Learning Through Exhibitions
For teachers and community leaders
The
Fruitmarket
Gallery
Louise Bourgeois
I Give Everything Away
45 Market Street, Edinburgh
Mon–Sat11am–6pm, Sun12–5pm
www.fruitmarket.co.uk
Entry to our exhibitions is always free
Image: Louise Bourgeois, Insomnia Drawing #163, 1994–95
Daros Collection, Switzerland. Photo: Christopher Burke,
© The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
Learning Through Exhibitions For teachers and community leaders
The Learning Through Exhibitions series helps schools and community groups to explore exhibitions
before, during and after a visit to The Fruitmarket Gallery. The series suggests ways to think
with and through art and be inspired to make it. Creative Challenges are open-ended
and adaptable to any age group.
Art forms: drawing, writing, collage, painting, sculpture
Themes: imagination, personal experience, the unconscious
Activities support Curriculum for Excellence levels 0-4: Expressive Arts,
Health and Wellbeing, Languages, Literacy, Social Studies
The Learning Through Exhibitions series can be downloaded from www.fruitmarket.co.uk.
Group visits are free and include an introduction to the exhibition.
Exhibition: Louise Bourgeois I Give Everything Away
Date: 26 October 2013 – 23 February 2014
Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) is one of the greatest and most influential artists of our time.
In a career spanning over seventy years, she produced some of contemporary art’s most
enduring images, making sculptures, installations, writings and drawings.
Bourgeois’s work is personal yet universal, rooted in the details of her own life, but reaching
out to touch the lives of others. The exhibition Louise Bourgeois: I Give Everything Away presents
a selection of works that focus on the relationship between the artist’s drawing and writing.
The exhibition begins with the Insomnia Drawings (1994-95), a suite of 220 drawings and writings
made at night during an eight-month period when the artist couldn’t sleep. Also in the exhibition
are two groups of larger works on paper, When Did This Happen? (2007), and I Give Everything
Away (2010), made right at the end of the artist’s life.
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Image: Louise Bourgeois, I GIve Everything Away, 2010 (detail; panel 5)
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
Before your visit
Use the information in this guide to introduce your group to The Fruitmarket Gallery and Louise
Bourgeois’s work before a visit to the exhibition.
These ideas can help prepare for a visit:
•
What sorts of artwork have you seen before that you liked?
•
What sorts of drawings have you made before? What materials did you use,
what types of marks did you make?
•
What are the differences between abstract and figurative art?
•
What do you think about the relationship between art and life?
•
Louise Bourgeois kept diaries all her life and made the Insomnia Drawings
on separate sheets of paper. Do you keep a diary, journal, or sketchbook?
What sorts of things do you note down? Try keeping a visual diary in a form
of your choice, drawing images and annotating with words or poems.
You could describe memories, note down your thoughts before you go to sleep
or your dreams for a week, or record your environment, feelings and experiences.
What do the drawings or writings reveal about your thoughts?
•
Research Louise Bourgeois’s practice and share what you’ve found out.
Installation view Louise Bourgeois: I GIve Everything Away, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: © Ruth Clark
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
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During your visit
Look and Respond
Lower Gallery
The Insomnia Drawings are displayed in chronological order from the left as you enter the Gallery.
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•
Look around all the drawings and make quick notes and sketches of any recurring
or unusual patterns and images. What links can you find between series of images?
How do they morph and develop? Look out for figurative and abstract representations
and groupings of images.
•
In groups or pairs discuss what these images might have symbolised to Louise Bourgeois
and what they symbolise to you. What visual evidence supports your reading of the
images? Is your interpretation the same or different to that of your friends?
•
What colours, materials and types of paper have been used? What effect do they have?
How do the drawings work with any existing marks on the paper?
•
How does using the interpretation material in the exhibition add to your understanding
of the images?
Installation view Louise Bourgeois: I GIve Everything Away, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: © Ruth Clark
Daros Collection, Switzerland. © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
Look at Louise Bourgeois’s writings. There is a list of transcriptions and translations you can take
away with you. Write your own list or piece of prose inspired by the writings. Try and rationalise
situations or feelings in your writing. What does the writing unlock about your way of thinking?
Your writing could be about a personal relationship, a memory from the past, something that
woke you up or about what sleep means to you. Or you could make two lists of contrasting
thoughts and feelings, e.g. one starting with ‘I want’ and one starting with ‘I can’t’.
