The Soft Centre of Bone

Jill Tegan Doherty

The Soft Centre of Bone

The Soft Centre of Bone

Jill Tegan Doherty

Jill Tegan

Doherty

The Soft Centre of Bone

2017–2020

Foreword

I perch, stagnant, Awaiting a sensation. The birds’ shrieks Echo a catfight, One day I hope to hear My own voice As it is, or should be.

Many More Figs I Couldn’t Quite Make Out.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant

Estelle Hoy | Art Critic

Jill Tegan Doherty, extract from ‘Awaiting a Sensation’.

losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Sylvia Plath, ‘The Bell Jar’.

I think we imagine various instances in our life, and despite fear and distance, and how little we know of ourselves and others, imagining into the void tempers the nerves—a plasticised sensation where we dare to be powerful. Jill Tegan Doherty needed a plan to shape the pulsating mess, the plural catastrophes of life, into something worthwhile. In Doherty’s alkaline and oil hands, figs are turned over as she burns the calamitous idea that experiences and realities are fixed, splintering the illusion that there’s but one seen reality, but one psychosphere that can sustain us. Under what circumstances are realities “true”? It’s pointless to lie about the unconscious, to attempt to secure one version of reality that’s a recitation, posturing itself in a way that’s inclusive to all of our selves— or so I suspect. From a forest deep in Berlin, surrounded by woodland creatures and the shifting columns of nature, Doherty phones in with dreamy, saturated pollinations from a yo-yo-ing unconscious. Her work is a sequence of pictures, transcendental ideas, and surreal mirages that gently swarm the Real with symphonic jellyfish, butterfly kisses, terrestrial snail polymers, roaring lions, swans in genuflection, multiplying realities like the loaves and fishes. She brings the unconscious–the ugly duckling of reality–out from the shadows for its

moment of insurrection and vindication. And it’s exquisitely beautiful.

A nocturnal artist thriving under eleventh hours and candlelight burned to the quick, she throws herself physically, spiritually, and psychologically at her work, pouring herself into every stroke of paint, every etching, every poised layer. Works where paralytic sleeps and light-soaked auras are of equal importance, psychedelic variations of reality many of us are too afraid to really see. Cathected images are brought back by a reconstructed reality washed through aquariums, aqueducts, mists, bell jars, nothingness, and Doherty’s own lofty version of possibilities from the crotch of a fig tree. Dishonouring Plath, she spreads her wings of autumn leaves before the hour of dusk, levitating like a wise woman-mad, halfway around truth, unenrolling herself from a didactic psychoanalysis (as we know it to be), reversing the hegemony embedded in every analytic couch. The truest story of her life.

Flagrantly disobeying reality is an ascending movement erasing the exquisite voices of suffering, the luxurious ambivalence, the deathly, neurotic regrets that once held us back, or held us hostage, or held us to nothing at all. Beginning a new version of reality unconditionally commits itself to exhausting the erotic power of cohesion and her false beliefs. Maybe partially. “Who am I?” asks Doherty, or more importantly, “Who are we?”, trusting the viewer to burrow into the depths of their existential repertoire. A solitary pursuit with collective repercussions. Iterations of creatures, mismatched bodies,

animal heads, lions, elephants, donkeys in erect or folded bodies, colours bleeding, hazy mantles in spatial displacement: species relocated from their expected habitat, worlds sans doors or windows, searching–perhaps–for moments of escape. Somewhat concealed, Doherty moves in three-four time with a basket of black figs in her arms, waltzing her identity through her dreamy primary passion: possibilities. Not escapism so much as iterations of realities that have the ability to persevere into alternative futures. And pasts. Transcendent images glow beyond everywhere in watery bioluminescence; she grows reality by making herself protagonist of a million first sentences. She has, it would seem, a reluctance, distaste even, for stories that are too fixed. These artworks tell the story of Doherty’s pull towards a psychological meta-world that has no discernible plot, like late July birdsong, automatic writing, or Chinese Whispers. More accurately: a pull toward multiple plots.

