emin uses her own handwriting, as seen in her neon messages, embroidered words, monoprints and hand-cut letters for her applique designs. Misspellings and grammar mistakes are present in her artworks, as if to add humiliations and failures to her authenticity.

Emin first came to the attention of the wider British public when she appeared on a television show about the Turner Prize in 1997, where she was belligerent and drunk, swearing on live television among a panel of academics. She finished her appearance by saying, "I'm leaving now, I wanna be with my friends, I wanna be with my mum. I'm gonna phone her, and she's going to be embarrassed about this conversation, this is live and I don't care. I don't give a fuck about it." She ended with, "you people aren't relating to me now, you've lost me" before taking off her lapel mic while still talking and walking off in the middle of the live show.

Two years after her drunken television appearance, Emin was nominated for the Turner Prize for her controversial work My Bed (1998). Only one British artist of the four nominated can win the prize, and Emin lost the Prize that year to Steve McQueen. The surrounding press coverage dubbed her the "bad girl of British art". At the time, many voiced opinions about the types of stains and impurities contained in her artwork, even the lowest English tabloids weighed in. Although she never won the Turner Prize (yet), it was the catalyst for her fame.

Her work evolved during this period and she developed a more specific style. Her choice to use needlework and applique techniques place her work within a tradition of feminist discourse within modern and contemporary art. These techniques were considered domestic handicrafts and were typically considered low in the hierarchy of art, and a part of normalized feminine practice - a concept that Feminist art has waged war against with significant success. Emin herself has no fear of being associated with "low art" or "women's work", for she embraces her own sexuality and femininity; and most certainly places importance upon it.

Current Practice

Emin's personal life and public appearances have become less sensational since the late 1990s. Her work is in a variety of important collections, and many celebrities have become collectors of her art, including Elton John and George Michael. She has also become friends with many famous people from the music and fashion worlds, including Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Vivian Westwood, Kate Moss, and Madonna. Madonna has described Emin as "intelligent and wounded and not afraid to expose herself."

In 2007, Emin was made a Royal Academician at London's Royal Academy of the Arts, marking her ascent into the upper echelons of British art society and her acceptance by the establishment. She was later also made a professor of drawing at the institution. In 2013, she was included on a list of the 100 most powerful women in the country by BBC Radio 4, and in the same year she was awarded a CBE for her services to the arts.

For the 52 nd Venice Biennale in 2007 Emin was the second female British artist to be nominated to represent the British Pavilion (the first was Rachel Whiteread in 1997). She exhibited a work titled, Borrowed Light which featured many of her early drawings alongside her recent works. The show received mixed critique, and she was criticized for being limited in her art practice.

In 2015, Emin took the unusual decision to "get married" to a rock in her garden in France. She later stated that "somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it's not going anywhere," describing her rock-husband as "an anchor, something I can identify with." She symbolically chose to wear her father's funeral shroud for the short and unconventional ceremony. This is to be understood as a universal expression of love, and an expression of the soul or the invisible self. Emin has announced numerous times that she no longer has sex and is not invested in physical conquest, but rather, seeks to focus on love and her work.

The Legacy of Tracey Emin

Emin's work as part of the Young British Artists movement placed her firmly within a key legacy that was to affect the development of art in Britain for years to come. Similarly, she holds an international stage, for her work tackles universal ideas through her relationship to human behavior and gender. Her seminal work My Bed helped redefine what a liberated woman can be. In particular, Emin's work influenced a generation of female artists who explore womanhood and feminism through a self-confessional tone. These include artists such as Marie Jacotey-Voyatzis, whose print works explore her emotional life as a woman and include Emin-like misspellings, and Laure Prouvost, a Turner Prize winner who works with self-revelatory video as well as textiles and found objects to create striking tableaux. Emin has evaded aligning her ideology with a larger political cause, and has stated, "I'm not happy being a feminist. It should all be over by now."

Her work can be understood as belonging to the ethos of third-wave feminism; a belief that a woman can define her sexuality on her own terms. The lack of symbology in Emin's work forces audiences to focus on the real and often taboo aspects of femininity through modern women's issues, such as menstruation, abortion, promiscuity, and the shame associated with these topics. She has carved her own place and continues to produce artwork with her signature strong, yet vulnerable edge.

Emin continues to be active in her art practice, and the basis of her work remains tied to physical identity through corporeal and spiritual anguish. She is an active participant in her artwork, and through this she lends an openness and vulnerability to her audience through universal emotion. She rejects discussion of the feminist authority in her work, and yet she engages directly with modern female identity. Art allows the violation of social norms, and in turn a way for viewers to enter into sharing the human social condition - often in a controlled environment.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Tracey Emin

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

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Tracey Emin is often called the "bad girl of British art" for her raucous public appearances and self-righteous art which are quite contrary to societal norms in England, and previous notions of femininity. She is best known for her deeply personal and confessional artwork that she promotes through her celebrity and use of the popular media.

