Contemporary art in context, Review of Ellen Gallaher, contemporary black American artist.

Ellen Gallaher is a black American artist who originally comes from the north east of the United States, in New England.  She creates imagary of an alternate black history, by reclaiming and renewing, both politically and historically the vision of the black populations roots from around the world.

Ellen Gallagher, Oh Susanna, 1993, Collection of Joan & Michel Salke © Ellen Gallagher, Courtesy of the artist and Diego Cortez Arte Ltd, New York
(retrieved from http://www.hausderkunst.de/en/agenda/detail/ellen-gallagher-axme-b237f2a6c7/ 23-03-2015)

The early work she created was focused upon disembodied eyes and mouths, and more lately she has used hairpieces, which suggest from the old days of the black-and-white minstrel's, which in reality were white people blacked up with make-up paint and lampooning generally the black population.  The hairpieces signify the classic stereotype of the Afro, the 1960s and 70s hairstyle of the black African.  Ellen Gallaher does her work around this absurd play against the 1940 images of an alternative black American beauty, such as in the painting "deluxe" (2005) and other such works that Ellen has made her own art from.  (Image retrieved from Tate Modern; http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gallagher-deluxe-t12301 (Retrieved 23/03/2015).

Ultimately, her references seem to be heading towards "a new kind of world", a utopia and this is also a theme that Gallagher plays with throughout her artistic career.  She engages in the blackness of around body to rethink an idea of something new.  The rather awful imagery of the black-and-white minstrel shows, which tried to undermine black Americans, is therefore turned on its head and repositioned to be ridiculed for what it is.



In the painting "bird in the hand" (2006), this is a picture of rebirth, a re-association through the world, the question may be from where-the sea, perhaps?  With a little further analysis, this is correct.  It is in fact taken from the reference of Herman Melville's book 'Moby Dick'.  Within this picture can be seen reference of the whites sea captain, known as Capt. Ahab who, having had his leg bitten off by the great white whale known as Moby Dick.  Herman Melville set the book off the shore of Cape Cod in the north-east of the United States, just north of Boston and south of Newfoundland.  This is been a very traditional seafaring coastline since its discovery by the white settlers.  Further south east, towards the west african coast, lies the Cape Verde Islands, which were also mentioned and written about in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, were also used as a staging post later by the slave trade.  Ellen Gallaher was born in Providence, Rhode Island, which is in this area, her black father was born on Cape Verde Islands and she is of an Irish mother, which makes Ellen true descendant as an immigrant of this area.

Watery Ecstatic, Gallaher, E (2005)

Ellen Gallaher's educational history actually started in Marine biology, where she originally focused upon the study of pterapods.  Her father also had an interest in the fishing industry around New England, and so Gallaher's interest has been highly influenced by all things maritime.


An interesting link to Gallaher and Sigmund Frued can be found at the Frued Museum; http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/10539/ichthyosaurus/ (Retrieved 23/03/2015)
and an extract below explains her position;

Ellen Gallagher finds an affinity with Freud’s early fascination for oceanography and his surprisingly accomplished drawing skills. As a student Gallagher spent a semester aboard an oceanographic research vessel. There she began researching the migratory patterns of pteropods, collecting and documenting the specimens under a microscope. “My project was studying pteropods – wing footed snails. I chose this subject after a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute gave me a side talk about pteropods and it appeared to me that they looked just like butterflies, it somehow never occurred to me that they were microscopic. In reality it meant that I was on a sailboat catching these tiny things every three hours during the night and then studying them under a microscope and drawing them.

Since 2001, Gallagher has been making a series of drawings entitled ‘Watery Ecstatic’. Carving directly into the think pulpy watercolour stock, Gallagher creates a floating world, which she relates to the mythical Drexciya, an undersea world made up of those who were lost by suicide, murder, or slow death, along the perilous Middle Passage. For Gallagher, the Middle Passage is resonant as an origin myth – where language and imagery and music were reconfigured and recombined to create a mutable constant.

"Drexciya" is a word which takes its reference to the human lives that were lost and thrown into the sea during "the Middle passage" of the slave trade, and the bodies of those slaves who were unable to make the transition from Africa to America and died in transit.  Drexciya is a mythical world within a world under the ocean, a new utopia, and Aqua topia here if you like.

Watery Ecstatic, Gallaher, E (2005)

We are very lucky in the United Kingdom in that we can see Ellen Gallaher's work as her usual gallery of choice is the Hauser and Worth Gallery in London.  Much of Gallaher's work is created on a very large scale, and the piece "bird in the hand" (2006), I believe has been made almost life-size as a reference to Capt Ahab.

It has been estimated that a total of 6 million slaves were actually lost in the Middle Passage of the Atlantic.  Gallaher's reflection of the sea world of Drexciya is created in much of her images as a kind of honour to all these poor lost souls at sea.  Within her paintings, and in particular some of her beautiful draughtsmanship in the printed drawings of mystical sea creatures, in the style of painting that was not dissimilar to that which was used in the 1800s by various botanists and biologists who travelled to the new world, there is this underlying reference to Drexciya.  limpets and barnacles on ships are recast in a way that suggests that life has been reborn.


Ellen Gallaher's work is also referenced the Scrimshaw, which were detailed engravings made by this maritime seamen whaling community.  These engravings were usually made on whale bones and teeth, and Gallaher also refers together with new forms of sea creatures in her designs.  "Watery ecstatic" is a series of works that are based on drawings of aquatic life from the 19th century as mentioned briefly above, which again has this underlying reference to the same time in history of the awful slave trade that was going on above.

Morphia (recto/verso)
detail, 2008-2012 Courtesy the artist
 and Gagosian Gallery © Ellen Gallagher

In another of Gallaher's works "morphia" (2008 to 2012) there is one painting from the series, called recto-verso, which is a reference to another form of change of image, which possibly shows the face of the slave woman, half covered with an undescribable flesh like mask.  One of my peers suggested that it did not look too dissimilar to a recent book written by Sue Monk Kidd called the life of bees?

Overall, the way that Ellen Gallaher presents her art is particularly interesting, especially as she claims to be an animator, rather than an artist.  She is constantly referring to deep ocean, and this new world of Drexciya.  The paintings are a kind of form of abstraction of lifeforms from the deep sea, a recent example being "Osadex" (2011), which is actually named after a new form of deep sea worm, only discovered in 2010 off the coast of Monterey.  Interestingly, this deep sea worm is a consumer of the fallen whale flesh in deep sea ocean floor beds.  Whilst this may be in the Marianna's trench in the Pacific, there are distinct similarities of that trench to the great rift trench that runs down the centre of the Atlantic, another place where whales seem to go to die.  Again, this seems to be a reference to the underworld utopia of Drexciya.

Gallaher also seems to use the device of using an image which is similar to rocks are inkblot, and then turning that into a sea creature or seaweed with additional life forms swimming in between.

In conclusion, the themes seem to be centred upon lost knowledge or unknown knowledge together with rebirth as a metaphor.  She is creating works in order to derive multiple interpretations by the viewer, yet underlying them with the core theme of slavery, the Middle Passage, the bottom of the ocean and the mythical Black Atlantis utopia, known as Drexciya.