Paintings of ghostly apparitions, alternative kingdoms, at once tender and excruciatingly haunting, dancing to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in mystical flux, revealing a million psychological variations of an artist completely in control– dà aria of a woman that is undoubtedly, disturbingly, in open command of her variations of reality. She backchats to Plath with images that trust in autumnal spectors of a past unseen, timing her own ghostly phantoms with the dreamy fantasies of the hereafter. She never presupposes herself. Fall has a strong trust in the summer that came before; summer’s she’ll never actually see but imagines them to exist. All those months of waiting to show

up when she’s expected, never crossing paths with the flows and draughts of every moody season. She accepts that this is the way it is. The only thread through the quartet of seasons is the preservation of perception, pleasant or unpleasant. As you wish. What the autumn months of Doherty are saying is, “You have to make your own past, expand every chronicle, plant your own narcotic dreams, cast your own taxidermy, invent your own platinum skies. Your life depends on it.”

Sure, Doherty takes inspiration from the icy plumages of the wild swan, pheasants with bespoke millinery, otherworldly squid, the magical figs of late Italian summers, but her work continues with erudite departures that are pleasant and unpleasant both. Doherty, in deep self-effacement, draws the audience into a magical world of underwater voices—lost and found. “I am real, I am not real?” Doherty asks, but rhetorically. She is both simultaneously; we are both simultaneously. A staggering psychological rift where we raise seashells to our ear, listening for the homiletic whispers of a reality told by shoreless, displaced, spiralled shells—an impoverished position, a narration of exquisite yielding, dislocamento, echoes, departures, screams and voicelessness. But then again, she summons back the windy, cyclomatic spirit of Plath before the shape of death, fashions a bugle from the shell, breathes out the call of wild impatience, desecrated perspectives, self-admiration, and divisive imagination. Iterations of humans, vacant-eyed does and transparent jellyfish, esoteric depictions of metamorphosis, indiscernible from eternal beginnings and departures, endless navel-gazing, star-gazing, infinite possibilities.

This parallel reality of indiscernible insecurities, panic, and transformation, where nature looks for places to crawl in, is a personal unconscious that tests our social unconscious. A rhetorical shift that tests our ability to remain sane in a rapidly changing and degrading world. If our individual and collective conscious manages somehow to continue functioning, what has happened to our unconscious? Doherty’s stunning apparitions inadvertently take us on a journey through the collective psyche: from the neurotic ticks of modernity, the schizoid-delusions of late capitalism, to the generalised severed solidarity of a reality seized. And what remains, perhaps, of our individual and collective ability is the potential to act politically and imagine an existence dedicated to collective freedom. Together and apart, we’re asked to pick up figs of purple, green, black, titanium white, and colours that we can’t quite make out and choose them all at once, at any cost. At the end of a Swedish pier under winter’s demi-moon, axe in hand, she cracks through the ice of every self, gorging herself on figs while starving herself.

These exquisite paintings pull us in every direction, Other selves, alternative narratives, parallel consciousness, eternal platinum never-never lands she speaks into existence. Doherty’s work knows no time; it has no before-and-after, it does not have a stagnant history of its own. Yet, it is always the same. As it emerges in the life of the viewer, a third unconscious opens up, and then a fourth and fifth, birthing frontiers and liberation simultaneously.

Hungry Lungs

2019–2020

Jill Tegan Doherty

Edited | Estelle Hoy

Change is life’s inevitable companion; devoted to one another - a symbiosis. Shifts can take place rapidly, monumentally or cursory, propelling nature into a continual state of adaptation; an ineffable metamorphosis. What may first appear as misfortune transmutes and divides, compelling one to change position, to grow, to acquire: to evolve. Change triples its image, urging us to capitalise on an opportunity to learn, both subjectively and on a broader political scale.

Change destabilizes, provokes, heightens our fears and anxieties as our animal passions flare up in fight or flight. Incubating on a phenomenology of panic we seek escape from the psychic torture of realities we find intolerable; libidinal energy shifts to resist rupture and manage the unbearable. The same ideological gloss is seen in its inversion: sudden change releases us, severing our attachment to the Imaginary. Stagnation is agitated and we embrace its vertigo in dialectical prefiguration.

