Latest / The Downing Arts Podcast / LT26.8 Face-to-face with Elizabeth I

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LT26.8 Face-to-face with Elizabeth I · The Downing Arts Podcast

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  Welcome to the Downing Arts Podcast.
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  This past week has seen a huge number of events, including widening participation activities,
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  the percussion extravaganza on Saturday and the final evensong of term on
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  Sunday. Thank you to everyone who's been involved in making it all happen.
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  The new exhibition in the gallery opened last month and I'm delighted to have
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  with me today the curator of Tudor contemporary, Dr. Christina Faraday. Welcome,
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  Christina. Hi, Louisa. Lovely to be here. Thank you very much for joining us.
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  I'm looking forward to talking about the exhibition, but before we do, perhaps you could
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  just tell us a little bit about yourself. So I'm an affiliated lecturer in the
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  History of Art department in Cambridge. I did all my
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  degrees in Cambridge and stayed to be a research fellow
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  at Gonval and Quays. But my specialism is Tudor art
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  and I just find this period so fascinating.
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  I recently released the book the Story of Tudor Art, which is
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  the first book to sort of look at the whole period from a kind of
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  artistic, material culture perspective. Amazingly, there hadn't been one before that
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  did all of those things. You know, it was more isolated studies.
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  So, yeah, I think this is a period that's ripe for reinterpretation
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  and new discoveries. Fantastic. And I know there's
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  some pretty wacky stuff in the exhibition about reinterpretation.
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  Excuse me. So, I mean, where did you sort of first
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  get the idea of having an exhibition and then how did you sort of put
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  it all together? I mean, where does one start with this kind of thing?
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  Well, I've been thinking about these artists and these artworks sort
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  of together in my imagination ever since I started writing
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  the epilogue for my book, which kind of brings things up to date and says,
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  well, look, you know, artists now are looking at Tudor art and thinking about its
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  relevance in the present moment. And then when Rachel Coombs,
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  the previous keeper of the gallery, said, I know you do the Tudor, but is
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  there anything that might work in the Hyeon Gallery as a space?
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  I thought, well, actually this would be an amazing opportunity to actually
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  see all these things together. So we,
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  I think, took shape over a year or two. We were writing to artists
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  and they. They've all been so responsive and so eager to
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  be involved. You know, I think this is. It is a slightly unusual way
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  into their work. I don't think any of them think of themselves as purely,
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  you know, artists who are interested in the Tudor period. It filters
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  into their ways in slightly more. Into their work in slightly more incidental ways.
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  So to bring everything together with that overarching
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  Theme is actually a slightly new experience for them as well.
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  And they were just so enthusiastic about it. Did they have any communication with
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  each other? Sort of was a sort of collaborative thing or did you
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  have the overall view and then sort of put it all together? Yeah, I don't
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  think any of them really knew each other very well before.
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  Think incidentally, you know, they've all developed an interest in
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  the Tudor period for the things that they want to explore. So artists
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  of every period have looked back to the Tudor age for various
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  ideas about national identity. And particularly,
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  you know, the Victorians, for example, were interested in Britain's.
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  The origins of that Protestant naval empire that they
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  were so keen on and Elizabeth I being a strong queen, they saw that as
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  a kind of parallel with Victoria. So they were kind
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  of looking at the Tudor period in a celebratory way. And some of the same
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  themes are visible in the work of contemporary artists. They're also interested
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  in the Tudor age as the origin of imperial
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  ambition and things like that. But seen from the much more ambivalent perspective
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  that we have on that now and the much more critical kind of assessment
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  that we might. So to answer your question,
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  yeah, I suppose I don't think any of them did know each other in advance
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  and it's just kind of nice to be able to bring everyone together and say,
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  hey, you know, you guys are interested in similar, similar things. Do you
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  have a favorite piece of art that's currently in the gallery? That's probably an impossible
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  question. I mean, they're all amazing and actually seeing them in person,
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  you know, I've been thinking about these works and studying them for quite a long
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  time. From the Sing Twins, kind of incredible Mughal inspired
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  light boxes, gigantic images inspired by tiny ones
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  from the 16th century. And Chan Qiu Bay's incredible photographs
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  where he dresses up as different historical figures to explore his
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  ideas about British history. I think if I could take
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  one home, it would be the Mask of Youth by Matt
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  Collishaw, which is extremely creepy. Yeah,
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  I don't think my partner would have it in the house actually, so it's a
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  good job that I don't have the option. But it's a life size
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  face of Elizabeth, the first made out of silicon and
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  it has a robotic armature,
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  so. And a motion detector. So it looks around the room,
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  it blinks, it opens its mouth and it sort of moves towards
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  and it is. It's very uncanny, very creepy.
