Panel: ‘Art is a guaranty of sanity’ Julia Gutman, Nell, Wayne Youle and Emily Sullivan on Louise Bourgeois

Emily Sullivan: Good afternoon, everyone. I think we’re all on.  My name’s Emily Sullivan and I’m the assistant curator of contemporary international art here at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and I’m the assistant curator on the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night, or Has the Night Invaded the Day?, working alongside Justin Paton, the head curator of international art.  

We’re gathering today on Gadigal land, and I pay my respect to Elders past, present, and emerging. And I’m welcoming you all to the second day of opening weekend celebrations. And a special welcome to my co-panelists who have bravely stepped up to talk about this formidable character.  Much of the excitement around the show for Justin and I, especially in the last few weeks, has been about bringing Louise’s art to a new generation of audiences in Australia, and especially to local artists.  

For those who do know Louise, the exhibition is, we hope, an opportunity to go deeper. Perhaps as deep as you’ll ever go with Louise’s work, something our wonderful building affords us. The exhibition is staged over two vastly different spaces, the classical and chronological journey through ‘day’, which you’ll find on this level and the unconscious landscape of ‘night’, which you’ll discover downstairs in the Tank. In that space, the mind takes over. Logic leaves you, and you’re instead guided by intuition, sound, and your own body. What’s been affirmed in the making of the show is that for many artists, Louise is viewed as this formidable art grandmother. She has a habit for appearing more radical, more urgent, and more bad arse with each new generation who discovers her. 

Her work is intensely vulnerable and open, but also mysterious, shrouded in stories and embellishments. And it’s these more enigmatic qualities that I think artists are well placed to talk about. So I’m going to introduce my co panellists. You’re kindly sitting in order, which is great!  

Nell’s practice traverses painting, sculpture, performance and installation. Her work deals with life and death. Incorporating text and symbols that are not only of personal significance, but that are understood across many cultures. She’s currently a New South Wales Creative Industries resident at the Powerhouse Museum and is working towards a major exhibition in Aotearoa at the Dowse Museum in Wellington. 

Julia Gutman’s practice, sitting in the middle, is anchored by an experimental textile process, telling personal stories that draw on the language of the history of Western oil painting. Julia was included at the MCA’s 2022 exhibition Primavera for young Australian artists and earlier this year, she was awarded the Archibald Prize, making her the youngest winner in 85 years.   

Wayne Youle is an artist of Ngā Pūhi and Ngati Whakaeke descent, based in Aotearoa and he works across many disciplines, predominantly as a sculptor and a painter. He trained as a designer, and you can see that paring back in his work, allowing simple forms to convey complex meaning, be it in the form of story, metaphor or the retelling of personal histories. Humour and wit are also important tools. 

Three very different artists with a range of practices and that couldn’t be more appropriate for an artist such as Louise Bourgeois. As the show demonstrates, Louise didn’t stick to one lane, and there are always multiple ways at coming at the problem. That’s really what today is about: the many ways we can enter Louise’s world.  The title of our talk is ‘Art is a guaranty of sanity’ and it first appears embroidered onto a bed cover within one of Louise’s psychological environments known as the Cells. The quote is sometimes not appreciated for the seriousness with which it’s said and it’s a seriousness that I’m sure you all, it’s not lost on any of you. So I’d like to start there, on your reflections on that statement, and I’m gonna throw down to you, Nell, to kick us off.  

Nell: Hello. Great. Thanks for not going to the beach today. Okay, art is a guaranty of sanity. Well, yes and no. Like, I would ask, whose sanity as well?  I know many artists who have driven probably you crazy and their families crazy.  

Emily kindly gave me a tour of the show earlier in the week. And one of the things we were talking about, about this aphorism, and what’s the one about hell? ‘I’ve been to hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful.’ That these aphorisms are provocations, I don’t really, I don’t take them on their word and I’m sorry to use this as a metaphor, because we are living in a very troubled world of war, but we were saying it’s almost like she throws you the hand grenade: okay, your problem now! You go to hell and back, see how you feel. And so I love that, obviously, about her practice.  And then yesterday, I think it was in Justin’s panel that I overheard, or actually I came in quite late, that she felt this huge sense of catharsis or relief after, or she felt great after getting it out. It’s not hers anymore. And that’s like saying what you mean in words, which is something I also love doing in my practice. So, I didn’t really touch on the sanity aspect too much, but yeah, that’s probably a start.  