Hungry Lungs speaks to the unforeseen, a staggering rhetorical shift that generates a primitive craving for the familiar. A cathexis towards the before. The work confronts us, provokes us with eyes of examination whilst simultaneously offering a departure from the every day.  We’re invited to explore new environments, exuberantly budding, diving head first into a change that births us into existence.

Deaf Mute | 2019 Oil on canvas 160cm x 140cm

As We Disappear | 2019 Oil on canvas 160cm x 130cm

The Soft Centre of Bone | 2019 Oil on canvas 140cm x 140cm

Jellyfish II | 2019 Oil on board 70cm x 70cm

Above Jellyfish I | 2019

Oil on board 50cm x 50cm

Left Jellyfish III | 2019 Oil on board 50cm x 30cm

The Moon Is His Strobe | 2019 Etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper Plate 49cm x 49cm | Paper 76cm x 53cm Edition of 5

Hungry Lungs | 2019 Etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper Plate 49cm x 49cm | Paper 76cm x 53cm Edition of 5

Hungry

Chinese Whispers | 2019 Etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper Plate 33cm x 39.5cm | Paper 68cm x 54cm Edition of 5

An Ongoing Grey in the December Sky | 2019 Etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper Plate 33cm x 39.5cm | Paper 68cm x 54cm Edition of 5

Muddied Lawns | 2019 Etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper Plate 33cm x 39.5cm | Paper 68cm x 54cm Edition of 5

The Forest as an Alternate Kingdom

Jill Tegan Doherty

Edited | Laura Haaber Ihle

The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom reflects a search for refuge from the pervasiveness and obligations of the digital and social realm. I accepted a residency on the rural island of Fyn in Denmark in September 2017, where I had the possibility to live and make work for a month without electricity or internet. I enjoyed a simpler existence, eating fruits and vegetables that were grown in the garden and spending evenings by the fire with only candles for light. It emphasized for me a need for separation from the duty of the social realm, both in its digital form, as well as in real life. I wanted to immerse myself in nature, in the forest, which I saw as the antithesis to the cultural sphere of the city.

This series of paintings started out as an attempt to portray that space, an almost mythological understanding of nature as a place uncultivated by human hands. I imagined the works as expressing the need for sanctuary in a displaced state of being and as reflecting a need to maintain basic physical connections, both between humans as well as between human and nature.

In the finished paintings, however, this initial train of thought and its manifestations does not appear so present. In its place is a scenario that looks and feels highly artificial and constructed. Sickly pastel tones, vast black voids and bizarre multi-coloured abstract shapes offer transportation into an alternate realm, where auras are visible and perspective and light appear to follow other rules. The blur between two and three-dimensional objects within the paintings reveals an unknown world and sense of insecurity. The peculiarity of the

creatures is suggestive of a kind of chaos and disarray; the fact that this fictitious forest is inhabited by animals that normally do not belong there gives the impression of an underlying fear, of what was thought stable and solid beginning to unravel and dissolve. The portrayed bodies resemble manikins, action figures, toys with unnatural and awkward poses. There is a fakeness to them, as if they are floating in a parallel virtual landscape. Nature is present, but not as the contrast to the cultural and populated world, instead the natural elements that can be found in the paintings are mainly the result of human interaction with nature.

Therefore, and contrary to my first intention, this series of paintings is not the natural alternative to an aggressively pervading social reality. Instead it evokes the association of a further fake realm, difficult to break away from. The desperation to nevertheless attempt that escape seeps through these works. Rather than having a tranquil effect, that an escape to nature would produce, the works are unnerving, as they seem to suck the viewer into yet another artificial and highly constructed reality from which the way out is not easily discernible.

