MARCELLE
HANSELAAR
ALEPH CONTEMPORARY
MARCELLE HANSELAAR
TRANSFIGURED ARCHETYPES The Strange Becomings of Marcelle Hanselaar Curated by Kamini Vellodi
Exhibition: 9 February - 23 March 2022
Aleph Contemporary at The In & Out, 4 St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4JU
1
TRANSFIGURED ARCHETYPES: The Strange Becomings of Marcelle Hanselaar ‘We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day.’1 In the darkly wondrous worlds of Marcelle Hanselaar, the drama of human existence - with its pathos and absurdity, its terrors and passions - is staged with an intensity and fringed with a mystery that propels it towards the sphere of the mythic. Primal dimensions of the human condition - desire, mourning, fear, solitude, belief - are refracted through the dynamics between self and other, individual and socius, dream and the waking state. Beyond definite time or place, these suspended image realms conjure states of being that transcend cultures and epochs. The archaic – with its elements of the cultic, the prophetic, and the ritualistic – meets the theatre of the contemporary psyche. And throughout this fertile universe of symbols and archetypes, we are made aware of a pervasive and insistent exploration of the liminal states of the human subject, the thresholds at which man becomes other, the evershifting borderlines of the self. This exhibition brings together a group of works made between 2006 – 2021 that reveal Hanselaar’s journey as a penetrating investigator of the symbolic realm. Within this rich and expansive cosmos, a cluster of motifs - the colander, the canopy/palanquin, the jester, dogs, a woman with red hair – recur in ever renewed configurations, in ever-stranger kinships. There are no cosy interiors or pictorial landscapes here, and the signifiers by which we would firmly locate ourselves in the West are denied. That these indeterminate spaces and expanses of sea and desert could be anywhere in the world, and at different moments of history, testify to the nomadic lived experiences of the artist – who has spent much of her life in India, Japan and China. Hanselaar is truly a citizen of the world and her interrogation of human experience in infused with this expansive vision.
Becoming-animal and archetypes ‘What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes.’2
C. G. Jung, The Red Book, 1915-1930 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, London: Continuum, 2003, 238 1 2
2
The earliest works on show are two paintings from the Under my skin series. In Under my Skin 3, a naked adolescent woman sits facing a large standing wolf-like dog clothed in a diaphanous apron. Slightly reclined, her gaze absent, her palms curled inwards, she appears almost defensively exposed to this oddly statuesque creature, who stares at her hungrily, openmouthed, pink tongue agape. In Under my Skin 5, a more mature naked woman emerges, with an expression of curious impassivity, from what looks like the flayed skin of the same wolf-dog. This woman is the object of intent observation by a dwarfish man in a diaphanous garment whose indirect gaze seems to bore through her, as though attempting to seek, precisely, what may lie under her skin. Receding in the distance is a small naked woman with red hair, and a burning pyre. Other works in the series show a woman in various stages of late childhood/early adolescence, communing with the dog creature. Is this a dramatisation of female sexual development? Is the Wolf-dog a prefiguration of the dwarf man? A deeply ambivalent relationship between woman, dog and man bears perverse overtones in the implication of sexual relations between woman and dog. One can’t help thinking here of Sigmund Freud’s famous 1918 analysis of the ‘wolf-man’, a Russian aristocrat with an intense phobia of wolves. Freud had traced this phobia to a castration anxiety that had been expressed in the patient’s childhood dream of a group of wolves sitting in a tree. Understanding dreams as the disguised fulfilment of repressed infantile wishes, Freud interprets the wolf as an Oedipalized figure, the figure of the castrated father. The Under my Skin paintings might offer themselves to such a Freudian reading. But I would argue that in Hanselaar’s world, desire is not, as it was for Freud, expressed in terms of lack. Instead, it manifests as a force that transfigures and multiplies the forms through which we think we know and identify ourselves. As the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari argue, what is key about the Wolf-man’s dream, and which Freud misses, is that there are wolves – that the Wolf-man’s own ‘becoming-animal’ involves the apprehension of multiplicity’.3 Or as Hanselaar herself says, the fact that we are each ‘several parts at the same time’.4
3 4
Ibid., 239 In conversation with the author, 19th January 2022
3
These paintings are not so much investigations of the ‘I’ and its neuroses, but explorations of the fluxes that traverse and splinter identity. It is in this sense that the fascinating relation between human and animal running through her work can be grasped. Wolf-dog, woman and man are less separate and distinct beings, and more interchangeable personages stemming ‘from the same source’5, and which reveal the continuum of the primal and the ‘civilised’ within the human condition. The movement that makes human become animal (the dwarf man taking the place of the wolf) at the same time as making the animal become human (the wolf-dog that dons an apron and stands on two legs). What is so disturbing in her works is not simply the transgressive intimacy between human and animal, but that the relation of intimacy itself reveals the proximity, the affinity, the alliance, and even the indiscernibility of human and animal. This matrix of relations exposes the transience of supposedly fixed subject positions. In this sense, Hanselaar’s motifs might be called archetypes, in the sense to which Carl Jung gave this term - unconscious universal forms, primal symbols and images that derive from the collective unconscious. It is upon this basis of an elementary symbolism, a collective imagism that traverses the personal, that we can approach the important dynamic between individual and crowd in Hanselaar’s work.