Emily Sullivan: That’s a good point. The second half of the quote is that ‘pain is the ransom of formalism.’ Is that right, Justin? Julia. 

Julia Gutman: Yeah, I mean, I think that art-making is completely pathological. I’m definitely borrowing that from Zadie Smith when she talks about writing, but I don’t think that people do it if they don’t need to. And I think something that really hit me when seeing this show and just seeing the kind of breadth and scope of what someone made in the space of a lifetime and kind of the kind of breadth of content, the breadth of like the scope of the practice, the depth of the practice, like I don’t think you do that if you don’t need to. 

And I think what became really kind of clear to me was how important the kind of act of doing this was for her and kind of, you know, reading quotes where she talks about anxiety and the material kind of being, like the material having a pushback against that anxiety, of kind of being a way of being able to kind of move through an emotion or through a feeling.  

I think something I often feel when talking about practice with people who make or write or do anything is kind of this, this extra sense that they need to fulfil deeply. It’s like they don’t feel alive or content without this other thing. It becomes a basic kind of need for feeling human. I do think it is a complete guaranty of sanity and I think that if anyone didn’t feel that urgent need to do it, they wouldn’t, because it’s crazy. I wonder what the level of insanity of most artists would be if they didn’t kind of have that practice in order to get through life.  

Emily Sullivan: It’s nice that you talk about getting through life. I mean, for Louise, it was a career that spanned over 70 years. I think that was a mantra that, you know, was there from the beginning and as I think the exhibition demonstrates, is there right until the end. Wayne, your thoughts?   

Wayne Youle: Kia ora everyone. Thank you for coming. In terms of sanity or, you know, insanity, I think it’s a letting, right, for me, I know that I, my practice is quite insular in the sense that I have 15 acres, my studio is on my property, I’m on my property but I’m nowhere near my property, I’m the novelty in the corner. I tend to not give directions to my studio. So there’s this kind of thing, so I work out that insanity and that sanity kind of on my own, talk to myself a fair bit during the day, whatever it’s called, gesticulate a lot. I don’t tend to stop. I don’t reflect on work but there’s just a need. I absolutely agree with Nell, there’s just a, it’s a runaway train. You know, once it starts, you know, you’re hoping that by the process of making, you can chase some demons, find some demons, agree with some demons, you know?  

But I love what Nell said. You know, basically, Louise puts it out there. She’s really up front. She tells you exactly why she made it. She tells you, you know, it’s pretty, it’s there and then it’s for you to deal with, you know? And everything that we do, you know, we can only nurse our work so long. If you’re a writer or a musician, you can only nurse it so long. And then you give it out to the world if you’re lucky enough to give it out to the world or to your friends or your peers or whatever and then that, then the question of insanity or sanity comes back rather than you know I’ve kind of, I’ve done that job and now everyone’s looking at it with the side eye or from a distance or from below or questioning that. 

Emily Sullivan: Well, let’s stay with that image of you working away in your studio. I’ve come to imagine you as this quite routine-based artist, constantly arranging, rearranging objects in the studio and you know, have an interest in found materials, as opposed to prefabricated materials, although you do work in that space as well. 

I’m interested to hear on your reflections on the material range and inventiveness in Louise’s work. I love this idea that in the 80s, people would walk into Louise’s exhibitions and think that it was a group show. You know, there was a range of materials from latex to marble. She was working with marble while minimalism was all the rage in New York in the 60s. Can you talk about that variety that we discussed in the lead up?   

Wayne Youle: It’s kind of nice to hear that. I’ve had the same … I’ve been in my own shows where people have asked if it was a group show, it was one person, so I admire anyone practicing out there that can go into their studio and have done successfully for a number of years one craft. I love the story that worn wood can tell you. I love the direction that someone’s already taken stuff. I love the scoops and marble steps that have taken years of traffic.  I couldn’t on my best day make that. I love when something was supposed to be square and now it has round edges and, and I think if you can pick up that and run with it, side, strange side thing ... I was working with old wooden headboards at home, headboards and single beds, I don’t know if you have them in Australia, but the little springer single beds, the elm or the oak headboards. 