The Forest as an Alternate Kingdom | 2018 Oil on canvas 135cm x 135cm

Ugly Duckling | 2018 Oil on canvaws 120cm x 120cm

The Dominant Eye | 2018 Oil on canvas

110cm x 135cm

The Forest as an Alternate Kingdom

The Shape of Death 2017

Jill Tegan Doherty

Edited | Laura Haaber Ihle

The Shape of Death is a series of work delving into the ambiguity surrounding death, questioning the overlap between the corporeal and ethereal states and confronting our diverse and contrasting attitudes towards death, both with regard to humans as well as other forms of life. The exhibition forms a stasis, where the infliction of death is juxtaposed with the preservation of being. It encapsulates a sense of confusion and fear, balanced out against a more peaceful interpretation.

Death is an inevitable fact of life and is perceived in a myriad of ways. It can invite religious rituals or allow for intricate scientific study of the body; it can be seen as opening up portals to other realms or merely as an end to life. Death continues to remain an issue of taboo within our society. How do people deal with the loss of loved ones and the forecoming of their own death? The Shape of Death applies a sense of physicality and substance to an asomatous state, examining how the concept of death can shape our mentality.

Through the study of conservation and preservation of once living beings we can attempt to distinguish the entity of death itself. Whether it is through religious or scientific avenues, death can become an object for study or a catalyst for worship. There can be a stillness, tranquillity and sense of calm embodied within death, a beauty encapsulated within the shapes that it leaves behind. After death the only thing that remains tangible is the shape of the body, a now empty shell, the shape of the mind and spirit become harder to trace.

The series reflects the fact that we are presented with death in our everyday lives, most often in connection with animals.

Milk | 2017

Oil on canvas

165cm x 135cm

One way that contemporary societies manage to face this is by turning subjects into objects for consumption, where the reference to the life of the subject has been removed, both from reality as well as from our consciousness. It is possible that this constant, yet detached, exchange with death furthers a certain perspective, which spills into other realms of life.

The paintings in this series confront these questions, exploring the role of context for perception, addressing the shapes and emotional connotations that death entails in a contemporary setting. This work is a culmination of questions about what it means to be alive, what it means to be immersed in the world and how the binary of destruction and order that life and death entails can be interpreted artistically.

The Wrong Side of the Rainbow | 2017 Oil on canvas 165cm x 135cm

In the Minds Eye | 2017 Oil on canvas 135cm x 120cm

Pop Goes the Weasel | 2017

Oil on canvas 120cm x 150cm

Bubble

Oil on board 70cm x 70cm

Above

The Shape of Death Series, Elephant | 2017 Graphite on cartridge paper 14.5cm x 14.5cm

Top left

The Shape of Death Series, Bird | 2017 Graphite on cartridge paper 14.5cm x 14.5cm

Bottom left

The Shape of Death Series, Dog II | 2017 Graphite on cartridge paper 14.5cm x 14.5cm

The Shape of Death Series, Dog I | 2017 Graphite on cartridge paper 14.5cm x 14.5cm

Dog | 2017

Oil on canvas

101cm x 104cm

The Wolves Step Out to Play

2017–2019 [works on paper]

Jill Tegan Doherty

The technique and ideas behind Automatism play an integral role within my work and the surrealist movement. I believe that we are able to access an infinite amount of inherited human experience at any given point within ourselves. Being in touch with the unconscious transcends these narratives into our known reality, it is an attempt to access the unconscious with the possibility of creating a new conscious. Surrealism stands strongly for the idea of freedom, it is the profound and intense living of the now, the sensitivity of listening deeply.

For these works on paper printing ink is applied onto newsprint with a small roller, creating marks at random, free of conscious thought. Observing the formations, my attention is drawn towards patterns and creatures that emerge from the marks. I then use fine brushes to manifest these insights. The hand acts as a guide, a vehicle revealing elements from the unconscious. Symbols arise acting as a catalyst for research, unveiling hidden meanings and posing as a tool for self-analysis. This work presents as a journey into buried memories and emotions, past and present.