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Richard Long is associated with the Land Art Movement. The creation of these works and their aesthetic can be considered ritualistic.

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Sir Richard Julian Long, (born 2 June 1945) is an English sculptor and one of the best-known British land artists.

Long is the only artist to have been short-listed four times for the Turner Prize. He was nominated in 1984, 1987 and 1988, and then won the award in 1989 for White Water Line. He lives and works in Bristol, the city in which he was born.

Long studied at Saint Martin's School of Art before going on to create work using various media including sculpture, photography and text. His work is on permanent display in Britain at the Tate and Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery as well as galleries in America, Switzerland and Australia.

Long's work has broadened the idea of sculpture to be a part of performance art and conceptual art. His work typically is made of earth, rock, mud, stone and other nature based materials. In exhibitions his work is typically displayed with the materials or through documentary photographs of his performances and experiences.

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Artist page for Richard Long CBE (born 1945)

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SHOPPING: A CENTURY OF ART AND CONSUMER CULTURE

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SHOPPING: A CENTURY OF ART AND CONSUMER CULTURE

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Exhibition Write-up: Shopping has overtaken the mere satisfaction of physical necessities, becoming a ritual in which identities are shaped and transformed.

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The browsing, selection and purchase of commodities is one of the defining activities of modern urban life. Shopping has overtaken the mere satisfaction of physical necessities, becoming a ritual in which identities are shaped and transformed.

Artists have long been fascinated by the methods used in seducing customers, and by the locales of shopping - from corner shops and department stores to contemporary suburban mega-malls. Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture examines the relationship between the display, distribution and consumption of commodities and consumption of commodities and modern and contemporary art, and includes work that blur the distinction between the shop environment and the gallery environment. The exhibition begins with Your Supermarket 2002 by Guillaume Bijl, a 'real' supermarket in the gallery, with shelves of fresh food, drinks and household products, as well as checkout tills. Bijl presents us with a familiar place but because nothing is for sale our desire to buy is frustrated.

Photographers Eugène Atget, Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans chronicled the disappearing world of small shops and specialist stores in Paris, New York and beyond. Their work can be seen alongside Stewart Bale's photographs of shops such as Woolworths, Lewis's and Marks & Spencer in Liverpool.

Early examples of art's crossover into the commercial sphere include Frederick Kiesler's studies of shop windows and László Moholy-Nagys application of Bauhaus principles to the presentation of objects. The Surrealists created highly theatrical window displays, outraging the public by confusing material and erotic desires.

Two major Pop art installations feature in Shopping: Claes Oldenburg's The Store 1961,and The American Supermarket- constructed for the first time since the original was shown in New York in 1964. A collaboration between the great names of Pop art, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, The American Supermarket is an evocation of an ordinary supermarket but one where real foods such as Warhol's signed stacks of Campbell's soup cans are mixed together with works such as Robert Watts' chrome fruits and multicoloured wax eggs.

Shopping also presents a classic example of Christo's covered store fronts from the 1960s, an ensemble of Jeft Koons' monumental vacuum-cleaner vitrines from the 1980s, and Barbara Kruger's iconic work Untitled (I shop therefore I am) l987.

Damien Hirst's Pharmacy 1992 shown for the first time at Tate Liverpool - explores the link between the presentation techniques used by pharmaceutical companies and the methods of display found in shops and museums. Andreas Gursky's new work 99 Cent II 2001 celebrates and critiques the seductive powers of supermarket packaging and presentation.

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Shopping: A century of art and consumer culture | Tate Liverpool

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The browsing, selection and purchase of commodities is one of the defining activities of modern urban life. Shopping has overtaken the mere satisfaction of physical necessities, becoming a ritual in which identities are shaped and transformed.

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Although made in 1998 the work has its origins in the years 1980 to 1993 when Calle invented and sustained a series of private and shared rituals around her birthday.

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Sophie Calle, The Birthday Ceremony (Detail 1) 1998

Sophie Calle, The Birthday Ceremony (Detail 2) 1998

Sophie Calle, The Birthday Ceremony (Detail 3) 1998

Sophie Calle is fascinated by the interface between our public lives and our private selves. This has led her to investigate patterns of behaviour using techniques akin to those of a private investigator, a psychologist, or a forensic scientist. It has also led her to investigate her own behaviour so that her life, as lived and as imagined, has informed many of her most interesting works.