And if you dress those with a sander or a planer, you can smell the oils and the perfumes from the shampoo from the past. And so, I have no idea, they gotta be pretty old, but, so there’s those things, and there’s a little bit of an element of what we’ve been given. And it’s that risk factor for me with sculpture that I find over painting, I find painting is, for me, for me, there’s a certain amount of safe steps before it all goes, you know, like, I see Serafine’s like, before it all gets a bit kind of hairy and scary and you make some decisions, but for me, sculpture, the decisions are made from the minute something is collected and it’s, you know, same for Nell and stuff, so, yeah, so I just, I like the history, I like working with what there already is, supporting that story or totally twisting that story. Yeah, I just like the feel of something that’s already been held. 

Emily Sullivan: Your response to some of my questions was kind of profanity and then no risk, no reward, right?  

Wayne Youle: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Emily Sullivan: And I think it’s something that sums up Louise’s practice as well.  

Wayne Youle: Yeah, I’m trying to hold back on profanity. My mum might watch on. I mean, in terms of her, in terms of her materials, nothing was safe and rightfully so, and it was every contrast you can run over in your mind: the hard, the soft, the, the tactile, the found, the new, all of it, the fragile, the solid, the tall, the small. There’s just, I mean, no one attacked like, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not a great art historian, but I don’t know anyone, male, female, otherwise, that is rocking with stuff like that. There’s no fear. It’s like that’s a small package with zero fear. 

Emily Sullivan: And then in the 90s transforming I think again, reinventing again and picking up textiles of her past. Louise is highly sensitive to the relationship between textiles. feeling and memory and y ou know, she went to her closet, pulled down all the clothes, started to organise them by colour, cut them up, made new arrangements and they became, you know, the materials of figurative sculptures, some that you see in the exhibition, fabric books. I wanted to talk to, to Julia about about this use of material, especially as someone who works with textiles but also who’s, you know, very aware of the relationship between, between memory and intimacy in the use of those materials, perhaps, just as a starting point.  

Julia Gutman: Yeah, I mean, I think Louise’s relationship with textiles was a starting point for me and definitely kind of helped pull ... I was working in sculpture at the time and kind of pushed me into textiles and that kind of pushed me more towards kind of figuration and it’s interesting because I feel like that came out of the textiles because clothes and domestic kind of things that we remember from spaces that we’ve been in or people that we remember really hold memory in a unique way. 

I think clothes are sort of the closest thing we have to another person. They can become a stand in for another person and they do really become these conduits of memory. And I think specifically for Louise, you know, her family made tapestries, they were weavers, I think there’s that kind of an additional layer and, you know, that’s where the kind of analogy of the spider comes from, of this weaver. I think there’s, there’s something interesting there in that kind of very textural, very personal sort of relationship with materials as a way of, of holding on to a relic of a person. 

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, that’s, I mean it was definitely a conduit to Louise’s mother, who was a tapestry restorer, as you say. But also this idea that the textiles were, you know, she imbued them with this kind of psychological or reparative power, you know, the idea of joining things was, you know, gave her some kind of kind of cathartic assurance or guaranty or had a calming effect. I want to talk about the art of imbuing objects Nell with opposing forces, you’re a master of that. 

In our earlier chats, we’re talking about the power of Louise’s work to contain the extremes of emotion and Louise’s work always came from a very personal place, and yet it’s somehow able to touch, you know, a wide variety of audiences, always in very different ways. I’d love you to talk about, I guess, the relationship between the personal and the universal in your work and Louise’s, of course.  

Nell: Yeah, again, Emily and I started chatting and I just said to her, you know, the reason it connects is because the personal and the universal are wholly interchangeable.  And it’s just such a paradox that we find ... The paradox is in us that we’re so interchangeable. We’re all breathing the same air. We’re all interconnected. And yet we’re all unique. It’s just incredible. And that’s why, when people are themselves that we connect with them. It just takes so long to be confident to be who you already are.   

And even Tracey went – Tracey Emin – went to pains yesterday to say the ways she wasn’t like Louise. Like, she grew up in Margate, she didn’t finish high school, like, Louise was educated, and she’s like, well, you know, I’m really like her in a lot of ways, I’m gonna go deep, but I’m not her, and for me it takes, I don’t know why, it takes a while for that scaffolding to fall away where you’re trying to be someone you’re not.  

And you know, I’m from Maitland.  And you know, the work that’s in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales of mine, the one work, is Where Newcastle meets Maitland. I made work about what I make work about, which is what I know, and that’s when it really connects with people.  And just to touch on the materials, and Wayne talking about the materials, I also just can’t … Nothing was off limits for Louise, like, she’d just harness anything. If she found it on the street, like the greyhound body ...  Was it a real greyhound? 