Crowds and rituals ‘Symbols are rooted in reality, and even the most barbarous rites and strange rituals translate some human need.’6 This examination of the nature of the crowd is core to a triptych of paintings made between 2013-14. Whilst all marked by a sense of menace, the identity of these motley groups of figures from different times and places, is hard to determine. They are defined less by shared attributes than by the event in which they participate. In Procession, a hooded character that would not be out of place in a Pieter Brueghel painting, stands next to a boy with a baseball bat and sweatshirt. Both are members of a crowd that is hoisting a naked woman crouched within a transparent box. Is she being venerated or is she an object of sacrifice? In Ritual, a bride, bathed in a supernatural light, lifts her skirt to offer her sex for worship by the crowd gathered tightly around her. At once idol and captive, her condition expresses the fine line between
5
4
6
Ibid Emile Durkheim, The Elementary forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (NY, The Free Press), 1912
sacrifice and cultic veneration. In Who’s a Pretty Boy Then?, procession takes on an even darker tone. A shrouded corpse is being carried by a group of naked pall-bearers. But this action is no longer the centre of the composition - retreated to the background, it is disconnected from the crowd. Indeed, it is fascinating to realise that this crowd no longer has a clear function. They are not witnesses, they are not going anywhere, and their actions are disconnected from each other. Here, it is the indifference of the crowd to the scene of death that perturbs us. Barbarity has shifted from the hysteric veneration of a cultic figure to a disturbing degree of self-absorption. Is this an allegory of our contemporary condition? Hanselaar touches on a quality of the crowd that unsettles in its familiarity – the narcissistic subjugation of what does not belong or is no longer useful. In her attention to aspects of group behaviour that are as relevant today as they were in archaic societies, she prompts us to reflect on how collective beliefs emerge, and on the cyclical replaying of the follies and violences of human existence. Idol worship, the figures of the scapegoat and the ritual of sacrifice prefigure the modern cult of celebrity and its defilement of privacy, its dehumanisation, its spectacle and its tragic transience. This is a timely interrogation in the current age of tribalism, when group identification threatens to undermine our shared sense of humanity. Such elemental themes of ritual, the crowd, myth and belief return in the four magisterial paintings of Hanselaar’s series, At The Oracle in Limbo (2020 – 2021). Whilst the interrogation of power dynamics between individuals and groups remains, the carnal bestiality of earlier paintings has been replaced by a more esoteric, mysterious and sacred atmosphere. All four works centre on a veiled Sibyl - a divinely inspired seeress who pronounced oracles – who is surrounded by groups and supplicants within barren, lunar desert landscapes. In the first work, under a starry black sky, the supplicant sets down a flask before the Oracle and averts her face. In the second, a young girl dances before the Oracle, watched by a red-haired figure with a Noh mask. In the third, a dreadlocked supplicant drinks from a bowl, squatting alongside a monkey companion. In the last painting, a supplicant, ignoring warnings, sacrilegiously touches the veil of the oracle and attempts to lift it. Across the 4 works, the supplicant is never the same, suggesting, perhaps, the cycle of truth-seeking that eternally returns. Again, we are invited to
5
reflect on the topicality of such desire in our ‘post-truth’ age, where the critique of expertise and the entitlement to opinion masks the inaccessibility of truth under the illusion of attainment. Painted after the death of her sister in February 2019, and during an intense period of solitude and experience of ‘limbo’ during lockdown, these works – part of an extended series called ‘The North Sea’ series – are profound acts of query. Painting becomes the field through which questions of the absolute – death - can be attended to in the human imagination, where the unconscious can pose questions that exceed words, and which, indeed, exceed the plane of the personal. As Hanselaar says, ‘it is my question, but not me’7, that these paintings express. These works are extraordinary feats of draughtsmanship. Hanselaar’s mastery of the human form expresses the power and command of great predecessors from Velasquez to Millet to Picasso. They occupy the terrain of the erotic with the combination of mystery and directness reminiscent of Balthus (except that here, woman is not only objectified). They bear the psychological intensity of Dorothea Tanning or even Schiele, and capture something of the satirical power of interwar artists such as Otto Dix, and perhaps especially Max Beckman, an artist of particular importance for Hanselaar, in his ‘confrontation with the hidden side of human nature.’8 Hanselaar’s works have often been compared to another great master of the human form, Paula Rego. But whereas Rego’s works firmly occupy the space of storytelling, often based on preexisting stories, Hanselaar’s relation to narrative is far less overt. Yes, there are tales here, but they are not based on preexisting stories – there is no ‘translation’, and Hanselaar explains that her works grow organically, through the act of painting itself. Painting itself is the scene of mythopoesis. These scenes furthermore lack the domesticity and interiority of Rego’s. Even when painted in memory of a familial relationship, we never feel they are stories ‘about ’ the family; even when they pivot on ‘woman’ they are not ‘about’ woman.
