Corners (2004)

Corners is possibly the most personally intimate series I've made. I made them because of a book that had been a present to my sister, Rosina.  I was ten when Rosina gave it to me. 

Titled  ‘My Lady Of The Chimney Corner’ by Alexander Irvine, the book's content was significant to my sister while  the title alone fed my imagination.

The house where I was born and lived for the early years of childhood had chimney corners. I was especially fond of those corners and constructed imaginary worlds in them. Those same corners were also places of refuge during family altercations. Both the book and title, if not the story had personal meaning for me.

My sister had written her name and address in the book, in my childish handwriting I had written over the top of hers. I also added a rhyme Rosina taught me: ‘If this book should ever roam, box it’s ears and send it home’.

My sister died in 1984. 

Through my many house moves the book was lost; until out of the blue a parcel arrived, it contained lost book, a gift from the past. In fact it came from the ex-wife of a family member.

When I lived in Barcelona I had Gaston Bachelard’s, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press Boston 1969) plus the selected works of Rainer Maria Rilke, (edited & translated by Stephen Mitchell Pub. Picador 1981) as two of my companions. Below are sections I highlighted at the time.

‘To begin with, the corner is a haven that ensures us one of the things we prize most highly, immobility. It is the sure place, the place next to my immobility. The corner is a sort of half box, part walls, part door. It will serve as an illustration for the dialectics of inside and outside…….

‘Consciousness of being at peace in one's corner produces a sense of immobility, and this, in turn, radiates immobility. An imaginary room rises up around our bodies, which think that they are well hidden when we take refuge in a corner. Already, the shadows are walls, a piece of furniture constitutes a barrier, hangings are a roof. But all of these images are over imagined. So we have to designate the space of our immobility by making it the space of our being. In L'tat d'bauche,' Arnaud writes: je suis l’espace ou je suis (I am the space where 1 am.) This is a great line. But nowhere can it be better appreciated than in a corner. This is a great line. But nowhere can it be better appreciated than in a corner.

In Mein Leban ohne mich (My life without me). Rilke writes: “suddenly, a room with its lamp appeared to me, was almost palpable in me. I was already a corner in it, but the shutters sensed me and closed.” It would be hard to find a more felicitous way of saying that the corner is the chamber of being.

For an artist there is always an imperative to make work, Corners were more, they were a requiem for Rosina.