Emily Sullivan: No, it was a plaster kind of statue that she found in the dumpster.  

Nell: Yeah, so that’s the work with the multiple breasts was actually cast from something she’ll find on the street. And I actually, one of my great revelations of which I’ve had many, since seeing the show is for me, I’ve come to see her using emotion and fear as a material, not as a subject.  

It’s almost like it could be written in the material list, like fear, insomnia, grief, anger, right? It’s there, and it’s not … It’s a shift from being a subject to a material.   

Julia Gutman: I’ve read, I read this quote of hers this morning where she was talking about ...  Descartes has this idea of people being mouldable like wax and she found materials to be mouldable, but people to be like iron and the studio being a space where she could, you know, evoke change, and just not really finding that relationally at all. 

And I think there is that kind of interchangeability between, like, moving through something psychological through this act in the studio that she does have control over, in a world where you don’t really have any control over anything or anyone.  

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, I think you see that in the show where similar forms appear in different materials. It’s almost as if she’s identifying, well actually, you know, this, this form or this material needs to, is befitting of a particular emotion that I’m trying to work through or process. I’m going to jump to the title of the show, it’s you know, it relates to a key theme: has the day invaded the night, has the night invaded the day? This kind of incessant working and always this notion of time passing and of observing time through kind of ideas of kind of longing, but also in kind of reaching and waiting.  

It was a pleasure to discover your works Wayne, particularly Piece of string [How long a piece of string actually is] and March of the good bastard, which is about your father. Works that deal with themes of aging and loss and I guess about, you know, the way our relationship with key, I guess, members of family changes over time and how that can be another material that you work with.  

Wayne Youle: Yeah time’s huge. I have a, especially in the last few years, like the sun and the moon are in my work a lot. I always just say to students, be careful about how much you research. So I’m too scared to research Louise too much because I feel like everything pops up and I’m like, oh my god, you know.  

But no, I did a work that means a lot to me. I went up to my mum once and I said to my mum, and in true supportive mum fashion, I said to her, because she can knit, she’s one of those knitters that knits and talks on the phone and knits and does something. And one day I, there’s a work called A piece of string, how long’s a piece of string? [How long a piece of string actually is] 

And so I asked my mum to knit essentially, let’s just say, call it a scarf, but it was yea wide, I think it was about 300 [cm] wide. And I asked her to knit for a year.  I said to my mum, can you knit me something for a year to start on a certain day? Because she’s really emotional she started to knit on my grandmother’s birthday. 

It was the grandmother ironically that reminds me so much of Louise it wasn’t funny. And so she started to knit. And she would apologise periodically. She’d say, ‘Oh, I didn’t knit much this week.’ I said, ‘Dude, there’s no limit. There’s no limit.’ I don’t want it until it’s fluoro orange. It had to be acrylic because she gets eczema so it couldn’t be wool and I roll it up and it’s about a length of time and it rolls up and when she said to me, ‘I’ve done about X amount of metres or X amount of centimetres.’ I said, ‘That’s fine, that’s exactly how much I wanted in a year.’ It’s exactly how much I wanted and so when I show it in a space when it has multiple lives it spans either the width of a door, or it spans as long as, I’ve never been able to roll it all the way out but that kind of concept comes about time with children. 

So there’s a variation in time from my eight-year-old through to my parents. And for those that have, irrespective of children, and anyone who has a, with their, with their parents, or relationship with their parents, where their parents are still alive, I remember really emotionally and really vividly when my father slowed down. 

Like, I remember it to this fucking day, like I remember he would go in and he would manhandle something, he’s a big man, you know, he’s overweight, but he’s a big man, and he would manhandle something, and I remember going the next time, and I had to help him, or he had to stop, and so I realised time was an issue.  

So my eight-year-old says, ‘Look, I can’t wait five minutes. I can’t wait five minutes for something!’ And then I realised time is different as we get older. So I got my father to walk for a certain amount of time. I made, I got him in a grey, in a grey, horrible grey tracksuit and some horrible shoes. And I said, I said, ‘Papa, all I need you to do is walk,’ I said, ‘up that hill.’ And he just walked and I filmed him and it was four minutes 19 seconds or something. And he didn’t ask a question. I got him back in the van, I gave him a can of Coke, and he was a happy man.  

