Close Looking: Heather Phillipson on Emma Talbot

Osman Yousefzada’s poem, Untitled (for Prem), is written in response to Prem Sahib’s User_01 (2016), a panel of black aluminium covered with drops of resin that look like sweat and moisture, smudged in one part as if by a hand. The work’s eroticism, inspired by the sweaty walls of clubs, is framed by Yousefzada’s evocation of memory, longing and sensuality.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Marina Warner’s Pentimento is written in response to Paula Rego’s drawing in pencil and conte, St Mary of Egypt (2011) and tells the story of the little-known saint from fragments of reports of those who knew and remembered her. Knowing Rego’s love of storytelling and character studies, Warner has written a fictional account of a professor who has discovered Rego’s drawing and has pieced together memories of the saint gathered from a fictional fourth-century palimpsest she is researching from the city of Fustat (old Cairo).

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Heather Phillipson’s The Creeps is written in response to Emma Talbot’s How the Web was Woven (2009), an acrylic on canvas work with a variety of vignettes, spider webs, texts and mysterious figures. Reflecting the haunting, unsettling atmosphere in Talbot’s painting, Phillipson considers how an artwork can never be fully understood or described, but is something we can continually think with and learn from.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Julie Ezelle Patton’s Three Phases of Eva, 1965 is written in response to Eva Hesse’s Three (1965), a triptych of gouache and oil on paper collage. Patton takes Hesse’s triptych and title to structure the poem in three, imaginatively exploring Hesse's name, work and life, from Patton's first memory of hearing the artist’s name to once assisting Hesse’s partner, artist Tom Doyle. For Patton, the encounter with this work becomes a point of departure to play with language just as Hesse experimented with materials, and to reflect on acts of violence, from Hesse’s experience of fleeing from Nazi Germany in her childhood, to current events today.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter

Imani Mason Jordan’s 1:1 is written in response to Ellen Gallagher’s Untitled (2005). Gallagher’s intimate work shows two silhouetted figures etched onto a gold leaf background. The figures, posed as if in conversation, recall nineteenth-century portraits of authors found in narratives of slave emancipation. Jordan’s couplets of words and sounds, pulsing and intimate, fragmentary and accumulative, reflects Gallagher’s own process of gathering, erasing, cutting and collaging materials.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Renee Gladman’s All These Not-Places for Wandering is written in response to Ayan Farah’s Stardust (2011), a work dyed and bleached by UV light and painted with acrylic paint. Gladman approaches the work and the project of writing about it questioningly. Taking the encounter with the work as one of ‘wandering’ through it, Gladman follows the different lines of thought that Farah's atmospheric work prompts, reflecting on the relationship between thinking, seeing and sensing.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

In this podcast, we invited Liliane Lijn, whose work is featured in the David and Indrė Roberts Collection to choose a piece from the collection as a starting point for a conversation.

Lilliane is one of the curatorial collaborators for Deep Horizons, our exhibition with MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, and she selected Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work Water Towers, 1972-2012 which features in the exhibition.

Liliane describes her early encounters with Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work and its impact on her practice. The conversation explores her own fascination with industrial structures, the role of fantasy and imagination in design and how she has experimented with light in her work.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

In this podcast, artist Valerie Asiimwe Amani discusses her first live performance To dismantle a house which was jointly commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art and South London Gallery and presented in June 2022.

RIA and South London Gallery invited Valerie to participate in a new five-week performance residency at South London Gallery. The work she developed whilst in residence presented a multisensory installation and performance that explored the intersection of cultures, reflecting Amani's diverse interests. 

During the conversation, Amani shares her experience of the residency, her feelings about performing live for the first time and reflects on the impact this experience has had on her artistic practice.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

In this podcast series, we ask an artist represented in the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, and who was also part of one of the Evening of Performances, to select a work by another artist represented in the collection as the starting point for the discussion.

We invited Dora García, an artist who often draws on interactivity and performance in her work. At our 2008 Evening of Performances, García performed The Game of Questions, a performance that blurred boundaries between spectator and performer.

In this edition, she chose Ida Applebroog’s A Performance, (1977-1981) which sparks a discussion about reading and performance, marginality and collaboration.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

In this podcast series, we ask an artist who performed in one of the Evening of Performances to choose someone to be in conversation about collaboration, their respective practices and the future of performance.

In this edition, DJ and producer, Nkisi, aka Melika Ngombe Kolongo, who was commissioned as part of the 2017 Evening of Performances, invited artist and choreographer Tiran Willemse, to chat about performance, their collaborations, and their most recent work (bb), which looks at the structures of support and maintenance from the theatre.

This special edition of our 'On Togetherness' series is part of Recall: Evening of Performances (2008–2019), a year-long programme of interviews, podcasts and contributions from some of the artists who participated in the twelve editions of the celebrated Evening of Performances. Highlighting the evenings’ extraordinary legacies, we will be exploring what the next wave of contemporary performance can become with the artists who have shaped it so far.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!