Visual Desperation: Lecture by Lavinia Greenlaw
We make visual sense of things through a series of impositions, constraints and arrests. What we are able to see depends upon what we've seen before and so we can only describe the unknown in terms of the familiar. How then does someone working with the image, an artist or poet, disable these limitations so that we experience renewed vision? How do they exploit, complicate, reinvigorate and subvert the act of seeing? How does metaphor enable us to see more clearly?
Lavinia Greenlaw will explore these questions, reaching past them to the extremes of wonder, dazzle and glare. She will draw on art and poetry from the time of the arrival of the microscope and telescope in Northern Europe while also touching on Mary Shelley passing through the Alps, Turner's snowstorm, Wallace Stevens's snowman, Emily Dickinson's brain, battleship camouflage, James Elkins's concept of visual desperation, Primo Levi on white paint and Laure Prouvost on red, and Alma Thomas's eclipse.
Artwork explored
- Purchases for Rudolf II, 1579
- J. M. W. Turner, Among the Snow, 1844
- Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Nativity at Night, c. 1490
- Philip Koninck, A View Over Flat Country, 17th century
- Laure Prouvost, A Splash of Red Paint in Your Face, undated
- Alma Thomas, Arboretum Presents White Dogwood, 1972
- Alma Thomas, The Eclipse, 1970
- Still from Duncan Jones, Moon, 2009
Lavinia Greenlaw's most recent books are The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further and the poetry collection, The Built Moment, which includes the sequence about her father's dementia - the basis for her short film, The Sea is an Edge and an Ending. She studied 17th-century Netherlandish Art at the Courtauld Institute, and has received fellowships from NESTA and Wellcome among others. She was the first artist in residence at London's Science Museum, the setting for her novel, In the City of Love's Sleep. Her immersive sound work, Audio Obscura, won the Ted Hughes Award. She is an Emeritus Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber.
Further Information
This event is fully accessible, with lift access to Gallery 3, where it will take place. Please note that Gallery 2, located in the basement, is not wheelchair accessible due to the building's historic nature. Kindly inform us of any specific requirements when making your booking so that we may assist you.
Light refreshments will be served.
Any queries, please email: laurie@glenn-brown.co.uk