So time’s huge, because like the fear that, like the fear ... and again, Nell’s got it in one: he fear should be part of the media. You know, like, the fear drives that. The insecurities drive that. The fear of me losing my parents drives that. The fear of me not having done enough work to leave for my children means that I get up every morning 7 ‘til 5, treat it like a job, go back when I’ve got crushing, you know, things and work through that. So emotion and fear and pride and finance and all of those things drive my work. But I’m sure it drives everyone’s [inaudible].  

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, I think that idea of fear, I mean, Louise had a fear of forgetting. You know, she said, ‘I need my memories. They are my documents.’ I wanted to talk to you, Nell, about this idea of this cycle of life that’s so present in your work through images of, you know, of the egg and the form of the egg. And also this idea of holding on and letting go and finding equilibrium between those two things.  

Nell: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been looking at lots of Louise Bourgeois books in the lead up to this and reading about her in her 90s talking about her abandonment issues with her father and you just think, ‘God, get over it! You’re 90!’ 

But the inability to let go is the kind of fuel. I think we’ve got some politicians who’ve you know, you find the job that meets your neuroses or something. And that for her, she couldn’t let the material go. That’s the thing. 

So the eggs I’ve used in my work to represent the similar things to her and these things we were talking about, they’re universal and personal: fragility and strength, they’re such a pure shape. And they’re so fragile and so strong, and we are so fragile and so strong, simultaneously. And then the works of being the child and the mother, and the interchangeability of that as well. 

At times I, well many of you know I lost a baby, so I’m kind of like a motherle- ... My mother at times has not been great, so I feel like a childless mother and a motherless child. And that’s why I also don’t have a last name, so I like to feel like I’m initiated into everyone’s family. So these things of family and loss and birth and death and we all come from a mother and we all leave through Mother Earth. These are big themes! And the other thing I’ve loved about this show is she talks about the mother-child relationship outside of the very Christian one, which is the classic one that we’re so used to seeing, the Mary with the baby. And it’s so dominant through art history and there’s works [in], I call it ‘Jeffrey Gibson’s room’ [Jeffrey Gibson’s work THE STARS ARE OUR ANCESTORS (Kissing Chair) was previously installed in that room], in Jeffrey’s room, that really incredible room of the mother with still the umbilical cord and the chart, the baby’s floating. And you know, Tracey Emin said something that, you know, her work gets into the nooks and crannies of your mind.  

But for me, it’s like the bottom of your stomach falls away. Like, woahhh! Like that baby in the strainer, like you’re strained into life, but somehow it’s holding you and containing you at the same time. It’s like, whooh! Yeah, that’s a tearjerker.  

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, that room is, it’s an intense space and it’s quiet in some ways and speaks volumes and speaks differently to different people. 

I was talking about the work The Good Mother with my partner and, for me, I feel instant pain when I see that work and kind of this, most like I’m, you know, locked into place, don’t move and everything will be fine, you know, no pain will come if you just don’t move. You know, it’s got the, the five kind of spools of thread coming from the woman’s breasts and Dom’s reflection was he felt instant guilt, you know, as a child, you know, he said that the child’s guilt of the kind of burdens that you place on your mother, and I think that’s the power of Louise’s work, you know, we each go to that personal place. So thanks for sharing, Nell. 

I wanted to go to some questions that I think will be nice for us all to jump into. The first is talking about I guess, jumping off from this last point, but artistic depictions of the body in Louise’s work. 

And I’ve been reading Olivia Lang’s book Everybody and she has a great quote in there where she suggests that the body might have its own language which is distant from speech but just as eloquent and meaningful, composed of symptoms and sensations. And I love that idea in relation to Louise, because, you know, I always feel that my body’s reacting before my mind is when I see some of her works. I can try to … constantly trying to catch up and process how I’m feeling. And I wanted to talk about some of the sensations – start perhaps with you, Julia – that you experience when you see Louise’s works, perhaps bodies that you’re drawn to or repelled from in the show. 

Julia Gutman: I mean, I think that, that explanation of your stomach falling away is very apt. I feel like the emotional breadth of what I experienced walking through the Tank specifically, like, I think I was surprised by how many times I laughed as well, like I think Louise’s sort of wicked sense of humour is something that isn’t always brought up, but she was so mischievous, we had a great laugh about the only kind of overtly male figure in the whole exhibition is a small man with a crutch and a sort of little wounded man with this big, big shadow, which just felt like a very kind of Louise joke. 