The Wolves Step Out to Play | 2018 Printing ink on newsprint 21cm x 29.7cm

X-Rays of a Fractured Mind | 2018 Printing ink on newsprint 21cm x 29.7cm

Beasts and Kisses | 2018

Printing ink on cartridge paper

29.7cm x 42cm

About the Artist

Vita

BIOGRAPHY SOLO EXHIBITIONS

*1983

Born in Bristol | England, GB

1985

Moved to Nottingham | England, GB

2002–3

Art Foundation Course, Kingston School of Art | Kingston Upon Thames, GB

2003–6

Fine Art (BA HONS), Chelsea College of Art and Design | London, GB

2009–11

Co-founder and curator of the TO and FOR Gallery in London. Hosting exhibitions, artist talks and workshops. TO and FOR became a registered charity and ran for two years, with funding from the Cripple Gate foundation | London, GB

2011

Moved to Berlin, DE

2015

Etching course, with Peter Schulz Leonhardt, Werkstatt Kuenstlerische Lithographie | Berlin, DE

2020

Hungry Lungs

Gudberg Nerger Gallery | Hamburg, DE

2018

The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom

Gudberg Nerger Gallery | Hamburg, DE

Crystallisation of Thought

Asklepios Medical School | Hamburg, DE

2017

The Shape of Death

Gudberg Nerger Gallery | Hamburg, DE

2014

An Absence of Hares

The PPC Galerie | Berlin, DE

The Forgotten Few

Space Shuffle Projekt Raum | Berlin, DE

2013

Nothing Was Put in Place to Stop the Growth

Porcelaingres Galerie | Berlin, DE

2012 MeSH (D020188)

Holz Kohlen Koks Galerie | Berlin, DE

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021

October Edition

KIB Raum für Kunst, Arena | Berlin, Treptow, DE

2020 Salon No.3

Galerie Christine Knauber | Berlin, Schönenberg, DE

Fabelhaft

Ratskeller Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst | Berlin Lichtenberg, DE

Der Weg Allen Flweisches

Neurotitan Gallery | Berlin, Mitte, DE

2019

Ausstellung Tag der Druckkunst

Werkstatt Künstlerische Lithographie | Berlin, DE

2018

Playground

Insel Galerie | Berlin, Friedrichshain, DE

Das Tier

Galerie Christine Knauber | Berlin, Schöneberg, DE

Stockholm Art Week

The Enter Art Foundation, Epicentre | Stockholm, SE

2017 Synthesis

Gallery X | Kopenhagen, Rungsted, DK

Und#9

Verein UND Plattform Karlsruhe.e.V, Dragoner Kaserne | Karlsruhe, DE

Jill Tegan Doherty & Belarmino Varela De Barros

Taut Haus | Berlin, Britz, DE

2016

Naturell

Galerie ICON, curated by We Art Berlin | Berlin, Mitte, DE

In humane [Kunst] PROJEKTE, Monica Ruppert | Mannheim, DE

2015

We are all Human

Galerie Blond & Blond Contemporary | Berlin, Mitte, DE

Equinox

The Ballery | Berlin, Schönenberg, DE

Ornamental Stature

Dat Galerie | Berlin, Charlottenburg, DE

2013

Trace of Existence

The Cellar Gallerie | Berlin, Friedrichshain, DE

2011

Live Art Review

Liebig12 Galerie | Berlin, Friedrichshain, DE

The Persona Arts Festival

The Rag Factory | London, GB

Beasts Royal

The Last Tuesday Society, curated: Alice Herrick | London, GB

2010

Millennium

The Millennium Gallery, curated by The House of Fairy Tales | St.Ives, Cornwall, GB

2009

The Horn of Plenty

The last Tuesday Society, curated by The House of Fairytales | London, GB

Altermodernism

The Lloyd Gill Gallery | Weston-Super-Mare, GB

2008

Surreal September

The Art Works Gallery | Newcastle Upon Thames, GB

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition

Royal Academy | London, GB

Artist’s Statement

I’m interested in the ongoing mutations of the individual and social unconscious, that which we observe and inhabit. Presently it’s a historical threshold marked by technology, viruses, existential unrest, nature with human fingerprints, and ultimately the loss of our primal and biological connection to the earth. The ideology of humanity is dissolving, leaving behind a primeval quest for re-connection to something familiar, something raw, and real. Automatism plays an integral role within my practice. There’s a purpose to this process; however, no prior intention, elements from the subconscious transcend onto the paper or canvas, liberating what lies hidden.

