'Conversation: a dialogue between Mary Evans and Julia Findlater'
Facilitated and edited by Maria Amidu.
In: Mary Evans: Filter. Edited by Gilane Tawadros and Maria Amidu. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1997.
JF The initial ideas for the residency came about through a conversation with Gilane. I was very keen after the centenary, to keep up the momentum of interest in the House, to develop new audiences, and, look particularly, at art practice.
Part of the problem of Leighton House, is that the spirit of the House - the artist who lived and worked there and created all those great canvasses - has gone because in 1896 when he died everything was sold. So when you come to Leighton House you see this extraordinary building, which is really an expression of his own aesthetics in bricks and mortar and you see the studio. Very few people understand what an artist's studio is and it is impossible for us to re-create that; so we felt it would be useful to create some sort of dialogue with the past through a residency. Having an artist working with the collections, talking to members of the public, staff, and responding in their own way to the House and its history, seemed a very appropriate venture.
ME Did you have in mind that the resident artist would actually use Lord Leighton's work or were you more interested in them getting involved in the aesthetics of the House itself?
JF I think it's a very good point because it would be very simple to have life-drawing classes, carrying on that traditional academic, classical approach, and it's certainly something that we are considering, but I wanted to touch on the unknown. The House is so full of layers of pattern and meaning that have been lost and I wanted to find an artist who was interested in those layers and in Leighton's fascination with North Africa and the Middle East. Leighton was not simply interested in the Orient in a populist way, but in the academic and classical rigours and disciplines behind it; so we were really looking for an artist that could bring that intellectual understanding and open up the House for visitors while, simultaneously looking at their own practice.
JF What motivated your application, Mary? Had you visited the House prior to finding out about the residency?
ME I'd never heard of Leighton House, but I considered applying because I'm always looking out for opportunities to enable me to carry on making work, looking for new experiences. I visited on an outrageously hot day in February and got lost in Holland Park but eventually found the house. I thought it was amazing, just walking into the first hallway and then to the Arab Hall. I needed to see Leighton House to see whether I could apply for the residency and whether I could work there.
Ideas began floating around. I felt this incredible sense of history on the one hand, but also a lot of issues that it brought to mind were contemporary. The initial visit to Leighton House influenced me to make new work straight away, so that's when I thought I could do it. I wasn't quite sure what but I just had the feeling that I could do something there. The influence that the house has had on me has been quite subtle but definite. I'm not quite sure how to explain it really. It's as you say, more intellectual in a way.
JF Is it similar to the way text influences visual artists? The process of reading and research whereby information filters through and then evolves much later.
ME Yes, during, my first two months there I just read all the time. I was just reading and looking at some of Leighton's drawings. Although I was not only reading about Leighton; I was reading about Victoriana and topics that I've never really been interested in before. I was reading about wallpaper and trinkets, American Victoriana and how different that was from British Victoriana. I was really amazed that there was so much there that I could get into.
JF Initially, you submerged yourself in the House and in that time you had a lot of conversations with me and all the other staff to glean our perspective on it.
ME Yes, just being in the office or being around people who work there; watching and seeing how you work has really helped me - also the visitors. I suppose I've been eavesdropping a lot, and sometimes, hanging around downstairs. The response is not just 'oh, it's wonderful'. Some people are really into the House and go beyond the surface. Also the artist's tours that I've led have given me a good insight. There were a couple of visitors on the first tour who had obviously read up before they came and were asking questions that I felt capable of answering.
JE Do you have a particular place in the House which is your favourite little domain? A space that you retreat to every now and again?
ME I like the Lower Perrin Gallery which is not open to the public. It's beautiful to work in. I like it because it's quiet and I can formulate ideas in there. It feels like a bunker.
I took some boys to the House as part of a workshop and we were talking about decoration and pattern, and looking round. I realised that every single inch of the House is covered in some sort of pattern. This was Leighton's intention. He wanted to be able, with every swerve of the head, to see something lovely. So it's quite nice being in the Lower Perrin Gallery because it's quite neutral. I imagine that you must have a space in the House which is your retreat.
JF Well I enjoy the House before it opens to the public. We're there for our visitors (and the last thing I'd say was that I don't want the public there). But Leighton and Aitchison designed the House very specifically and, as you said, with every swerve of the head there's something to look at. Leighton called the House 'The Palace of Art', and through the arrangement of the rooms he manipulated visitors so that wherever they stood in the House they would see something that was beautiful.
Stepping off Holland Park Road into Leighton House in the 1880s when the street would have been full of carts; people making deliveries; the mews outside; the fog and the smog; the smell of Victorian London (remembering that everyone's house at that time was full of clutter, every surface was covered with things), the first thing you see is the Arab Hall. It's like stepping into a piece of Damascus. Imagine the impact that had on visitors in the 1880s, they'd never seen anything like this. So the House is all about manipulation. He designed it so that there are very few windows looking out onto the street, so that your eyes wouldn't be assailed by those views. He covered the walls with beautiful fabrics and paintings.