And I think that was something I was also struck by, seeing a lot of work in person for the first time that I had read about, or seen imagery of. Seeing Destruction of the father for the first time in person, which if you don’t know, is sort of about this sort of, it’s a narrative work about this family that’s eaten the father figure, and it’s sort of violent and cannibalistic and it’s this sort of gruelling story, but seeing it in person, it was also, it’s quite camp and theatrical and it’s got this red light and this velvet curtain and it’s gross and unsettling, but I think something we spoke about is even the very dark themes that sort of unsettle you, they never frighten you. 

And I feel like Louise is never trying to kind of scare you, she’s speaking to this kind of deep emotional place but it’s psychological without being kind of horrifying. I think there’s an interesting tension there with a lot of the kind of more difficult works.  

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, I think that’s beautifully put. It’s almost, I’ve been saying that the forms are both familiar and confrontational. But because they’re familiar, there’s also this sense of comforting that I, you know, or recognising in some of the forms that, you know, helps kind of subdue that shock. 

Wayne, our first meeting in real life was by happenstance in the room of the Personages, which is a favourite room of mine, but you know, it’s a space where you know you feel the tensions between the forms and Louise was highly attuned to those tensions between people. Can you talk about, I guess you had a nice encounter with The observer?   

Wayne Youle: Yeah I think for me as an artist, you know ... Emily called me, I was absolutely ... when I got an email to say hey, will you talk, you know, with this wonderful woman here and these incredible artists, I was like, hell no, what am I going to talk about Louise Bourgeois? I was like, I’m sure she can hear me, and she’ll be tutting away or something and a bit of juju [inaudible], I can’t speak on that, there’s certain people that feel untouchable, and for me she feels untouchable. 

It’s a universal pain, I think, you know, like, not only, you know, we spoke about, I spoke about male and all that sort of thing, and Emily was very kind to cajole me to go, yeah, no, you know what, I can sort of, you know, contribute there. I think that room for me, like, we’ve seen a lot of those things, and I’ve never seen Maman before. Have you seen Maman before overseas, either of you? No.  

And so I kind of, that was everything it was supposed to be and more, right? But when you go into rooms that you’ve never seen those works, even perhaps in images, they were the greatest reward to me. And I think when I went into that very first room where I did meet you and your partner, was, they felt culturally … so the very first room you go in, in the ‘day’ room, the Personages, is that how you say Personages? They felt ethnically familiar, they felt like home, they felt a little bit Pacific. They felt a little bit Indigenous. They felt really good. I did feel like I was [inaudible], but the Observer, we have a puppet in, Māori carved puppets. We didn’t have a lot of kids play stuff like that, but we had what they call a karetao. A karetao is a puppet and it essentially just had these, you know, after European influence, so there’s this awkward puppet thing happening with almost a whirligig head.  

And I just, it was, it just spoke to me, but it actually did, and I just was absolutely enthralled by it. I went back, I saw it, just like when I see Po, or I see any of, you know, the funeral poles, they just speak to you. I think that height thing works. So it’s the little hidden gems for me, you know, the merci. mercy. felt you know, really interesting, an incredible job of putting works into the walls that kind of jump out at you, but have a museum feel, so it was the little, it was the unexpected I think that was great, you know, you go downstairs and there’s the things you’ve seen in there, they’re everything you want them to be. And when Nell spoke about some of those, I love that room, that Good mother, bad mother, you know, we’re always trying to be better or something whether it be mother or not, you know, but the serious message or the emotive message or the personal message or the sorrowful message with the contrast of materials and this … Because we all know how to sew, right? You know the craft of sewing, right? So it’s not, there’s nothing aggressive. Well, okay, I don’t think there’s much aggressiveness ...  

Julia Gutman: I think there’s so much aggression. 

Wayne Youle: Oh no!  

Julia Gutman: Sorry! [laughs] 

Wayne Youle: I mean, maybe I’m too anal, because I just, whenever I sew anything, it’s so tiny. And people say, ‘You didn’t hand sew that!’ But yeah, I just, I’m so slow I actually, when I did see your work yeah, true, there are some late nights there, right?  

Julia Gutman: I mean, she wasn’t always sewing the figures she worked with.  