Woman and the sea ‘The sea has no interior frontiers and is not divided into peoples and territories.It has one language, which is the same everywhere…. It is an image of stilled humanity; all life flows into it and it contains all life.’9
In conversation with the author, 19th January 2022 Ibid 9 Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, London: Phoenix, 2001, 81 7 8
6
The latter group of North Sea paintings conjure Hanselaar’s memories of her childhood with her sister on the seashore at Scheveningen in the Netherlands. Evocative of the intense inwardness and sobriety of certain works by Odilon Redon, Cumulus is perhaps the most clearly expressive of this loss. A red-haired girl, half submerged in a dreamlike watery expanse, her hands reminiscent of a Buddhist mudra, gazes pensively beyond us whilst behind her, figures (on stilts, in a boat) move away from her. The majority of the North Sea paintings depict a lone female figure – whose face we are never shown - near the edge of the sea, under a night sky, her silhouette made spectral by the intense light of the moon. Sometimes she is approaching the sea along a path (a path that Hanselaar and her sister would wander along as children), other times she stands at the sea’s edge, or in its shallows, or near to a little tower (close to where Hanselaar scattered her sister’s ashes). These are perhaps her most intense depictions of solitude, and bring to mind aspects of Northern European romanticism - the lone figure turned away from us, looking out at sublime limitlessness of nature (C.D Friedrich, Böcklin) – except that nature here is not a reminder of what is civilised in man, but the reservoir of the darker, primal forces in which man participates (and in this sense, they are perhaps closer to Norwegian painters such as Nikolai Astrup and Peder Balke). In their exquisite chiaroscuro and mystical atmosphere, these nocturnes could also be seen in a tradition extending from the 16th Baroque (painters such as Jacopo Tintoretto, Salvatore Rosa, Adam Elsheimer or Guido Reni, who used dark backgrounds to heighten spiritual intensity), to 19th century works by Whistler and Léon Spilliaert. Whilst marking a deeply personal journey of grief and mourning, these elegiac works are infused by a quality of the cosmic. Ghostly, ethereal, almost liquid, these women merge with their ever-shifting environment, conjuring the sense of cosmic immanence and interconnectivity, and of the sea as essential to this. Hanselaar has spoken of her apprehension, during this period, ‘of the sea as a beginning and end of some part of my life’10 and indeed, these works remind us of the sea as the archetype, across so many of the world religions, of the cycle of life and death, the source of all creation that is both the beginning and end of the cosmic cycle. This move from the examination of the human crowd to the sea has a poetic
Hanselaar, quoted in Laura Gascoigne, ‘North Sea’, North Sea. Marcella Hanselaar, exh. Cat. Arundel Contemporary 2021 10
7
logic – one which Elias Canetti captures in his magisterial 1960 book, Crowds and Power. He writes of the qualities of the sea to which the crowd aspires but can never attain: ‘In its impetus and its rage it brings to mind the one entity which shares these attributes in the same degree; that is , the crowd. But the sea has, in addition, the constancy which the crowd lacks. It is always there; it does not ooze away from time to time and disappear. To remain in existence is the greatest, though as yet fruitless, desire of the crowd; and this desire is seen fulfilled in the sea. The life with which it teems is as much part of it as its enduring openness. Its sublimity is enhanced by the thought of what it contains, the multitude of plants and animals hidden within it. The sea has no interior frontiers and is not divided into peoples and territories. It has one language, which is the same everywhere. There is thus no single human being who can be, as it were, excluded from it. It is too comprehensive to correspond exactly to any of the crowds we know, but it is an image of stilled humanity; all life flows into it and it contains all life.’11 In Hanselaar’s largest nocturne, Moonlight dancer, inspired by a postcard of Winslow Homer’s Summer Night (1890), the female figure is no longer searching or querying, no longer isolated, but is liberated, dancing as though possessed in an ecstatic trance. A transfigured archetype of a pagan nymph or primordial sea goddess, she elevates from the earth, from the past, fusing with the eternal night. Illumined both by the pervasive light of the moon and by a crimson halo that emanates from within, she dances wildly, as the spectral figures of her deceased family look out over the horizon. The final work in the series, Moonlight dancer marks the end of the quest, the turning away from memory and loss, and embrace of the living present as a borderless realm. In their profound imaginative lucidity, their humility and reverence in the face of the most primal forces of human nature, and their clarity of a vision which nevertheless remains always partly mysterious to us, Hanselaar’s paintings invite us to reflect on the liminal edges, intensive zones and turning points of human experience at which what is most intensely personal attains a quality of the universal.
Kamini Vellodi 11
8
Canetti, Crowds and Power, 81.
