Joanna Margaret Paul
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1945, d.2003
UNPACKING the BODY
- 1996
- Mixed media
- Gift of Alan Loney, 2009
- 297 x 210mm
- 2009/032
UNPACKING the BODY is one of several works artist and poet Joanna Margaret Paul made in response to the death of her infant daughter, Imogen. Swathed in a baby’s muslin wrap, it is both an annotated inventory of words connected to the human body and a lament about love, mothering and loss. Joanna’s work tenderly explores and names each part of the body, carefully listing resemblances to things in nature and the origins of the terms used to describe it. Bodies are ubiquitous, but they are also singular, and it is clear that what is represented here is something particular, private and irreplaceable.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Exhibition History
Brought to light, November 2009- 22 February 2011
Joanna Paul once described herself as ‘aggressively in support of the minor’ and as an artist and poet she operated deliberately on the margins between the domestic and the artistic. UNPACKING the BODY reworks an earlier installation and self-published book, Unwrapping the Body (1977), which was made in response to the death of Paul’s infant daughter, Imogen. Swathed in a baby’s muslin wrap, it is an annotated etymological inventory of words connected to the human body. Bodies are ubiquitous, but they are also singular, and it is clear that what is represented here is something particular, private and irreplaceable.
Related
Notes
Care Package (Part 3)
And so now that you've heard the story of the mystery black box that turned up on our doorstep, and the big blow-up bunny inside it, and the fact Jim Barr and Mary Barr have given it to the Gallery to put some bounce in our eventual re-opening celebrations, it's time something else got mentioned.