Emily Sullivan: No, I mean, it’s a nice clue, I think, to discover which works Louise kind of worked on. You know, she was aging in the early 2000s and so the works where you can see the really ragged stitches, the loose threads, you know, the messy stitches – my favourite stitches, they’re Louise’s and she also had a studio assistant who would …  

Wayne Youle: But they don’t look sketchy, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t feel like I’m gonna pick the work up and go, ‘Oh shit, it’s on the ground.’ You know, they feel robust. They feel smart and considered and learned and they feel solid. That’s what I think. I don’t see them as you know, I think about my nana darning socks with that mushroom again and the darning sock mushroom has, you know, as a sculpture thing, I was collecting those for a long time. Don’t know if I did anything with them, but they were great things. You know, you just collect them.  

Emily Sullivan: Well, you’re talking about you know, grandparents and senior kind of maternal figures and I guess great influences on our practice. They can be personal, but they can also be the big figures. Louise is unique in that she’s a historical figure. You know, she was making art and kind of moving in circles with the emigre surrealists in New York in the 1940s. But she was a contemporary artist and I love the way Tracey [Emin] speaking yesterday saying that, you know, she knew Louise’s name, she knew the work, but she was shocked to discover that she was two generations her senior because the work felt so fresh and so relevant.  

I’d like to hear about how Louise has figured in your worlds or your spheres as a kind of, you know, a peripheral figure, perhaps a foundational figure. Perhaps, Nell, you can start. I mean, you were forthcoming with some other key figures in your world.  

Nell: Yeah, I mean, interestingly, I did not have a big bang Louise Bourgeois moment, it more like crept up on me. And that’s part of, you know, being Australian and just seeing it in books and magazines. But I was telling Emily, I have on … my computer needs to be higher because I’m too short. So I have my computer propped up on Louise Bourgeois and Sonia Delaunay books and that’s really intentional, like spine facing out, so that everything I write or think about at that desk comes from these two incredible female practitioners, which really explode the myth of the artist, like the Amy Winehouse, Sylvia Plath, Eva Hesse, like, you know, it’s young and tragic. Like, it’s the tenacity in those, and the diversity of, has been touched upon. Wait, what was the question? [laughter] Oh, how Louise – 

Emily Sullivan: Just how Louise figured.  

Nell: Yeah, how Louise figured. Yeah, and so the thing too, I think I … There was other artists, I knew their work more intimately but didn’t realise how much they were influenced by Louise Bourgeois. And I studied with Annette Messager in Paris, I was a massive Mike Kelly fan, and still am, when I was at art school. And, you know, that psychological nature of the house and nostalgia. So all these artists who were highly influenced by her and the trickle down to, yeah, Kathy Temin who I just loved as an art student and still do.   

It’s all there. And in fact I left the opening and went: Rosalind Piggott! Louise Weaver! My mind was just like, every woman who makes an object actually, it’s just there. It’s part of the vocabulary. Oh, I know what you and I were talking about. It’s just come back to me looking at your face. You said like, how’s Louise viewed as? I was like, well, if you’re a musician, how’s the Beatles? Like, they’re there.  

Emily Sullivan: They’re there.  

Nell: They’re there! 

Emily Sullivan: Wayne, what about you?   

Wayne Youle: It’s, it’s almost just reiterating what Nell’s said. You asked me and I was like, oh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the flesh, but I’m dying to, you know. They’re just there! You look at my browse history, and when it’s not Japanese woodwork, it’s kind of a Louise, you know, you type in something, something brings up, and then you’re only, you’re all of a sudden, you’re Sarah Lucas, and then you go, well, we wouldn’t have, you know, and then you go, yeah exactly right, and we, hey, whoa, hold on, and then you find yourself just, yeah, down this, this crazy thing that we, again, at home, I don’t know the English word, but we have whakapapa, like everything whakapapa is back to Louis Bourgeois. Yeah. Like, right? Like, I mean, it’s like everything comes back, like, you know ... Genealogy. Genealogy. Like, family tree. The art family tree. Mate, she’s the roots! For real. Like, you know, she’s, like, really, you go there, and you look down here, and you take this, and you’re like, oh shit, we just took that from Louise Bourgeois. Like, here’s a walk of shame. Hopefully it’s paid for, and put the money in the bank, and then we’re good.  

But, you know, like, really? Like, really? You know, Nell’s so right. It’s there. And it’s, you know, I said to you, you’ve got all these contemporary rock stars that are in your face. And she just lives rent free in here. Like, it’s like, she’s, like, that will stay with me. You know, I can count on one hand the shows that have blown my mind, Chris Ofili and all these, but that stays there. You know, that’s like, I’ve got to go home and save more money to come back. Right? So, yeah.  

Emily Sullivan: Julia, did you have anything to add?  