Marcelle Hanselaar in her studio
9
UNDER MY SKIN 5, 2006 Oil on canvas 110 x 130 cm
10
UNDER MY SKIN 3, 2006 Oil on canvas 90 x 120 cm
> WHO’S A PRETTY BOY THEN, 2014 Oil on canvas 108 x 82cm
11
PROCESSION, 2013 Oil on cavnvas 112 x 97cm
12
THE RITUAL, 2013 Oil on canvas 112 x 97cm
13
AT THE ORACLE OF LIMBO 1, 2019 Oil on canvas 120 x 100 cm
14
AT THE ORACLE OF LIMBO 2, 2019 Oil on canvas 120 x 100 cm
15
AT THE ORACLE OF LIMBO 3, 2019 Oil on canvas 130 x 110 cm
16
AT THE ORACLE OF LIMBO 4, 2019 Oil on canvas 130 x 110 cm
17
SIDE ARM, 2020 Oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm
18
NIGHT WANDERER, 2019 Oil on canvas 70 x 60 cm
19
CUMULUS, 2019 Oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm
20
THE LONG GOODBYE, 2020 Oil on canvas 91 x 71cm Overleaf MOONLIGHT DANCER, 2020 Oil on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm
21
22
23
Small paintings, 2021 Oil on canvas Le Retour Futile 20 x 20 cm (left to right) 2,3,4,9 Whirlpool 20 x 20 cm Night Eyes 18 x 12.5 cm
24
Black Path 3, 2020, Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm
25
Imprint, 2021 Oil on Canvas 55 x 40cm
26
MARCELLE HANSELAAR 1945 1962–64 2001
Born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands Lives and works in London Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, NL B-TEC Printmaking, Chelsea & Kensington College, London
AWARDS 2021 2014 2012 2011
2010 2006 2003
Jury award Novosibirsk Print Triennial 2021 Clifford Chance Purchase Award at the International Print Biennial 2014 Statutory Awards of MTG – Krakow International Print Triennial 2012, PL; Guangdong Museum Purchase Prize, Qijiang, CN Shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait prize and acquired by the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait collection Birgit Skjold Prize for Pillowbook of Endless Nights, acquired by V&A National Art Library Guangdong Museum Purchase Prize, Qijiang, CN Aberystwyth, University of Wales Purchase Prize, Originals ’06, London Presse Papier Award, Biennale Internationale d’estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, Quebec, CA
WORK IN COLLECTIONS British Museum Prints & Drawings Collection, London V&A Prints & Drawings Collection, London V&A National Art Library, London The Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Aberystwyth School of Art Print Collection, Wales Whitworth Museum & Art Gallery, Manchester Museum de Reede, Antwerp, Be Meermanno Museum, House of the Book, The Hague, NL Soho House, Amsterdam, NL AMC, Amsterdam, NL Amsterdam Arts Council, NL Clifford Chance Art Collection, London The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, London The Ned, London Soho Works, London Paintings in Hospitals, London Merrill Lynch Bank, London
Rabo Bank, London; New Hall, Cambridge Clare Hall, Cambridge Richard Harris Collection, USA Swarthmore College, USA University of Arizona, Tucson, USA Sakimi Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan Guandong Fine Art Museum, Qijiang, CN Iraq National Library, Baghdad, IQ
27
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2022 2021
2019 2018 2017 2016
2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010
2009 2008
2007 2006
2005
2004
28
Transfigured Architypes The Strange Becomings of Marcelle Hanselaar, Aleph Contemporary, London North Sea, De Queeste Art, Abele/ Watou, BE, Long is the Road, Arundel Contemporary, Arundel The Bark and The Bite, Museum de Reede, Antwerp, Be The Crying Game, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Il The Crying Game and other prints, 12 Star Gallery, London Dreamcatchers, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE, The Crying Game, 30 Prints and Book launch, Herrick Gallery, London Drawings/Tekeningen, de Queeste Art, Watou, BE, Drawing the line, Julian Page Fine Art, Clerkenwell, Gallery, London Cushioning the blow, prints by the CC prize winner, Clifford Chance HQ, London Wondrous world of an introvert, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE, Open Secrets, Millennium Gallery, St Ives Walking the line, Kings Place Gallery, London Auerbach & Hanselaar, graphic works, Quest 21, Brussel, BE Mama mama, the bear is loose, De Queeste, Abele/Watou, BE Mama mama, the bear is loose, Quest 21, Brussel, BE Biting the bullet, Millennium gallery, St.Ives Sticks & Stones, University Gallery and Baring Wing, Newcastle Sweet ’n’ Low, Viktor Wynd Fine Art inc. London Back to Basics, SNAP Gallery, Edmonton, CA The Weight of Smoke, Galerie de Buytensael, Arnhem, NL, The Weight of Smoke, East West Gallery, London, Down the Rabbithole, University of Aberystwyth, Gallery, Aberystwyth, Wales The Weight of Smoke, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE, The Weight of Smoke, University of Brussel Gallery, Brussel, BE La Petite Mort, Stephanie Burns Fine Art, Canberra, AU, Intimate Conversations, Artonomy Fine Art, Truro La Petite Mort, 19 etchings, East West Gallery, London, La Petite Mort, De Queeste Kunstkamers, Abele/Watou, BE Shouts & Whispers, Stephanie Burns Gallery, Canberra, AU, Silence is easy, De Queeste Kunstkamers, Abele/Watou, BE
