Lisa Milroy

Taking the Side of Things

4th October 2020 - 22nd January 2020 

A meat tenderiser; three small glass jars, corked, each containing a different green pigment; a lighter in the shape of a lipstick; a pack of ‘toe spacers’; a couple of toy cars made from tin cans. A disposable clay tea cup from Ahmedabad, a set of fèves in the form of shoes from La Roche Chalais, a ‘Pine Tree’ car air freshener from Vancouver, traditional hair adornments from Kyoto, a small wooden boat from a tourist shop in Lamu, a speckled drinking glass from the mercado in Guadalajara, a perforated cooking ladle from the souk in Taroudant. Garments, shoes and slippers. Textiles and fabric swatches, baskets and bags. Cushions and carpets. Vases. 

Over the years, without intending to, I’ve amassed a huge collection of objects that have caught my eye and I’ve simply had to have, mostly gleaned from travels abroad but also from shops and markets in London where I live. I love arranging these objects around my home, on shelves and windowsills, hanging on walls and from ceilings, the groupings determined by different kinds of classification: by type, colour or function. As I spend time arranging a group of objects, I feel like I’m composing a still life.

I’m curious about the urge itself to acquire these objects. Sometimes my objects are obtained in moments of loneliness, responding to a sense of absence, loss or abandonment. Found and purchased in this state, the objects are a bid to keep hold of something vital and concrete when my place in the world feels uncertain or troubled. Conversely, when I’m out and about and feel full of that particular excitement of simply being alive, joyously alert to the present moment, the objects I buy are an affirmation to salute the sense of connectedness, presence and bodily ‘t/here-ness’ through materiality, touch and the sensory; and a desire to reach out and share socially the beauty of things, of life with others. On other occasions an object can strike me as so surprising, funny, delightful or outrageous, or so strange and mysterious, that I want to hang onto it as a catalyst: to inspire in me a sense of the unknown, the inaccessible and unfamiliar; and of how objects can put up a resistance to my having it, owning it, at least on an emotional level. All these transactions depend on having enough money to purchase an object, and to travel. The complexities of spending money and the politics of consumerism and consumption add another angle to the conversation. 

The collections of objects in my home speak to my enduring love of still life painting and highlight the fascination it has for me: the way still life values everyday objects in daily life in a myriad of ways - as souvenirs and embodiments of special, never-to-be-forgotten experiences; as tools that enable different ways of making; as heartbeats of creativity, imagination and innovation; as a celebration of different cultural traditions; and of sheer beauty. The collections also suggest ways to approach still life painting by exploring the subjects of ‘same and different’, the individual and the group, and repetition – critical and thematic perspectives in / on my practice over the past 40 years.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, my appreciation of certain objects within my home made me want to work directly with them in the spirit of still life. I began to photograph objects according to themes, such as colour or function, and then group the photographs in portfolios. The engagement allowed me to cherish that fabulous sense of simply being alive that can suddenly well up through glimpsing a familiar object in a particular light, catching a scent that stirs a memory, or feeling the satisfying texture of a fabric against the skin. And it was also a way to celebrate the enjoyment found in ‘looking’. I began to post the portfolios over a 3 week period on Instagram under the heading ‘around the home’. When Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art invited me to contribute to O Sole Mio,their online publication, I put together one final portfolio, ‘sunlight around the home’, for issue No. 10. Please feel welcome to take a look at ‘sunlight around the home’ on Parasol unit’s website https://parasol-unit.org/issue/o-sole-mio-issue-10/, and at all the ‘around the home’ portfolios on my Instagram at lisa_milroy. 

For the m2 pavilion, I would like to share my collections of objects around my home with you, the viewer, in a display of actual objects where I’ve painted bespoke patterned backgrounds for each selected object and composed them on panels for the m2 pavilion windows. In creating this architecturally based 3-D painting, I wonder about the objects you may have in your home – their history, their story, the objects that come and go on your shelves or the others that remain a permanent fixture. Ugly objects, beautiful objects, tasteful and tasteless objects, each object somehow dear whatever its appearance. By my pulling these real objects into a painted world, and through your own experience of looking, scrutinising and comparing, I hope they might reach out and create a bridge to the objects in your world in a shared celebration of things.

The title of the exhibition, Taking the Side of Things, comes from a book of prose poems, Le Parti Pris des Choses by Francis Ponge, one of my favourite writers.

Thank you to Aglaé Bassens, Stephenie Bergman and Vincent Dachy

Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver, Canada and lives and works in London. Still life is at the heart of Milroy’s practice. She won First Prize in the John Moores Painting Prize 1989, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2005. Milroy has worked at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL since 2009. Her work is held in many public collections, including Tate, Frac Occitanie Montpellier, France, Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA and Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. A major exhibition of Milroy’s work, Here & There: Paintings by Lisa Milroy was held at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London in 2018. Milroy’s practice is represented by One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya. www.oneoffafrica.com

In 2015 Lisa set up Hands On Art workshops, contributing to Vodafone Foundation and UNHCR’s Instant Network Schools digital learning programme. Hands On engages students in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya in practical art workshops, which Lisa delivers from London through live interactive video conference sessions. Lisa travels to Kakuma Refugee Camp annually to deliver Hands On Art Workshops, working with UNHCR Kakuma. Hands On is supported by Vodafone Foundation, UNHCR, Colart and Windle International Kenya.

www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/hands-on                                                   www.lisamilroy.net

Installation Photos ( Double click to see full image )