Upper Gallery
Look at the two large groups of works on paper I Give Everything Away (2010)
and When Did This Happen? (2007). Choose a work and describe it in a journal.
You may wish to write a brief story or poem about it.
•
What relationship might the artwork have to the artist’s life and experiences?
•
What is the relationship between text and image?
•
How were the works made?
•
Do any of the motifs relate to those seen in the Insomnia Drawings?
•
What affect does the scale of the work have?
Image: Louise Bourgeois, I GIve Everything Away, 2010 (detail; panel 1)
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
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Creative Challenges
These creative challenges can be undertaken before or after a visit to the Gallery,
or a mixture of both. Activities develop by experimenting with different drawing and writing
techniques to explore the imagination and personal experiences.
1. Drawing and the Unconscious
These are quick exercises that can be used to warm up before moving on to the next challenges:
Play the game Exquisite Corpse, in which collaborative texts and images are produced by
a group of people. Experiment with different versions of playing the game.
You could start with a piece of found text, a poem you’ve written or the first line of a song.
Make drawings of figures but add unexpected objects and symbols in place of the head,
body or legs.
Produce automatic drawing: clear your mind and start drawing without thinking what’s
appearing on the page. If you’re stuck you could start with a question, theme or image from
Louise Bourgeois’s work, draw to music or from the first line of a book, poem or lullaby.
What do the images reveal about your state of mind? Are there any common themes?
Do a quick drawing of yourself from memory in a continuous line. Use any material you like,
but draw without taking your material off the page. Now close your eyes and draw yourself
again. You can also try drawing a portrait of a friend, just looking at them and not your paper.
You could either draw their whole face or make repeated lines of the side of their profile
or one aspect of their face. You can do lots of these quick drawings on separate sheets
of paper or over each other on the same page.
Tips and discussion points
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•
Experiment with different materials. Try biro, felt-tip pen, pencil, ink, watercolour,
charcoal, gouache, wax crayons or chalk.
•
Think about the colours you choose. What does colour mean to you?
•
Experiment with drawing or writing with the wrong hand, e.g. if you’re left-handed draw
with your right hand, and compare the results.
•
Louise Bourgeois made the Insomnia Drawings on paper including envelopes, musical
manuscript, lined and coloured paper. Work on whatever paper is to hand, or find a wall
to cover with paper and draw or write straight on it. How have you worked with any
existing marks on the paper?
•
How does your work differ from other styles or writing or drawing you have done?
What does it feel like to draw or write in a fluid or spontaneous way?
2. Giving Form to Feelings
These ideas help explore your own personal experiences through drawing and sculpture:
Write down a list of different feelings and emotions, then draw a picture of the word that
represents your mood. How does a particular situation or environment make you feel that way?
Make a mind map of things that are important in your life, or that have influenced and shaped
who you are. They could be thoughts, events, memories, experiences, images, fears, places
or people. Draw images, make a collage or use modeling clay to express them in sculptural form.
For Louise Bourgeois, water was a metaphor for the shapelessness of the night. What shapes,
objects, marks or symbols are metaphors that represent your feelings, emotions, situations
and things that have influenced or affected your life?
Tips
•
Experiment with drawing recognisable forms and making abstract representations,
and mix between working quickly and unconsciously trying not to think too much about
the marks you make, and taking time on some of the drawings.
•
Experiment with different uses of line and pressure. You could use a ruler or compass
or make fluid, organic shapes.
Discussion points
•
How did you feel during the
process of drawing your emotions?
Did it exacerbate, exaggerate
or relieve your mood?
•
How do you feel about the
differences between making
realistic drawings and more
abstract marks?
•
What are the differences between
making drawings and finding form
with sculpture? Which methods
did you prefer?
Image: Louise Bourgeois, Insomnia Drawing #53, 1994–95
Daros Collection, Switzerland. Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
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3. Creative Writing
Look at Louise Bourgeois’s writings in the exhibition.
The exercises below are designed to help you
think about your own experiences to inform your
creative writing.
Look at Louise Bourgeois’s writing (I want – pictured).
Think of a first sentence to repeat and make a list
of your own. It could begin: I dream, I can, I fear.
Play the word association game in pairs or in
a group, and make your words into a drawing.
You could stack them like a tower, or make a coil,
maze or spiral with them.
