Jo Higgins

June 30, 2021

Writings

ABC Arts: Hilma af Klint - The Secret Paintings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Jo Higgins

June 30, 2021

Writings

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, 1907. Photo: Jenni Carter. Courtesy: Art Gallery of New South Wales.

This exhibition is equal parts dazzling and dizzying and and it really shakes something loose. I had the opportunity to unpack some of the wonder surrounding the life and work of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint in a story for ABC Arts last week. You can read it here.

Artist texts: Clare Thackway

Jo Higgins

November 23, 2018

Writings

Clare Thackway is interested in the ways we perform and move our bodies through spaces both literal and emotional.

Jo Higgins

September 30, 2018

Musings, Review

Frida Kahlo at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Jo Higgins

September 30, 2018

Musings, Review

Plaster corset, painted and decorated by Frida Kahlo, Museo Frida Kahlo. © Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Archives, Banco de México, Fiduciary of the Trust of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums.

I so, so loved seeing Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up at the V&A when I was in London earlier this month.

Despite finding the haunting soundtrack they bled into every room a bit emotionally manipulative, I felt that the exhibition - full of personal belongings and artefacts exhumed after 50 years from a locked room in her house, La Casa Azul, in Mexico City - powerfully cut through so much of the myth about her, absolutely anchoring her life and work and extraordinarily wonderful, powerful sartorial choices in her body.

The plaster casts and steel braces; her prosthetic leg; her many medicines and the details of her pain – so much pain – brought a real clarity and urgency to her work. To create such visceral, clear-sighted, provocative works despite and because of her pain, I’m just in awe really of her intense female energy. To have her passion and anger and vision, when so many others would have foregone their politics and aesthetic agendas for painful solitude and defeat, I was profoundly moved actually. And I also really, really loved – thinking about her jewellery – how she used it to do and say so many things – about herself and about Mexico. Jewellery really can be this extraordinarily powerful, subtle tool for communication if you wear it right…

There’s so much more to say about Kahlo, her work, the exhibition, the god awful, tasteless shit they were selling in the giftshop (I can’t imagine how the socialist Kahlo would have felt about £45 floral headbands being sold in her name…) but really, for me - it was about that visceral, tangible connection to her pain and her clarity of purpose.

Elizabeth Willing profile for Art Collector magazine

Jo Higgins

September 7, 2018

Writings

I had the total pleasure of writing about Elizabeth Willing’s work a few months ago for the latest issue of Art Collector magazine. I wasn’t familiar with her work before the commission so it was a wonderful opportunity to engage with her practice, which is so intelligent and witty and nuanced. I say it all the time, but getting to talk to an artist about their work and to unpick what drives them to make is one of my greatest pleasures. And Liz is so beautifully articulate and thoughtful.

You can read the profile here.

Elizabeth Willing, Pacify, 2018. Laboratory glass with etching and hole, 8 x 8 x 6.5 cm Numbered series, sold in pairs. Image courtesy: Tolarno Galleries. — Elizabeth Willing, *Pacify*, 2018. Laboratory glass with etching and hole, 8 x 8 x 6.5 cm
Numbered series, sold in pairs. Image courtesy: Tolarno Galleries.

Louise Paramor profile for Art Collector magazine, issue 78

Jo Higgins

January 19, 2017

Writings

I had the opportunity to interview Louise Paramor for the latest issue of Art Collector magazine. I really loved exploring her work and so appreciated the chance to write about it.

You can read the profile here.

ABC Arts: Hilma af Klint - The Secret Paintings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

OTHER POSTS

Artist texts: Clare Thackway

Frida Kahlo at the Victoria & Albert Museum

OTHER POSTS

Elizabeth Willing profile for Art Collector magazine

OTHER POSTS

Louise Paramor profile for Art Collector magazine, issue 78

OTHER POSTS