The exhibition of Francesca Woodman's work at The Miro gallery was simply laid out in the tiny gallery space - just a single room really, with a section off to the side. The images were small, square in format (mostly), and hung in grey frames with generous white borders. As one of my fellow OCA students observed, the size, frames, and mounts seemed to 'contain' the work.
Thinking about this comment later I find it to be very true. Woodman's images are complex and surreal; juxtapositions between objects and the subject - namely Woodman herself, posed mostly naked or sometimes wearing shoes or single items of clothing, can be difficult to read. They are bursting with richly complex meanings and suggestions of intent. I feel the choice and size of hanging seemed to shut that down to some extent. I'm not saying the images should be huge but printing the photographs larger would have helped me to navigate the visual complexity to be found in her work. With that said the gallery space is small so the choice of small images is probably wise to avoid a feeling of overcrowding.
It is clear from the images (mostly taken in an abandoned house) that Woodman is working through her artistic process. Woodman is playing with materials, objects, poses, using her own body to ask questions about herself and the wider world. I find the images fascinating in this respect and can relate this process to myself and the way in which I approach making work. I only wish I was as daring as this young woman and could unburden myself of many of my own hangups around my body that come with age and maturity.
The theme chosen for the exhibition was the compositional use of the zig-zag. I found this idea to be somewhat annoying to be honest. I have always approached Woodman's images from the viewpoint of content and meaning - tried to decode the images. 'Why has she placed herself naked in a glass display case with stuffed animals?' 'Why peel the paper from the walls of an abandoned house and try to position herself between the torn sheets and wall?' 'Why the strange blurring of hands and head at times?' Some of my favourite Woodman images were absent from the exhibition as these did not fit the zig-zag theme. The concept is different, I suppose, and as someone else pointed out it does help to lighten the mood of the exhibition and unburden the viewer of the baggage that one brings to reading a Woodman image. It is hard to distance oneself from the knowledge that Woodman committed suicide at 22 and look for a troubled mind in the darker elements of her work.
There is a kind of formal, Modernist element to Woodman's work. The square format (making all four edges of the frame equally powerful) reinforces the compositional and aesthetic aspects. Woodman is very adept with these skills. But looking at the exhibition from a curatorial point of view, should her intrinsic ability to make work in this way be foregrounded? It seems to me that side of Woodman is a background skill - albeit one used with strong effect to convey her intent. The content and meaning of Woodman's work speaks to me much more strongly than her compositional skills or dalliance with the zig-zag - one that might have lasted no more than for a small series of images (when flipping through a book of her work the zig-zag as a recurring motif does not particularly stand out from any other compositional element). Using the zig-zag motif seems to me to trivialise her images. Although to be fair, in the side gallery is a larger image, constructed of multiple photographs, in a linear format. Woodman's comments can be read and it is clear that she is trying to use the form of the zig-zag to match the images together. My concern is was this just a small part of her artistic process; one that has been blown up and taken to an extreme to try and encompass more of her images than is necessary? Unfortunately Woodman is not around to confirm or deny.
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