I paint because I have to, it’s a part of me. It’s as if my work and unconscious reveal themselves in studied randomness. Upon reflection of a completed series, all the things laid buried and unaware to me are staring back, becoming corporeal images to critique. The unconscious divulges our deepest hurts and fears, our belief in symmetry and hope, as well as presenting and unearthing archetypal icons and symbolism, an integral part of being human. I find myself overwhelmed by beauty. I see it all around, in the smallest details, in the most obscure places, sounds, unexpected patterns that other people don’t seem to notice. My work unveils the tension of opposites, the inescapable duality of existence: love-hate, death-life, magnificent-grotesque, light-dark, but it’s also a pilgrimage into what lies between these polarities. When I look at my work at the end, I see, unexpectedly, the complexity of the human psyche, the internal screams of anguish, and the screams of piercing delicacy. And this is the space my art occupies. Jorge Luis Borges perfectly encapsulates: “Idealist doctrine has it that the verbs ‘to live’ and ‘to dream’ are at every point synonymous; for me, thousands upon thousands of appearances will pass into one”.

Biography

Jill Tegan Doherty is an artist from Nottingham, England. After completing her Art Foundation course at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston upon Thames, she went on to graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design, part of the London Institute. She now lives and works in Berlin.

After a successful period living in London, participating in numerous exhibitions, including The Royal Academy’s summer exhibition, the Mall Galleries as part of the Society of Women Artists annual exhibition, and the Millennium Gallery in St.Ives, curated by Alice Herrick. Doherty is now infiltrating the German art scene after moving to Berlin in 2011, partaking in exhibitions and art fairs throughout Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Munich. She has shown internationally in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Physical instability surfaces in Doherty’s work through an almost playful act, pronounced by fusing humans and animals in unexpected landscapes. Animals are used as metaphorical masks, uncovering personal and social undercurrents. Doherty grew up surrounded by her father’s collection of taxidermy and cabinets of curiosities and is greatly influenced by her hyperreal dreams, forcing questions about the layers of our perceived reality. Walking the line between fantasy, realism and abstraction, the metaphysical, ethereal, conscious and unconscious states of being, Doherty unites the field of nature with our human nature.

Effortlessly shifting between mediums and materials, primarily a painter, Doherty also moves into sculpture, installation, performance, drawing and etching. Her work acts as a mirror, encouraging us to look deeper inside ourselves and a catalyst for our imaginations to soar.

Imprint & Acknowledgements

Author

Foreword | Estelle Hoy

Hoy is a Critically acclaimed writer and art critic based in Berlin. Her award-winning book Pisti, 80 Rue de Belleville, was published in 2020 by After 8 Books (Paris, France) with an introduction by Chris Kraus She is currently working on a collaborative book and exhibition, ‘The Orange Grove’ with Camille Henrot Hoy regularly publishes in singular art magazines.

Editor for The Shape of Death

Laura Haarber Ihle | Ph.D | Associate researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University and at the AI Ethics Lab.

Editor Jill Tegan Doherty

Graphic Design

Jill Tegan Doherty

Poems

Jill Tegan Doherty | Extracts from The Anonymous Self , hand printed using Letterpress in 2022 at Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin.

Photo credits

Paintings | Trevor Good

Artist portrait | Karoline Noerbaek

Studio shots | Jill Tegan Doherty

Printer

Ausdruck | Schaare & Schaare GbR

Köpenicker Straße 154a, Aufgang D 10997 Berlin Germany

Published by Jill Tegan Doherty

Heidekampweg 23 12437 Berlin Germany

www.jilltegandoherty.com

© 2022 Jill Tegan Doherty

- A SINCERE THANK YOU TO -

Estelle Hoy, Katrin Hagen, Dirk Steinbock, André Künkel, Ausdruck and especially Ian Medina.

ISBN 978-3-00-072139-7