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This quote of Lee Krasner created a link for me between these two women artist's works on my mind today. Mysterious writing is something that features in the Madge Gill exhibition at the William Morris Gallery.

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Madge Gill (1882-1961)

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Madge Gill exhibition at the William Morris Gallery. Spectacular Outsider Art which I'm sure will divide viewers. I was surprised at how much I liked it. It's original and driven, yet has resonance with artistic movements that she lived through #artgallery #outsiderart #artexhibition #artinlondon #madgegill #modernart #williammorris (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzATI14HG9x/?igshid=r7yr1tc67mje

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Untitled (Queenly Figure) by Madge Gill #madgegill #outsiderart

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WORK #32 (MUSGRAVE KINLEY OUTSIDER ART COLLECTION)

Madge Gill, untitled, ink on card, 1939.

All images © the estate of the artist and Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester.

INTRODUCTION:

Everyone here at The Whitworth was saddened to learn of the passing of Monika Kinley on 9th March 2014. Kinley's voracious appetite for collecting and promoting 'outsider art' shared by her husband Victor Musgrave, defined her life. In 2010 we were gifted the entire Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection and it is a great asset to our gallery. It therefore seems only fitting to me, to focus on works from this collection over the next few weeks in tribute to Monika Kinley.

I have a special interest in the collection and have done for some years, so I could choose so many hugely different pieces. That said, earlier this year I featured a drawing by the American artist Tony Oursler, whose preoccupations lie in the realm of the supernatural. In particular, the way we use advancements in technology to try to connect with the other side. Oursler is fascinated by "spirit photography" and mediums. When we welcomed Oursler's large scale multimedia work The Influence Machine to the gallery (and Whitworth Park) as part of the Manchester International Festival in 2011, the artist picked out several works from our Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection with a view to displaying them as part of the exhibition. The works he selected shared a common theme. That theme being that of an intervention of some other - a spirit or God - in the creation of the work. Some external influence guided their hands, or at least inspired the artists to create the work that they did. So, I have returned to one of these pieces. It is a drawing by Madge Gill, a British artist whose output was vast and largely unseen until after her death in 1961.

Her work was guided by an inner spirit who apparently took hold of her and directed her. There is something fascinating about the obsessive nature by which Gill portrayed the same woman in much of her work. It is often read as an act of self-portraiture: her own interpretation of herself. Although it is unlikely that this interpretation was developed through studying herself in the mirror. Madge Gill was left with only one eye after a terrible ordeal in which she gave birth to a stillborn child. It is said that she worked solely in the dimness of candle light - or in complete darkness - often producing work from her bed.

The version of herself - which is so instantly identifiable with her work - is stylish and often with a different hat, coat or brooch, seems to me perhaps, an ideal version of Gill. It could be that the figure epitomises to her what it is to be a woman: perhaps this character is Gill trying to escape from, or make sense of herself - an existential exploration even? She could have been metaphysically stepping back and viewing herself from a distance. These ideas intrigue me but are, of course, unsubstantiated. For Madge Gill her work was purely the channelling of her spiritual guide MYRNINEREST, whose name she often signed on her pieces. Perhaps all of these women were an attempt to give human form to MYRNINEREST, or they could even be interpreted as an act of devotion to her. This particular untitled work is vibrantly coloured with this familiar character appearing through a network of shapes, criss-crossing, overlapping and taking the viewers eye on a mesmeric journey around the sheet of card. The composition plays with perspective and hints at identifiable objects before leading you into a tangle of colour and shape. This is one aspect of the work of 'outsider artists' which I am fascinated by: the way that repetitive, dense mark-making occupies a grey area between representation and unfettered expression. Whoever was leading the hand of Gill, she produced wonderful art.

Andrew Cheetham (Visitor Services Assistant)

CURATOR’S INSIGHT:

Madge Gill (1884 – 1961) was born out of wedlock and was hidden away by her mother and aunt for several years, until she was admitted into an orphanage in London. As a teenager, Gill went to Canada to work as a servant on a farm, returning to London at the age of 19 where she worked as a nurse. At this time she developed an interest in spiritualism and astrology that was to stay with her for the rest of her life. Married at 23, Gill had three sons, the second of whom died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. In 1920, after losing an eye and almost dying while giving birth to a stillborn daughter, Gill began to paint and draw. She worked in bed by the light of an oil lamp, sometimes even painting in complete darkness. She consistently depicted the same female form, generally set against abstract, architectural lines, crosses and zigzags. The name MYRNINEREST often appears in Gill’s pictures and her son claimed that she believed her work was guided by a spirit, although she herself denied this in public. She exhibited her artwork in the East End Academy and by 1937 the press were responding to her work. Gill rarely parted with works and always refused to sell them. By the time she died there were hundreds of drawings piled in her wardrobe and underneath her bed.

Bryony Bond (Exhibitions Curator)

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