2003 2001 1999 1996 1994 1988 1986 1983 1982
You said you loved me, RM Art, Essen, DE, Sometimes I dream about reality, East West Gallery, London Incomplete Tales, Erasmus Gallery, Rotterdam, NL, All of Me, East West Gallery, London Close to the Bone, New Hall, Cambridge, Burying the Hatchet, the Millinery Works, London Collyer Bristow Gallery, London Galerie Reisel, Rotterdam, NL Last Gallery, London Art Space Gallery, London Clare Hall, Cambridge Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar, NL
GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2022 The London Art Fair, Aleph Contemporary, London 2021 Fascinating Fears , School of Arts University of Kent; Prints and Fairy Tales,Austin Desmond Fine Art, London; Picture a Dog; School of Art Gallery & Museum Aberystwyth University, Wales; 1st Triennial of Contemporary Prints,La Boverie, Liège. BE; The III Novosibirsk International Triennial of Graphic Arts, by Nan Mulder, curator for Dutch artists, Novisibirsk State Art Museum, RU; Editions/Artists’ Books Fair 2021, with Julian Page; Woolwich Contemporary print Fair, with Julian Page , London 2020 Prix Renee Carcan, Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Bruxelles, BE; Beyond other Horizons, Contemporary British Painting in dialogue with Contemporary Romanian Artists, Iasi Palace of Culture, RO; The Desire of Looking, De Queeste Art, BE; Revisiting the Decameron, Flowers Gallery online; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page online, RA of Arts, Piccadilly, London; Summer Exhibition, RWA Bristol; Women’s Lockdown Art, Zabludowicz Collection, London; Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, with Julian Page online, London; Quench your Thirst, CAN, KW 2019 Mini Print Berlin, Galerie Heike Arndt, Berlin, DE; Works on Paper, Arundel Contemporary, Arundel: Körpergefühl, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE; Iconoclash, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; The Female Nude, University of Kent; In Edition, Bo Lee gallery, London; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; Fair For Saatchi, Saatchi gallery, London; Points of Contact, Austin Desmond Gallery, London 2018 London Art Fair, Jessica Carlise Gallery, London; As The Crow Flies, Bo Lee Gallery, London; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; In a Country far away, Deutsches Märchen- und Wesersagenmuseum, Bad Oeynhausen, DE 2017 Strange Worlds, The Vision of Angela Carter,
RWA, Bristol; London Art Fair, Jessica Carlisle, London; Int. Print Triennial Krakow, at Dalarnas Museum, Falun, SE; Curators Choice, Leeds College of Art, Leeds; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; Ruth Borchard Self Portraits Prize, Kings Place Gallery, London; Biennale Int. de Gravure, Trois-Rivières, CA; Women in War, The HUB gallery, Kuweit, KW; Manchester Cont. Art Fair, with Julian Page, Manchester 2016 Rene Carcan Int. Prize for Printmaking, Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Brussels, BE; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; KALEID 2016 Collection, KHiO Bibliotek, Oslo, NO; Offprint London, with Kaleid Editions, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London; The Ruth Borchard Collection: The Next Generation, Kings Place Gallery, London; SHUFFLE, Herrick Gallery, London; Derwent Art Prize, Mall Galleries, London and touring; Hardboiled Wonderland, Jessica Carlisle Gallery, London; Creative Fury, at Clerkenwell Gallery, London; Pick your Poison/Political Impressions, Davidson Gallery, Seattle, USA 2015 10th Biennale internationale des estampes contemporaine, Musee des Beaux Arts de Liege, BE; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, Harold F. Johnson Library Center, Hampshire College, USA; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; Facing History: Contemporary Portraiture, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Positions Berlin Art Fair, with Kupferdruck Galerie, Berlin, DE; Aditory, Bo Lee Gallery, London; Multiplied 2015, Christie’s SK, with Julian Page, London; Freedom from Torture, OXO Wharf, London 2014 Works on Paper Art Fair, Science Museum, London; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page; RA of Arts, London; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; Intrusions, Looking after Aikman, artists and the Uncanny, Printroom Highgate, London; From David Bomberg to Paula Rego, The London Group in Southampton, Southampton City Art Gallery; Why War?, Freud Museum, London; Through the Window, Kunsthauschen Heiligerberg, Zurich, CH; Vogels, Meermanno