So, I like being there alone because I can almost reach out and touch some of what I feel was Leighton's intention with the house and often when you've got lots of visitors you lose touch with that. One of the joys of having you working there, Mary, is that you've actually got a much better grasp of that. When I'm looking round at the House I'm always worried about a leak getting worse or the mosaics and so on, but you've got a single vision about the House and I feel you really work as a conduit. It's very calming and you take us back and remind us, very clearly, about the original intentions of the House.
JF Even though your work isn't decoration, there is that element in it. Your interventions are under-stated which I find challenging. I like the idea of visitors happening upon a piece and not being quite sure why it's there. Because it is so subtle, it's possible that visitors do perceive it as decoration. I think one of the challenges of the residency for us is providing the language for people to understand where you and the House collide and merge.
ME The two works I've made in the House so far - the curtains and the cabinet with the paper screen in the Drawing Room - are a new departure. I've never made pieces like that before, so for me they're unique. Being at the House has generated those works. In a way I feel that I'm following my nose. For instance, with the curtains, I saw those windows and thought 'I'm going to make curtains', and then I found out that Leighton did have curtains there originally. There seems to be this thing going on, where I do something and then I discover a direct connection with the original interior of the House. You mentioned to me that Leighton had lots of screens in the House and it's something that I want to follow up.
People have mentioned that my work looks like textiles or wallpaper, which is fair enough but I don't think that means that I should make textiles or wallpaper. I think hanging on that edge is what's interesting for me. I'm interested in craft, but in a fine art sense.
I've got a comments book in the Drawing Room and somebody wrote about the curtains and the cabinet piece, which are paper cut-outs: ' Oh well they're not very neat are they and they're not very tidy and well they just haven't been cut out very well'. I found this amusing because, yes, on the one hand I could go that way, it could all be very precise but that's not the point. A lot of the things in the house are, on the one hand, extremely beautiful, whether it's the wall coverings or the tiles, but in the Arab Hall you can see where tiles were broken and were patched up. Close up it can look quite ugly but overall it doesn't detract from the impact of the Hall. So it's not important that things are not beautifully cut out. I'm glad that the work is subtle. I wanted to intervene in the House without making things that people are going to fall over; but I think people are finding it difficult to decide what I'm doing. They can't categorise my work.
JF People have preconceptions about what art is and about decoration.
ME I think so.
JF They want it to be either/or. Lord Leighton was a painter and there are canvasses on the wall as well as decoration in the House. Do you think, through the way that you're choosing to work, that visitors are beginning to question their perceptions of what it means to be an artist?
ME I hope so. A visitor wrote: 'What's this got to do with Leighton, his paintings are so beautiful, why can't you do something like that?' I think that people walk into the Drawing Room, having read something about the artist-in-residence, expecting to see me standing there at an easel. I haven't painted for four years now, so I hope that I am challenging those perceptions.
JF In the same way that Leighton actually wanted to draw people's eye around the House, are you concerned with actually keeping people 'contained' in the House?
ME The first site in the House that struck me were the windows. You look at them rather than through them and think what I've done with the curtains is made a screen of the windows. This has become the theme of everything that I am making because I think the House is full of screens in a way; you can see through but you are made to stop at a certain point and to go back on yourself. I want to continue to play with that notion.
In addition, having spent so much time in the House, I have the impression that Leighton was quite a lonely character. I've visited other artists' houses - Frida Kahlo, for example where you get a sense of her in the house. I don't feel Leighton in the House. I don't feel as though I knew who he was, not entirely. In a sense I feel as though we know who he wanted us to know. He created a certain façade of who he was. I know his taste was very exotic and expensive, but at the same time I feel as though I'm trying to find him by being there and adding pointers that might give us clues to Leighton, not the artist, but the person.
JF You mentioned earlier that the House has a contemporary essence and I wondered if you could expand on that a little.
ME I think it's something to do with what you said about people walking into the House in Leighton's time and being very impressed. They'd see something in London that alludes to something in another part of the world, somewhere they knew nothing about (to a certain extent). Even now, you get that feeling of 'oh my goodness, this is incredible'. We do know more about where a lot of the decoration - the tiles, the stained glass and the screens - come from. People travel so much now and bring their souvenirs back, basically Leighton was just bringing souvenirs back from the places where he travelled.
I like the way that our houses can also be full of things from all over the world that don't necessarily go together . They're a record of the places that we've visited and what we've done. We throw them together in our homes and they go together because we want them to; that is what Leighton did. It's that cultural gleaning or buying of culture from another part of the world and making it fit or adapting it to your own needs and your own aesthetics; taking what you want from it and discarding the rest.
JF Moving on slightly, have you had any thoughts of what the exhibition will be? As you know, the gallery was added on in the 1920s. It is a classic, white gallery space - very unlike the House.
ME I'd like the interventions in the House to lead upstairs to the gallery space in some way. Whenever I show people round Leighton House, I say 'Welcome to my House.' I've become quite attached to the House and I now know it well. What I'm making is a result of my response to the spaces and I want the exhibition to reflect that quite specifically. So, I'm letting bits of information that I get about the House and Leighton map out a path, so that it is fluid and bridges the gap ...