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Notebook 1987-1996
Author: Helen Chadwick (1953-1996)
Date: 1987-1996
Size: 22.5 x 16.5 cm
Description: Contains ideas, sketches, technical drawings and notes on the development of works from 'Lumina' to 'Unnatural Selection'. It also includes notes on practical information related to the making of works and notes Chadwick had taken from various texts, which include references to Italo Calvino, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Georges Bataille. In order of their appearance the notebook includes: drafts for texts on 'Lumina' which appear in ''Enfleshings'' by Helen Chadwick (Secker & Warburg, London, 1989) pp.67-69; notes indicating how Chadwick views
'Ego Geometria Sum' and 'Of Mutability' in relation to 'Lumina'; notes on viruses and 'Viral Landscapes'; notes on 'Meat Lamps'; notes on how photography operates in her work; sketches for 'Meat Abstracts'; plan of an unspecified exhibition, possibly on Surrealism; notes on meat and the theme of 'enfleshings'; sketch for 'Tao and the Tariff'; notes on holographs; sources for materials used in 'Meat Abstracts' including brains and
earthworms; sketches and notes for 'Nostalgie de la Boue'; ideas and sketches for lightboxes including 'Loop my Loop', 'The Philosopher's Fear of Flesh', 'Eroticism', 'Organism in Love', 'Eat Me' and 'Billy Budd'; notes and sketches for the 'Piss Flowers'; notes on meat and the body and the boundaries between them; notes on Herculine Barbin, a French hermaphrodite; notes on 'Fruit Rage'; notes and sketches for 'Wreaths to Pleasure' and on flowers, hybrids and effluvia; sketches for 'Adore:Abhor'; notes and sketches for 'Glossolalia' and why Chadwick uses fur; notes for the book 'Gondwanaland'; notes for 'Cacao'; notes and sketches for 'Philoxenia'; notes on 'Unnatural Selection' including notes on eggs, in-vitro fertilisation and gemstones interspersed with notes on the 'Cameos'; notes on the editioning of various pieces, 1991-1992. Loose items include notes
for a lecture called 'Warm Dark Matter'; notes on 'Monstrance'; notes on a television programme on foetal surgery; a photocopy of a page from A.S. Byatt's novel ''Possession'' on a riddle about an egg.
Physical Description: Hardcover notebook with marbled effect colour, 1 volume 158 pages and loose leaves
Accession: 2003.19/2/8
Gift of the Helen Chadwick Estate, 2002-2003