By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted March 1, 2018)
British
artist Lizzie Thurman created a whole ‘tribe’ of talking heads back home in her
Shropshire studio in the UK.
“I’d been
inspired by the shrunken heads of Borneo that I’d seen during a trip I’d taken
with my students to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford,” the artist told Business
Daily at the opening of her first international solo exhibition at One Off
Gallery last Saturday, 24th February.
Titling her
show ‘A conversation – not quite as it appears’, one has to wonder who’s
conversing with whom. Certainly her colorful papier mache heads could
conceivably be in a disembodied conversation, given how vibrant are the hues
that Lizzie has used to give each one a quality of life that’s quite uncanny.
In fact, Lizzie’s
clearly got a personal attachment to each one of her ‘trophy’ heads. She’s even
given every one a name of its own. There’s Gabriele (who’s beautified with
rhinestones, beaded earrings and gold leaf), Luiz Cruz (who’s mainly coated in blue-black
acrylic with the rhinestones and beads in his eyes), Leonard Manly (who’s got
full-lopsided lips and somber eyes that are striking for their redness set
against shades of green and blue-black skin tones) and Glorious Searle (whose
flaming red scull and face contrast with his sunshine yellow lips and ears).
Lizzie has
even taken her heads on a cross-continental tour. They exhibited first in
London where one of Carol Lees’ friends saw them and suggested they come to
Kenya for a show at One Off. “A few
other friends counseled against that idea,” she says. Perhaps they thought her
heads might offend Africans since their features are decided sub-Saharan.
Yet in
reality, the tradition of headhunting and keeping skulls and heads as trophies
isn’t only a practice that took place in parts of West Africa and Borneo.
Archeologists tell us it happened all over Europe, the Americas and even in
Asia. So it’s just as well that Lizzie didn’t fear that folks in Kenya would be
super-sensitive about the resemblance that her heads have with people having
full lips and flat noses.
What’s more
important is the process by which she created her heads. She hasn’t always
worked with papier mache, but since she began teaching more than a decade ago,
she’s found that medium most functional, fun and easy to use. Especially when creating
three-dimensional shapes.
In her One
Off exhibition, Lizzie’s heads come in both 3D and 2D, with her monotype and
oils also having been given names like Elisabeth wife 2, Mariene, Thomas and
Cody Moon.
But even her pen and ink drawings have an elegant and powerfully
delineated message. It’s called beauty. And somehow it’s even more powerfully
pronounced in the drawings since one can’t be distracted by the ornamentation and
colorful elaboration and contrasting hues that command one’s attention, whether
you intended to look or not.
Considering
the impact of Lizzie’s ‘talking heads’ show, one can almost understand why (according
to Wikipedia) headhunting was a pervasive cultural practice in history all over
the world. And even now, there are records of skulls having been assembled in
Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Of course,
there no comparison between her heads, which are inspired works of art and
those of militant men (or even so-called medicine men) who collected heads for
war trophies or rituals’ sake.
But what
Lizzie has achieved with her heads is to remind us that beauty comes in all
shapes and colors and lines.
Whether she
learned that lesson while visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford or at
Central Saint Martin’s Art School or in Africa where she’s spent time both in
Egypt and Kenya, who can tell. But from the way she shamelessly assembles colors
that ‘clash’ and contrast, one can easily appreciate how Lizzie also worked for
years as a stylist with high-fashion magazines like Vogue, Tatler and Elle.
Her
exhibition will be up until 3rd April and she’ll be giving art talks
around the region between now and then. But if you can’t meet her in person,
her heads will be around till then and they are well worth seeing and hearing what
they have to say.
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