Size | Kate McCalmont-Woods

I made a last minute decision to go to Tate Britain on Friday to see the Ithell Colquhoun and Edward Burra exhibitions before they ended yesterday.

I didn’t enjoy the Colquhoun exhibition as much as I was anticipating, and I think it was because there wasn’t much surrealism.

As I was standing in front of Scylla, a woman commented to me that she had been expecting it to be a lot bigger as it had been used so extensively in the marketing of the exhibition. I assume that she had thought that because the image was used for marketing purposes that it was an important work of Colquhoun’s and because it was important and of value, that it would be large in scale – the old perennial issue of size.

*Scylla,* 1938, oil on board, 91.4 x 61cm

‘It was suggested by what I could see of myself in a bath… It is thus a pictorial pun or double-image in the Daliesque sense – not the result of a dream, but of a dreamlike state.’

Colquhoun used the Surrealist process of decalcomania to produce a mirror image of randomly applied marks which she then used as a starting point for her work.

*Gorgon,* 1946, oil on board & its decalcomania counterpart of oil on paper

’I meant to paint a ‘Guardian Angel’ but the result of the automatism was so horrific that I had to call it a Gorgon instead’.

She also used a technique called parsemage, which involved submerging paper in water which had powdered chalk or charcoal on the surface.

These processes offered intuitive access to the unconscious mind, according to the accompanying blurb.

Colquhoun also utilised automatic drawing.

They remind me of my pen drawings in On Your Marks & Lines.

I decided to give parsemage a go – I think that you can do it with anything that can be ground to a dust – I used powdered graphite which has a slightly metallic quality to it. I was really pleased with the results.

I then remembered a post on Instagram of a potter decorating bowls by blowing bubbles. I’ve used bubbles in wet cyanotyping before, so I decided to try it with the powdered graphite. I really like the delicate lines which were created and it was fascinating watching the effect of the bubbles popping – it reminded me of looking at cells under a microscope.

I then experimented with acrylic ink – maybe I should have realised beforehand – but it failed miserably. I wanted to try again with a water based ink, but I couldn’t find them. It might offer a more effective way of creating something akin to cells, than my previous attempts, so I’ll try again when I eventually locate them.

Whenever I go to B&Q, I always want to come home and do some DIY; whenever I visit a beautiful garden, I always want to come home and sort out our garden; whenever I go to an exhibition, I always want to come home and make.

I’ve been feeling in need of a pick me up recently, and so yesterday I headed into London on a hot, Notting Hill Carnival, Bank Holiday Monday to catch Louise Bourgois’ ‘Maman’ on its last day at Tate Modern, the very space for which it was commissioned back in 2000. There’s no doubt that it’s impressive at 9m tall – again, I ask myself whether it’s all about the size, but I think any spider larger than real life would have an impact. I had an overwhelming urge to touch it, but resisted in light of the ‘Please Do Not Touch Sign’. I also found myself wondering how they got it into the building, memories of Johnny Vegas’ struggles coming to mind.

It was well worth the trip, a rare chance to see a piece in the flesh in the very place for which it had been made. Having said that, I’ve seen some images of it in a landscape, which I find particularly effective.

Tate Modern’s website on ‘Maman’:

Louise Bourgeois started making sculptures of spiders in the 1990s. This version is her biggest spider. Its title, Maman, is French for mummy. The artist said spiders reminded her of her mother: ‘Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever … spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.‘

I’m a bit behind with things at home, and we’re starting to amass some really impressive cobwebs. I watched as a flying insect became entangled in one of them; in a flash the spider came from nowhere and quickly got to work wrapping it up.

I’m not sure that spiders are clever as such, but they do have great skill. I don’t really think of them as being helpful and protective: they set traps that you can’t see, they ambush you and then swaddle you up until they consume you. Although, I don’t have a problem with them, as they catch flies etc, as long as they are not where they’re not supposed to be, such as on the bedroom ceiling above my head, or in the bed.

Lifelong arachnaphobe, Primo Levi, in his essay ‘The Fear of Spiders’:

“The spider is the enemy-mother who envelops and encompasses, who wants to make us re-enter the womb from which we have issued, bind us tightly and take us back to the impotency of infancy, subject us again to her power…”

I’ve tried not to be either of those spider mothers. I’ve tried not to be suffocating and I’ve tried to resist the urge to fix things. I’ve definitely failed; I often tell my daughter that I’m trying my best, and, when she’s older, not just to remember the times when I’ve not been at my best, like I seem to have done with my own mother. It’s that negative bias again, I suppose. I’m now actively remembering all the times when she was kind and caring, supportive, and all the laughs we had together, which by far outnumber the not so good.