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  But it's also, I think because it's so small,
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  being life size, it's very Vulnerable looking.
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  And I think Matt Collishaw originally
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  made it for an installation in the Queen's gallery,
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  the Queen's house in Greenwich, to go opposite the
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  Armada portrait. And in Elizabeth's later portraits,
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  she becomes the Virgin Queen, this icon of. Of British
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  identity, English identity at the time.
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  And she's aging, but her artists very rarely
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  show that. They show her as artificially youthful,
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  partly as a way to allay any fears about
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  the fact that she actually refused to name her successor. And she didn't have any
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  children, obviously, being the Virgin Queen. So the question for
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  Matt Collishaw at the time was what did Elizabeth really
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  look like? You know, can we access what she might have actually looked like
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  when she was 55 in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada?
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  So he researched this quite meticulously. He looked
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  at ambassadors, reports from foreign countries, so they're under less pressure
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  to flatter the Queen than her own courtiers.
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  He looked at medical information because she'd had a bout of smallpox when
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  she was quite young, so what effect would that have? And he
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  based the whole thing on an effigy in Westminster Abbey,
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  on her tomb, which is thought to possibly be based on a death mask.
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  So it's the closest thing we have to an actual face of Elizabeth I's three
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  dimensions. And he takes all of that information and he makes this silicon
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  mask out of it. And I think it seems on the
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  face of it, ha ha, to promise, you know, access to
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  the real Elizabeth. What did she really look compared with these very artificial
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  seeming portraits? But of course, what he's done is he's
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  left the robotic armature exposed so we can see sort of how
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  it works. So in effect, this is another very
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  artificial image, just as constructed and imagined and potentially
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  misleading as anything that was made in the
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  Tudor period. So it's quite an interesting exploration of art and artifice.
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  Yeah, I was going to ask you about that actually, because the face,
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  I mean, and I mean, it really is really scarily realistic.
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  I mean, you know, we've. Steve Bennett, who's the current keeper of the
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  gallery, he and I and Rachel sort of, we were joking about, you know,
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  what happens at night, you know, sort of, you know,
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  there's a slightly darkly humorous side, I guess,
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  when they got it out the box. So when we had the art technicians in
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  and it was the first time I'd seen it because I didn't see the original
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  exhibition in 2018 and once was
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  on the wall and mounted and, you know, on an installation day, the art technicians
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  have to Then immediately start something else. And everyone's sort of wandering around, being busy.
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  But as the curator, you're not always needed everywhere. So I
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  was just taking a moment to watch it. And the first time
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  it turned to look at me and made eye contact, I think I let out
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  an involuntary noise because everyone in the gallery was laughing at me.
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  I was. It's just so. It feels so real when she.
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  When she makes eye contact. Yeah. You're saying about the sort
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  of mechanism behind it being exposed. I mean, I. I mean,
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  when I first saw it, I had a sort of sneak preview before. Before the
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  thing opened. I wasn't sure if it was. If it was just open, because it
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  kind of had to be, or if it was actually part of the art itself.
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  And from what you've said, it seems it's part of the art itself. Oh,
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  yeah. But I. I took it as sort of thinking, well, yeah, there's this.
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  There's this human, you know, humanish face, very human face,
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  in fact. But then behind it, there is this. Because I was just. I'm making
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  a complete hash of explaining this, but essentially I was rem.
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  The quotation. What is it? She said I might. I have the body of a
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  weak and feeble woman, but I have the stomach of a king. Of a
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  king. Yeah. And I was reminded of that and sort of thinking, actually, behind this
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  human face, there is. There's a sort of. I mean, she must have been
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  under. Yeah, she must have been under huge, you know, pressure, as all monarchs
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  are. And. Yeah, behind it, there's this kind of calculating, sort of
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  logical. On eerily calm sort of. I don't
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  know. The whole thing is just. Oh, it's just so freaky. Yeah. I love that.