Museum, Den Haag, NL; London Artist Book Fair, Whitechapel Art gallery, London; Multiplied, with Julian Page, Christie’s SK, London; Herbstgruppen Ausstellung, 55 Limited, Kupferdruck & Galerie, Berlin, DE; Arts Libris, Book Fair, Barcelona, ES 2013 London Art Fair, With Millennium, London; The London Group Centenary Exhibition, Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, London and Mottisfont Abbey, Mottisfont; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; The Mythical and the Mundane, Siamse Tire, Tralee, Co Kerry, IE; 8e Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, Quebec, CA; Threadneedle Prize 2013, Mall Galleries, London; London Art Book Fair, with Kaleid editions, Whitechapel Galleries, London;
Multiplied, with Julian Page Fine Art, Christie’s SK, London; Helen Bamber Foundation at Deutsche Bank, London; Freedom from Torture, CARA, The Art of Resistance, Pentagram, London; Who is afraid of red, yellow & blue?, Flowers Gallery, London 2012 London Art Fair, with Millennium; Ruth Borchard Self Portrait new acquisitions, University Gallery, Newcastle and Kings Place, London; Self, nu ich?, Kunsthäuschen Herrliberg, Zurich, CH; London Original Print Fair with Julian Page, RA of Arts, London; The Bones of My Hand, Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London; 400 Women, CSM Suikerfabriek, Amsterdam, NL; 20 jaar beklijvende kunst, De Queeste Art, Watou, BE; 6th Biennal International De Gravura, Douro, PT; 6th Kyoto Hanga Print exhibition, Kyoto, and Kita Kusha Museum, JP; Print Triennial Krakow, PL; Multiplied, with Julian Page, Christie’s SK, London; International Graphic Triennial of Graphic Art, Bitola, MK; Party, Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London; Small is beautiful, Flowers Central, London; FIG Bilbao, International Print Biennale, Bilbao, ES 2011 London Art Fair, with Millennium and Miller Art Associations, London; 8th Biennale Internationale de Gravure Contemporaine de Liège, CED, BE; Dreams, Freud Museum, London; Trajector Art Fair, Brussels, BE; Galerie Artisten, Galerie Witteveen, Amsterdam, NL; 400 Women, Canongate, Edinburgh; Studio artists of Bartolomeu dos Santos, Casa das Artes, Tavira, PT; Wunderkammer, Oxtagonal Gallery, Bath; London Art Book Fair, with Kaleid Editions, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ghosts of Gone Birds, Rochelle School, London; Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair, Chelsea Town Hall, London; China Print Festival, Qijiang, CN; Ruth Borchard Self Portrait, Kings Place Gallery, London; Loods 6, with Galerie Witteveen, Amsterdam, NL 2010 10-10-10, De Buytensael, Arnhem, NL; The Art of Giving, Saatchi Gallery, London; Multiplied Art Fair, Christie’s SK, London; 400 Women, Shoreditch Town Hall, London, touring; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; Art London, with Eyestorm and Millennium Gallery; The House of Fairy Tales, The Millennium, St. Ives; Beasts Royal, Viktor Wynd Gallery, London 2009 Art of Survival, Helen Bamber Foundation, Maddox Gallery, London; Metamorphoses, 4e Biennale de l’estampe de Saint-Maur, FR; Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de TroisRivières, Quebec, CA; Drie Invalshoeken, De Queeste Art, BE; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; RWA Open, Bristol, 2nd Qijiang International Print Exhibition, Chongqing, CN, touring; XIVeme Biennale internationale de la gravure de Sarcelles, FR; Black Dog, Red Rooster, Kunsthäuschen Herrliberg, Zurich, CH 2008 Cont. European & African Prints, RaMoMa, Nairobi, KE; Choir of Angels, voice-over drawings with with Laurence Fuller, London Original Print Fair, RA of Arts, London; The Threadneedle Figurative Prize, Mall Galleries, London; X Bienal Internacional de Grabado
29
Caixanova, ES 2007 Biennale Int. de Gravure 07, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Liège, BE; Beyond the Narrative, 5 Figurative Painters, Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, London; Blauwdruk van een menszijn, De Steiger, Menen, BE; Shortlisted Sovereign European Art Prize 2007, Club Row, London; Shortlisted Celeste Art Prize 2007; Bienal Internacional de Gravura do Douro, PT 2006 Artists & Prints, Artonomy Fine Art, Truro; Originals ’06, Mall Galleries London; Le Reveil Figuratif, La Renaissance Mairie, Hondschoote, France, and Beauvoorde, BE; Summer Exhibition, RA of Arts, London; MAAPS Printmaking Biennial 2006/07, touring Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University, Halifax, CA; Great Hall, OCAD University, Toronto, CA; Kyoto Municipal Art Museum, Kyoto, JP; The Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, KR; Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, CN 2005 Uncanny Tales touring 2005-2007: Scarborough Gallery, Scarborough; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Wrexham Art