Calle's very first work involved following strangers around Paris. Calle had been abroad for a number of years and the idea behind this surveillance was initially an attempt to reacquaint herself with the city. However, she soon discovered that observing the behaviour and actions of these strangers provided information with which to construct their identities. Suite Venitienne, first realised in 1980, developed this idea in the form of a diary, comprising photographs and texts, detailing Calle's observations of a stranger whom she followed, in disguise, during his trip from Paris to Venice. In l'Homme au carnet of 1983 Calle elicited the active collaboration of individuals. Having found the address book of one Pierre D, Calle photocopied the contents before returning it to its owner. She then visited and interviewed the people listed, in order to build up a profile of its owner from their descriptions and anecdotes. The results were published in Liberation. At around the same time Calle herself became the willing subject of such investigations. In 1981 at Calle's request, her mother hired a private detective to follow her daughter, photograph her in secret and record her every movement. It was, in Calle's words, an attempt 'to provide photographic evidence of my own existence'.

Calle is known largely for works combining texts and photographic images in a cool presentational style; The Birthday Ceremony is her first major sculptural installation and it has been conceived especially for Art Now 14. Although made in 1998 the work has its origins in the years 1980 to 1993 when Calle invented and sustained a series of private and shared rituals around her birthday. These are now manifest as art, demonstrating how closely her life and her art are intertwined. Over this fourteen-year period, aside from the occasional year of disruption, Calle held an annual dinner party on the evening (or around the time) of her birthday. To each celebration she invited a group of friends and relatives, the precise number of invitees corresponding to the number of years of her age, with one additional, anonymous guest nominated by a chosen guest, in order to symbolise the unknown of her future. Calle initiated these dinner parties to ensure that her birthday was remembered each year. They were the most ambitious of a series of rituals Calle had invented to override an obsessive insecurity she experienced in early adulthood. The guests brought gifts, tokens of love and affection, and these Calle displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet, as a constant reminder of this affection. At the end of the year the objects were boxed up and put away, their places taken by the gifts of another birthday dinner party. At stressful moments over the years Calle was able to unpack the boxes and reassure herself of her networks of support. When she became forty in 1993, Calle realised she had been cured of this obsessive insecurity and no longer felt the necessity to recall her friendships and family ties in such a formal way.

The Birthday Ceremony brings together fifteen cabinets based on the medical design of the original, which had been given to Calle by her father. Thirteen individual cabinets and one pair, each contain the gifts of a single year. The gifts are displayed unwrapped and range from the banal to the bizarre. They include works of art, hand made tokens of affection, books and letters, junk and antiques, plastic trivia, items stolen from a restaurant, bottles of wine, chocolates and so on. Encased behind glass they become objects of magnetic desire and frustration to the viewer, who cannot hold, cannot taste, cannot unwrap. On the glass of each cabinet is a list of items. The donors themselves are not always named and it is therefore often impossible to tell if the works of art were given by the artists themselves (probable in the case of Christian Boltanski or Annette Messager, improbable in the case of the late Yves Klein). In some cases it is easy to identify a donor. Calle's mother is clearly responsible for the sensible and substantial gifts of domestic equipment that arrive each year - deliberately too large to display behind glass -and which are represented by the manufacturer's warranty. In other cases a particular theme emerges over time: someone often gives hats, another is interested in bull-fighting ephemera. On occasions, most notably with the fabulous painted-wood angel received on her fortieth birthday, guests join together to share a gift.

Calle first explored this ritual in a photographic work depicting the cabinet and its contents, reducing the annual ceremony and its associated objects to a series of documentary records. The development of the subject and its realisation as a series of installations, creates a work that is both more poignant and more perplexing. The Birthday Ceremony draws our attention to the way in which we construct our identity around secret rituals (from forms of self- indulgence to forms of self-denial) and surround ourselves with objects and activities that give meaning and substance to both our private and our public lives. In transforming personal ritual into public display, The Birthday Ceremony also raises questions about the meaning of these objects, each one removed from its customary realm. Each one is evidence of a relationship and a transaction of a particular kind and they are laid out here according to criteria that have nothing to do with traditional museum techniques of classification or display.

Text written by Frances Morris

Biography

Born 1953. Lives and works in Malakoff.

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art now: sophie calle: the birthday ceremony

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Art Now: Sophie Calle: The Birthday Ceremony - Exhibition at Tate Britain | Tate

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Sophie Calle is fascinated by the interface between our public lives and our private selves. This has led her to investigate patterns of behaviour using techniques akin to those of a private investigator, a psychologist, or a forensic scientist.