DEATH & DESIRE

DEATH & DESIRE

An Exhibition By Tracey Moberly and Bill Drummond

Press release conversation [english] [russian pdf]

Bill:

Ok Tracey so this going to be our press release, this conversation we are going to have. We are going to do an exhibition at the M'ARS Gallery in Moscow4. What's the exhibition called?

Tracey:

Right the exhibition is called Death & Desire

Bill:

And so whose doing the Death and whose doing the Desire?

Tracey:

Well I'm doing the Desire obviously and your doing the Death

Bill:

OK and are you going to tell us about the Desire is there anything to tell us or do we just see you Tracey

Tracey:

No you don't see me, but thank you anyway for that! Basically my work on the desire element is in three sections and the first section is a triptych, a set of three large canvases 2.5m x 1m. It is the very start of this exhibition which is going to evolve and grow hopefully touring Russia as one of the countries. It begins with three different women from different countries and their orgasms which are represented in sonogram form on the canvases, they are very bright in pinks, oranges, reds and black. It's a celebration of the female and female desire.

Bill:

Hang on, is each one different, one a black one, one a red one....

Tracey:

No all colours are used on one canvas , it's on a red background the sonogram which is like sound waves built up in colour so the voice or sound will be reproduced in the different colours. The orange will be the lowest notes coming up to the black which will be when it's reaching the higher note. In between these, the pink shows the density of the voice at a given point. The canvases present a visual representation of an actual orgasm and they consist of a Japanese, English and a Welsh womens orgasm.

Bill:

And were you there when these orgasms were happening?

Tracey:

No! I gave recording equipment to different women and said can you do this for an exhibition I am just starting off on desire which is a celebration of the female . There is no flesh or imagery that be conceived in any way shape or form pornographic. It is literally a visual representation of different womens orgasms and a celebration of the female and female desire

Bill:

What you are doing at the M'ARS gallery is this the first time it's been done?

Tracey:

In artistic format yes, it's the first time this has been done

Bill:

Are you doing anything else when we are there in the M'ARS gallery

Tracey:

Yes. There is a poem that I wrote several years ago which is a literary piece. It's a descriptive poem of the same...an orgasm with a slight twist at the end which goes into a level of abuse. I am interested in putting sound/emotions into a visual format. This poem is being made into an installation called 'Pillow Talk' where each word of the poem is translated into Russian, I love the Russian language and alphabet. Each word of the poem is sewn onto an individual pillow case and the installation is made up from this. I like the double play on the words 'Pillow Talk' and I also like the saying 'Airing your dirty laundry in public' I don't know whether this saying exists in Russian, the installation will be 'Airing your clean laundry in public!' Having worked through something and turned it into a visual representation, using art as a psychological tool in a sense

Bill:

Hang on so you have the poem on the wall as well and you have the poetry on pillow cases in the gallery?

Tracey:

Yes, some are stuffed with pillows, others hang on a washing line in the gallery, the whole poem is there.

Bill:

Is there anything else with this section of the exhibition?

Tracey:

Yes so the canvases, true visual representations of the female orgasm lead in the poem and 'Pillow Talk' section and I said there is a twist in the poem and an undertow which deals with abuse, so this takes the exhibition into the next section. The next section is a film, I am going to be showing the film on loop there. The film is called 'VDAY UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS' a movement that grew out of the Vagina Monologues. The Vagina Monologues play opened a year ago in Russia and is performed in a theatre there. Some of the actresses from the play will be performing in the gallery on the opening night and hopefully one of the monologues they will do is the 'Orgasm Monologue' plus one or two others. I've been working with Mariana Katzarova (formerly from Russia's arm of Amnesty International) and we are hoping to get womens activist groups inspired to organise their own groups for Vday events for next year where we are trying to plan for Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda and other people involved in this movement to promote it in Russia.

Bill:

Ok good. Anything else you want to tell me.

Tracey:

I think I've covered that

Bill:

Do you want to ask me anything?