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  Yeah. The idea that she had to some maybe somehow subsume any
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  emotions. I mean, this is a whole can of worms, the history of emotions.
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  But the idea that she might have had to sort of set those aside to
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  be the ruler. Yeah. I mean, I think it opens up such a
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  wealth of ideas about what it is to be both
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  a real human person at a time in,
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  you know, four centuries past, and also somehow a figurehead,
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  a symbol of an era. And a lot of the
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  artists in the exhibition are really interested in that interplay between Elizabeth
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  in particular, as a kind of figurehead, and Elizabeth as
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  the real human woman, who actually had a very tragic biography.
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  You know, her mother was executed when she was just 2 years old by her
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  father. Her brother died as a teenager. She was
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  imprisoned by her sister. Her friends were executed or exiled.
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  You Know, she had a really grim time, as indeed did many
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  other people in Tudor England. But the idea that you then
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  go on to be queen is. It's such a strange transformation.
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  And I think a lot of the artists in the exhibition, Natasha Kensmill
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  in particular, who's a Dutch Surinamese artist, she's very interested in this
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  question of Elizabeth's psyche, you know. Yes, she's a figurehead and she
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  takes these famous images of Elizabeth as a
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  stately figure, state portraits, engravings in history books
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  where Elizabeth stands for a particular era, a set of policies,
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  you know, quite dry political history. And then
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  by kind of warping her and exaggerating
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  aspects of her age and her expression,
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  Kensmill kind of gets. Tries to feel behind that surface.
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  So it's a similar thing actually to the mask of youth, you know, what's behind
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  the mask? Can you get behind the mask? You know,
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  how is the mask fused to the face, as it were? Well,
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  can you tell us about the frogs? Yes. Okay,
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  so there are some wonderful ceramics in the exhibition by
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  Serena Corder, who's a British ceramicist,
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  and she's inspired by Baartman or
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  Bellarmine jugs, which are jugs that were made in the 16th
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  century and they're characterised by having at the kind of neck of the bottle,
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  a grinning or groaning looking face with a big
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  beard. We don't know what they were called at the time, but now we call
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  them Bartman, which means bearded man, or Bellarmine, which is a reference to
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  Cardinal Bellarmine, who looked nothing like these guys. So it's not clear how that name
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  developed. But anyway, the sort of face jugs I would call them.
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  And they were originally imported into
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  England from Germany as beer bottles, but they
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  often were reused as witch bottles.
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  So they would be filled with pins and nails and urine and
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  then buried at thresholds, so doorways
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  or in hearths and chimneys as
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  a way to ward off evil spirits,
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  witches. And it seems that their kind of anthropomorphic
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  human shape is part of that. And also some of the patterns on
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  them, which they often have kind of wheel shapes which have a relationship with witch
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  marks, which we find in historic buildings, kind of circular motifs that
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  are thought to confuse demons.
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  And Cauda is really interested in the kind of violent
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  and witchy aspects of these much older objects.
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  So she transforms them. And one of the ways she transforms them is
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  by covering the modern Bachmann jugs with
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  huge toads. Toads, sorry, not frogs.
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  Well, and frogs, but I think toads in this, in the ones that
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  are in the exhibition, which have a lot of associations
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  with witchcraft. I mean, they appear in the witch's
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  recipe. In Macbeth, for example, they are thought to
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  be poisonous, they're thought to have the ability to self generate.
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  You know, there's a lot of weird stuff about toads and Serena
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  Korda has combined that with other rather gruesome
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  additions to the Bachmann jug. So some of them have slightly horrible
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  growths on them, some of them appear to be being
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  sick. And a lot of lovely.
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  It's lovely, yeah. They have holes in them and breasts and it's all kinds of.
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  It's like a really exaggerated idea of the Bachmann
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  jug as a kind of humorous and slightly kind of gross object
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  in its transformation. So the abject of the urine, the nails
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  and the things that make it into a witch bottle. So she's interested in
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  the idea of ritual violence, the kind of ritualized
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  aspects of violent acts. And that's sort
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  of what she's envisaging in the jugs. And also, when there
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  are lots of them, they're sometimes performed as the jug choir. So people blow into
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  them and slap them and things. There's a performative element as well. There's a lot
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  going on. There's a lot going on, yeah. Yeah. Wow. And there's
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  also, if I remember rightly, there's a sort of necklace which has writing
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  on it. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So there's.
