As although he has continually painted the same sitters and often returns to a particular location in London, every painting is considered to have its own merits, not being attached to a series or time period. Despite the critical acclaim, that in itself draws crowds to the Tate, curator Catherine Lampert was presented with the challenge of creating a showcase that reflected the uniqueness of each of Auerbach’s piece. This clear prestige is echoed in the opening exhibition blurb that described the work Auerbach produces as some of the ‘most resonant and inventive paintings of recent times’, reinforcing his position as an influential figure in the contemporary art world. Frank Auerbach, an artist whose depictions of people and landscapes near his London studio painted in a zealous style, has been compared to masters such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Tate Britain undertook the ambitious task of presenting a retrospective of work from arguably one of the greatest painters still alive today. Likewise, her radical feminists, symbolised by a typed list of female assassins, poisoners and thieves, prepare to construct a new ‘language’ to overthrow existing systems. Her collages, a compilation of magazine clippings with faceless females, cold-blooded familiars and automatic scribblings appear to reference the misrepresentation of women within patriarchal society. Conveyed in sign language or alphabetic codes, Fumai’s urgent message whips up a state of confusion. Here lie the props for her performance and the accoutrements of her immoral spirits flesh coloured gloves, a blindfold, the silky beard of Annie Jones, Dope Head’s shisha pipe and the ghostly attire of Zalumma Agra. Housed in vitrines, the artists’s colourless paraphernalia suggest the ghastly vibes of a funeral parlour. The Book of Evil Spirits, her latest installation comprises film, collage and found objects.
Inspired originally by the fake identities of the New Romantic Dance Movement, Italo Disco, Fumai delights in the personas of terrorists, activists, philosophers and freaks and from here, she assumes her feminist stance within the protection of her various guises. Palladino is a favourite of the performance artist Chiara Fumai whose enactments reveal a medley of eccentrics contrived by swapping the narratives of historic individuals and thereby making them her own. Although her psychic powers were genuine, Palladino’s séances were habitually based on trickery, thereby creating a parody of her gullible participants… Attracting prominent figures such as Tsar Nicholas II and Madame Curie, she preyed on their vulnerabilities with her eerie utterances and levitating tables. Originally an illiterate maid from a peasant background, the physic medium, Eusapia Palladino attained a status unimaginable to 19th century society.
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