Tracey:

Yes I can ask you some things. Now you're doing mydeath.net. What is mydeath.net?

Bill:

Mydeath.net is an English language website or has been an English language based website up until now. My part of the Death & Desire exhibition is launching the Russian language version of mydeath.net.

Tracey:

What made you start working on death and peoples deaths?

Bill:

I used to work with dead bodies a long time ago when I was 22. I worked in a hospital, where I used to have to lay peoples bodies out and take them down to the mortuary. My father was a Minister in the Church of Scotland and he used to be involved in funerals so I was often aware of him getting ready to go to a funeral, him getting into the right clothes to go to the funeral and just aware of that feeling how a funeral worked and how it affected one. We'd have families of dead people coming around to the house.

Tracey:

Did you have dead people laid out in your front room or anything?

Bill:

No, No I've never had dead person laid out in my front room, but that's what I had to deal with when I worked at the hospital. A few years ago a couple of friends of mine died within a few months of each other both of them in their late forties early fifties, both of them died of cancer. One of their funerals in particular I remember... afterwards even though I did a talk at the funeral, I left thinking, 'this funeral did not reflect the man, it wasn't a celebration of his life, it just didn't work.' I began to feel, that the old funerals, now that we live in a far more secular society no longer work. The religious funerals that have evolved over centuries whether it was in Russia in the orthodox tradition or in the various traditions we've had in the West and we've just put off thinking about what our death is going to be like, or what our funeral is going to be like and I decided that I wanted to encourage people to think of their funeral as their last creative act they can give to their bereaved, the friends and family that they are leaving behind. So I put together the idea of mydeath.net as website where you can visit time and time again throughout your life putting down what you would like at your funeral. Most people know a piece of music they'd like at their funeral so that was an obvious thing, but maybe something they want read at their funeral, the type of flowers they want. I'm asking people to get kind of extreme, to be challenging, or be fun, to make it into a celebration. What kind of coffin you want or if you want to be burned. I've never done a huge big push on the website but it's grown in the English language world. I somehow felt if I was ever going to take it into another language I want to take it into Russian. In my head nobody does death like the Russians, so much of the Russian culture seems to me to be as a Westerner, to be about death whether it's in Tchaikovsky.

Tracey:

Same with me on desire with the Russian culture I think that was coming out of communism and going into post communism

Bill:

I mean even the fact that Russia has one of it's major leaders, Lenin in a mausoleum- no other country I am aware of has something like that so much of its music, plays, literature is about death. So I thought if ever I am going to do it in another language Russian is the perfect language. I am interested to see how Russia will creatively respond to it on the website. Obviously it's going to have to be translated back to me so I can understand it. I think that's all I have to say

Tracey:

It's really important the dates of our exhibition.

Bill:

No No I've forgotten some bits. What I'm putting in the gallery

Tracey:

Oh yes

Bill:

I am always working on a number of things from a visual point of view so there won't be just a computer screen in the gallery. I usually do text paintings that announce what it is I'm doing. In my English version of this I have a text painting that says 'Prepare To Die'. It's done in black and white 2m x1m.5 and I'm having a mirror image of that in Russian cyrillic 'Prepare To Die' and there will be the poster that I use to advertise the site in Engish and in Russian. I will also be taking the exhibition out of the gallery by putting flyers and posters around Moscow in cafes and bars. So the date when do we open Trace?

Tracey:

We open on the 4th July (moved to 5th July) quite a significant date we would usually ignore. The topic as well i think is very Russian Death and Desire.

Bill:

I think of the European countries, I bet the Italians would argue over this. but I don't think anyone celebrates Death and Desire like the Russians do

Tracey:

It is a country that to me wonderfully represents Desire.

Death & Desire is open from 5 - 29 July 2006 at
M'Ars Gallery
5, Pushkarev side-street
107045 Moscow
Russia
p +7 (095) 923 6690
f +7 (095) 923 6690
http://www.marsgallery.ru
Opening Night:
Wednesday 5th July 2006 7-10pm


Press release [english] [russian pdf]