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  In Cambridge, we have Jane Partner, who is a college
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  lecturer at Trinity hall in English literature. She specialises in the
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  Tudor early modern period. But she's also a maker of jewellery and
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  she's very interested in the relationship between words and
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  the body and the body and books,
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  because all of these ideas were very closely intertwined in
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  the 16th century. So jewellery was often made with writing
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  on it. Posy rings, the most famous example. They were
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  rings that often given in courtship or between friends, that had
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  inscriptions on the inside of the band. So only you know what
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  that said if you were wearing it, or jewels that had sort
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  of large letters or words written on them. So she takes that
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  to a sort of extreme in her work. And one of
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  the necklaces in the exhibition is called Inked, and she's actually incorporated real
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  pieces of early modern books which had
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  been cut up and sold as a kind of job lot,
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  probably cut out at some time in the 19th century for an album.
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  And she's reincorporated it into a necklace,
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  but the word that it's spelled is inked.
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  And she's also thinking about tattoos, which were
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  sometimes kind of designed or plotted with a
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  stamp that looks quite a lot like the kind of raised, movable type
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  that you find in the printing press. So when pilgrims went to Jerusalem,
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  they would have Jerusalem tattooed on
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  them. But in order to get that word, you know, looking right,
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  the tattooist would first of all stamp onto the surface of
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  the skin the word Jerusalem with a kind of ink block.
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  And there are even some tattoo parlors in Jerusalem
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  that have been going since the 13th century that still use the same.
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  Wow. They've been using ever since. That's incredible.
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  There's a long. There's a lot of things going on there, but I think it's
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  also to do with making your body legible and
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  sort of using it to make a statement that is somehow
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  readable. And this is something that really worried people
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  in the 16th century because there were so many upheavals
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  in terms of faith, you know, what was the right thing to believe.
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  And Protestants in particular started to worry that, you know,
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  if it was the case that people were kind of predetermined to
• 17:40
  go to heaven or hell and you couldn't really do much about it. This is
• 17:44
  a doctrine called double predestination, which some of the kind
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  of hotter Protestants believed in, Then how could you tell
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  if you were going to heaven or hell? And how could you tell if someone
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  else was going to heaven or hell? So how do you read the soul on
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  the surface of the body? And this is something that they. They talk about a
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  lot. So I think when Jane is sort of making the body
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  legible and making it say things, that's one of the things she's
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  thinking about. I mean. Yeah, it's all sort of very, very intricate.
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  It must. Yeah, it must take a lot to put all that together.
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  Well, thank you so much. It's been. Yeah. Really interesting to have this kind
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  of snapshot into what's going on in the exhibition.
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  Yeah. I have to say, the exhibition is really, really quite
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  something. So I hope all our listeners will want to come and see it.
• 18:33
  And. Yeah. Thank you very much for chatting today. Thank you. Thanks very much.
• 18:42
  This week in college, tonight, tomorrow and Saturday,
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  the DDS Festival of New writing is taking place in the Howard Theatre at 7.30pm
• 18:50
  See the show notes for details. On Sunday at 8pm, the Chapel
• 18:54
  Choir are giving a performance of Mozart's incredible Requiem,
• 18:57
  conducted by organ scholar Matthew Chanwy and accompanied by organ and a small
• 19:01
  orchestra. The concert has been sold out for weeks, but there are details in
• 19:05
  the show notes of how to join the waiting list for tickets. On Monday,
• 19:09
  the chaplain gives a talk on the Church of England as a global church.
• 19:12
  All welcome refreshments provided and the deadline for the Twining
• 19:16
  Eggington Fine Arts Prize is Monday 16th March at noon.
• 19:19
  More information in the show notes.
• 19:26
  Next week I'll be talking to the college archivist Jenny Ulf, about some rather
• 19:30
  fascinating history to do with the arts in college. And as always,
• 19:34
  if you'd like to come on the show, do drop me a line on artspodcastdao.cam.ac.uk
• 19:39
  thanks for listening.