Julia: I was just, like, I’m thinking about her as this kind of canon, but also, like, when that happened and kind of thinking about generationally, you know, who is able to think about Louise Bourgeois as the starting point for everything, and at what point she kind of became this figure because I think a lot of that would have to do with, like, when you became interested, and when at what point in time you kind of, started to think about her work.  

I feel like the first time I really heard her name was after reading ‘The blazing world’ by Siri Hustvedt. It’s fiction, but it’s sort of loosely based on her as a character. I mean, I didn’t learn about her in art school, and I only went to art school, you know, in the last 10 years. So I do think, like, yes, she is this kind of foundational figure that we’re all influenced by, but there’s probably a reason why we didn’t all realise we were influenced by her. That’s interesting and worth noting.  

Emily Sullivan: Yeah, no, I think it’s definitely worth noting. It was something that you all echoed, so I think nice to draw attention to the fact that, you know, she was there. She had the staying power. You know, it was almost like there was, she was almost too big, perhaps to be referencing directly.  

So I guess I’m excited about perhaps changing that with generations in Sydney and having that, you know, that deeper exposure that this exhibition affords. Final question is just about a work that perhaps surprised you or one work that you’d return to in the exhibition.  

For those who don’t know, Justin is hosting a curator’s tour at 2pm. If you haven’t been yet, now is the time to go and if you have been, it’s well worth the revisit. Is there a key work that you would return to if there was just one in the exhibition? Something to hunt out in the Tank perhaps?   

Julia Gutman: I mean, this is, it’s just a couple of drawings that surprised me that I’ve been thinking about since I saw them. There’s kind of this, this series of like very kind of girlish drawings that say, ‘I love you, do you love me?’ And just the kind of total vulnerability. And also, we had a conversation about this, but it made me kind of recontextualise a lot of her work. It’s like, there’s sort of this unapologetic girlishness or like, this embracing of a lot of kind of qualities that I think a lot of women have suppressed in order to be taken seriously intellectually and just this kind of this willingness to go there that as such a monumental figure I find really validating and also humbling.  

I think it’s a nice point. I love their inclusion, and even some of the kind of the larger suites of works, you know, there’s something almost preparatory about them, like Nell, you were saying that, you know, the 10am is When You Come to Me, that work. It’s almost like, you come in every day, you do one of those prints, and then, you know, you get on with other things.  

Emily Sullivan: Where would you send us, Nell?  

Nell: Oh, you know, I’d take a lottery dip on any of them to take home. But yeah, for me, it’s the whole enterprise. Yeah, and also that not pigeonholing herself as a female artist. I think she just kept making, and making, and making, and it’s the diversity of, you know, the small scale and the large scale, which I do in my own practice. Naturally, not my strategy, and that, yeah, I think what you just said about people coming to the shows and thinking it was a group show, that you can be all these different people, and I think there’s a tendency to think that men who make work out of lots of different materials are Renaissance men and women are just a little bit all over the shop, you know and I get I’ve received this like, you know, you make work out of too many two materials I was like, oh really? Really? What do you call a guy who does that a genius, you know?  

So like, you know, I love I just love that she’s not trying to be like the boys, she’s just herself. It’s like what the girl bands say, I don’t want to be in the women of rock issue, I want to be in the issue, like the main magazine, like she’s just, she just went there, she just bypassed it with what Jane Campion called female thinking. Which I love those two words, I’d never heard them put together before like that. And it’s just like yeah, this is my world, take it.   

Emily Sullivan: Wayne, final thoughts. 

Wayne Youle: Pretty simple really: anything’s on, it’s the favourite work. Julia, we’re of a different generation. I have physically actually written some of those things to girls in classes at school, primary school. And there used to be a box or a tick will you, you know, push me on the swing, you know, so those are real. Those things are real. So I remember those back in the day. Look, it just, again, like anything, and a senior artist once said to me, Wayne, if you just picked one kind of material, you could probably be more successful than you are.  

So I’ve had the opposite, like, you know, it’s like, man, you’re all over the place, why don’t you like just pick a material and run with it. Anything’s fine. You know, I’m picking up anything she’s putting down, so,  it’s just incredible and it’s a tribute to yourself and Justin and the team to bring something so special to Australia and New Zealand.  (applause) 

Emily Sullivan: Please join me now in thanking Wayne, Julia, and Nell and don’t forget to join Justin at 2pm in Gallery 3, where the tour will begin shortly. Thanks. 

(applause)