Write about memories from your childhood
or your home, school or work life using a form
of writing of your choice. It could be prose, poetry
or use found text. In your writing try and think
about how and why you feel that way.
Produce stream of consciousness writing.
Write directly from the thoughts and feelings that
pass through your mind as they come to you.
Reflect on it afterwards, what does it reveal about your state of mind?
Research Louise Bourgeois’s psychoanalytic writings and their relation to the creative process.
Tip
Alternate between using different languages in the exercises above, either on your own
or in a group.
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Image: Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, c.1962
Photo: © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
4. Further Development
Ideas for further development of your drawing and writing from the exercises above:
Develop
Choose an image or theme from your drawing or writing to develop further.
•
Try making your own paper as a surface to draw or write on, or to make sculpture with.
•
Photocopy drawings and add colour to them.
•
Link or contrast themes from your drawing and writing to combine them in the
same image.
•
Try making work on a large scale on your own or in a group.
•
Use mixed-media and try different ways of adding text to your work e.g. collage,
fabric, paint, hand-stitching.
Visit the exhibition Louise Bourgeois, A Woman Without Secrets at the Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art, Modern One (26 October 2013 – 18 May 2014) for inspiration on how to further
develop your ideas into sculpture. What relations do you see between Bourgeois’s drawing
and writing and her wider practice?
Image: Louise Bourgeois, When Did This Happen?, 2007 (detail; panel 2)
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by DACS
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4. Further Development continued
Display and Document
Choose how to display and document your work.
•
How does it make sense to display your work, e.g. chronologically, in a line or grouping
of images? In your own presentation or collaboratively with others?
•
Think about the relationship between works. How do works complement or add
to an understanding of each other?
•
Make a book from your series of drawing and writing experiments. You could stitch
or staple the book or leave loose leaves with inserts and mounted drawings on
different types of paper.
Discuss
Present your work to other people.
•
What are their reactions and responses, and does this change the way you think
about the work?
•
Compare different styles, themes, mark-making and other techniques.
What are the differences between people’s work? Can you see distinct styles emerging?
After your visit
Further Research
Research other artists whose practice links to themes you’ve explored in Louise Bourgeois’s work,
e.g. personal experience, insomnia. How do they relate to what you’ve found out about
Louise Bourgeois? How do they relate to your own work and thinking? You could write an essay
comparing and contrasting the work, or take one theme from the exhibition you’re interested
in and research it further. Some artists to look at include:
Tracey Emin
Laure Prouvost
Tomoko Takahashi
Pae White, particularly the work Too much night, again (2013)
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General Questions
What is contemporary art?
Contemporary art is the term used to describe art
of the present day.
What is The Fruitmarket Gallery?
The Fruitmarket Gallery is an art gallery funded
by the taxpayer displaying exhibitions of work that
are not for sale. The Gallery brings the work of
Illustration: Matthew Cook
some of the world’s most important contemporary
artists to Scotland. We recognise that art can change lives and we offer an intimate encounter
with art for free. The Gallery welcomes all audiences and makes it easy for everyone to engage
with art. Gallery facilities include a bookshop and café. The Gallery is physically accessible and
family-friendly.
Resources
The Fruitmarket Gallery produces resources that are available in the Gallery and online.
Little Artists are activity sheets for families and primary school groups to enjoy the exhibition together.
Available in the Gallery and online: http://fruitmarket.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LA.pdf
Download the current exhibition guide
http://fruitmarket.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LB_exhibition-guide.pdf
View publications in the resource room
View the short exhibition film in the resource room or online
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOHA0INiqA
Talks and events are programmed for each exhibition
http://fruitmarket.co.uk/exhibitions/current/talks-and-events/
The exhibition is accompanied by a new fully illustrated book Has the day invaded the night
or the night invaded the day? Insomnia in the work of Louise Bourgeois, featuring new writing
from Frances Morris and Philip Larratt-Smith.
An educational discount is available: please enquire at the bookshop.
Book a group visit
Group visits are free and include an introduction to the exhibition.
To book call 0131 225 2383 or email [email protected]
Send us your work
Send us examples of work produced
in response to the exhibition and we will
feature a selection on The Fruitmarket
Gallery’s Facebook page.
Caitlin Page, Learning Programme Manager
Email [email protected].
Written by The Fruitmarket Gallery
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