Gallery, Wrexham; Cultural Centre Ypres, BE; Jersey Arts Centre, St. Helier; Gt Sutton Street, London; Black Swan Arts, Frome; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Rugby Art Gallery, Rugby; Babylon Art Gallery, Ely; Print International, Memorial Gallery, Yale College, Wrexham; Biennale Internationale de Gravure, Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins de Liège, BE; Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, CA; Unladylike, East West Gallery, London; 200 years European Art, Stephanie Burns Fine Art, Canberra, AU 2003 Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, Quebec, CA; Prizewinners, East West Gallery, London; Uncanny Tales, Galerie de Buytensael, Arnhem, NL 2002 Young Masters Prints, Atlanta, USA; FWA, Art, Age & Gender, Orleans House, London; Grafiek Nu, Biennale Nederlandse Grafische Kunst, Singer Museum, Laren, NL 2000 Art on Paper Fair, RCA, London; Englische Kunst, Galerie Thomas Hettlage, Munich, DE; Bearing Up, East West Gallery, London 1999 Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky Museum, St. Petersburg, RU; Small & Sexy, East West Gallery, London 1998 Women on Men, touring Oriel Gallery Theatr Clwyd; Bodelwyddan Castle, Denbighshire; School of Art Gallery, University of Wales, Aberystwyth 1997 Unquiet Voices, Doncaster Museum & Art Gallery, Doncaster; Graffik 97, Printmakers, North Lincolnshire Museum and Art Gallery, Scunthorpe; Small Objects of Desire, East West Gallery, London
30
1996 The Human Form, Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells; The Child Within, East West Gallery, London 1995 Identity, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Experiments, SW Teachers University, Chongqing, CN 1994 Contemporary Portrait Society, London; Women Light Up The Night, Berlin, DE 1993 Cooling Gallery, London; Expressionist Paintings, SW Teachers University, Chongqing, CN 1992 Eva Jekel Gallery, London; Cooling Gallery, London 1991 Galerie Clairfontaine, Luxembourg; British Month, Roy Miles Gallery, London 1990 Art for China, Smith Gallery, London; British Painters, Mall Galleries, London 1989 Links of Affinity, Knapp Gallery, London and touring; Berkeley Square Gallery, London BIBLIOGRAPHY 2021 The Flux Review, edition 4, Anna Mc Nay meets Marcelle Hanselaar; the Jackdaw, Nov/Dec issue, Easel words/The Night watch; Pressing Matters issue 17, The Bark & tHe Bite; 24/10/21 DZ , Northsea; Catalogue The Bark & The Bite, Museum de Reede; Catalogue 1st Triennial of Contemporary Prints,Be; Catalogue The III Novosibirsk International Triennial of Graphic Arts, Ru; Catalogue North Sea, Marcelle Hanselaar 2020 Catalogue René Carcan Print Prize; Catalogue Beyond other Horizons; Art Quartely, Summer 2020, page 74; The Flux Review, ed 4; The Spectator, 25/7/20 The Art of the Plague; The Jackdaw, Remembering Lockdown, 7/20; The Tablet, Pandemic painting, July 2020; The Long Goodbye, Journal of Contemporary Painting, Autumn 2020 2019 Catalogue The Female Nude; Catalogue Points of Contact, Austin Desmond Gallery, London 2018 Galleries, March 2018, Round-up by Nicholas Usherwood; It’s all political, Susan Tallman, Art In Print, March 2018; Catalogue In einem fernen, fernen Land, Deutsches Märchen- und Wesersagemuseum, Bad Oeynhausen, DE 2017 Catalogue Strange Worlds, The Vision of Angela Carter, RWA, Bristol; Bristol Life Magazine, Jan. 2017, Strange Worlds; Catalogue Int. Print Triennial Krakow, at Dalarnas Museum, Falun, SE; Leeds College of Art, 2017, Curators Choice, exhibitions Jan-June; Catalogue of Biennale Int. de Gravure de Trois-Rivières, CA; The Ashmolean Magazine, Eunice Martin The Crying Game, autumn; Printmaking Today, Hidden Mentor, Winter 2017;
Printmaking Today, The Crying Game, Autumn 2017 2017 The Crying Game, Book, Marcelle Hanselaar, publ. Julian Page; Catalogue Women in War, Kuweit; BIECTR, Un air de liberté, Vie des Arts, 248; Catalogue One-Off, Monoprints, Bankside Gallery, London; Dark Mountain, issue 12, Sanctum, Oct. 2017; Catalogue Round and round we go, Leeds College of Art, Leeds 2016 Catalogue René Carcan Print Prize; Catalogue Derwent Art Prize; Sex and Slaughter in the Tent of Jael, Colleen Conway, Oxford UP 2015 Catalogue Absence and Presence, a printmaking response to the bombing of Al Mutanabbi Street, San Fransisco Center of the Book, USA; All the Fun of the Fair, RA Magazine spring 2015; Catalogue New Hall Art Collection, June; Catalogue The Sketchbook World Tour, Princeton Press, New York; Nourishing Blood Novelist, New Statesman, 7-14 May; Catalogue 10e La Biennale de Gravure de Liège; Dreams & Utopia, by Nan Mulder, Printmaking Today, Winter 2015; New Acquisitions 2015, the V&A Museum
gravure contemporaine, Liège; Catalogue Dreams, Freud Museum, London; Beauty & the Beast, Printmaking Today Vol. 20 no 1, spring 2011; De Musagete 3, text and published by Jurrie Poot, Amsterdam, June 2011; Catalogue Concrete Skin, London 2010 Catalogue Visual Arts, Sale 708, Bloomsbury Auctions; Catalogue Mama, mama the bear is loose, De Queeste Art, BE; Catalogue Biting the Bullet, Personalia, Collect Magazine, Oct 2010; Galleries Reviews, Nov 10, Millennium Gallery, St Ives; Exhibitions: Soames & Hanselaar, the Guardian Guide, 28 Aug 2010; Art Review, Frieze Fair issue 2009 Printmakers Secrets, Anthony Dyson, May 2009; Catalogue Metamorphoses, 4e Biennale de l’estampe de Saint-Maur; Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, CA; Practical Printmaking, Colin Gale; Hybrid Prints, Megan Fishpool; Catalogue Wrexham International Print Bienale; Black on white, Triple Vision, Galleries May 2009; Catalogue 2nd Qijiang international Print exhibition; Catalogue XIVeme Biennale int. de la gravure de Sarcelles, FR; Regards sur la literature contemporaine, Sept. 2009
2014 Viktor Wynd, Cabinet of Wonders, October 30; Catalogue Open Secrets, Millennium Gallery; Catalogue International Print Bienniale; Northern Print, Newcastle; Catalogue David Bomberg to Paula Rego, Southampton City Art Gallery; Why War?, Wall Street International 19/8/14; Catalogue Wondrous world of an introvert, De Queeste Art, BE
2008 Close-up, Kunst & Antiek journaal, Collect, Feb 2008; Marcelle Hanselaar, Select, Tableau Fine Art; Comptoir d’estampes au Churchill, Wegimont Culture no. 236; Intaglio Printmaking, A&C Black; Mychael Barratt; Catalogue Down the Rabbit hole, Aberystwyth University; Catalogue X Bienal Internacional de Grabado de Caixanova 2008
2013 Catalogue The London Group Centenary at Pitzhanger Manor; Printmaking Today, Krakow Print Biennial; Catalogue Douro Print Biennial; Catalogue Impress13; Easelwords, The Jackdaw, no 109, May/ June 13; Triple vision, NU, Galleries May 2013, King’s Place Magazine, May 2013; Catalogue Walking the Line, Kings Place Gallery, London; The Jackdaw; Catalogue 17th Int Print Biennial, Varna; Catalogue FIG Bilbao, Premio Internazionale de Grabado; Catalogue 8e Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, Quebec; Ghosts of Gone Birds, author Ceri Levy and Chris Aldous, Bloomsbury Press; Postcards from the edge, film by Thomas Voelker; Catalogue The Threadneedle Prize for Painting; The Jackdaw, Sept/Oct 2013; Catalogue CARA, The Art of Resistance, Nov 2013; 1er Encan d’oeuvres d’art de la BIECTR, Trois-Rivières, CA
2007 Catalogue The Weight of Smoke, De Queeste Art, BE; Catalogue Sovereign European Art Prize 2007; Catalogue Fête de la Gravure, 6e Biennale internationale de Gravure, Liège; Catalogue Celeste Art Prize; Receiving the inheritance, Printmaking Today, vol.16 no. 1/07; Catalogue 04 Bienal 2007 Internacional de Gravura Douro; Easel words, The Jackdaw, No 73. Nov 2007
2012 Catalogue Braided Together, London; Braided Together, Viviane Blanchard, Artist Newsletter, March; Ruth Borchard Self Portaits, Newcastle; Catalogue Hanga Print Exhibition, Kyoto, JP and London; Catalogue Biennale de Douro, PT; Catalogue International Print Triennial of Graphic Art, Bitola, MK; Catalogue International Print Triennial Krakow; Journal of the Print World, vol 35 no 4, Oct 2012; Printmakers Bible, Colin Gale & Megan Fishpool 2011 Catalogue 8e Biennale internationale de
2006 Into the Dark Side of Women, The Independent, 4/4/06; La Petite Mort, Le Reveil Figurativ, Pillowtalk, Veduta, Spring 06; Images Touch a Raw Nerve in Exploring Sexuality, Canberra Times, 26/3/06; Galleries, Canberra, 5/06; Rare Glimpses of Time-honoured Artists, Collector, 7/06; Uncanny Tales, Frome, The Art Newspaper, What’s on, U.K., 6/06; Printmaking Handbook, Etching, by Colin Gale; Catalogue L’image, Le Reveil Figuratif, 7/06; Uncanny Tales with a twist, Hull Advertiser, 6/7/06; 15/5/06 top 5 galleries, Uncanny Tales, The Knowledge, The Times, 7/7/06; Behind closed doors, artist profile Printmaking Today vol. 15 no 3 ’06; Catalogue MAAPS, 1st Print Biennale, CA; Catalogue Discerning Eye, London; Brush Strokes, Evening Telegraph, 27/10/06; Artist To Talk About her work, Rugby Advertiser, 5/10/06;The Uncanny goes on display, Rugby Observer, 21/9/06; Gallery Shows Light and Dark Shades of Life, Evening Telegraph, 15/9/06; Acclaimed Artists’ Tour Hits Rugby, Rugby Advertiser, 14/9/06; Boldness & Emotion, an interview with
31
Marcelle Hanselaar, Flashfilm magazine, 11/06
All of Me, East West Gallery, London
2005 Catalogue 5th Biennale internationale de gravure contemporaine, Liège; Catalogue Wrexham Print International; Catalogue The London Group, Bankside Gallery, London; Darkly Dreaming, Hull Daily Mail, 22/1/05; Lunchtime talk by top artist, Evening News, 23/2/05; Preview Uncanny Tales, The Guardian, 30/4/05; The Guardian Guide: Pick of the week, Uncanny Tales, Swansea, 23/4/05; Uncanny Tales, Platform Summer 2005; Galleries, Thumbnails La Petite Mort; Preview, Best of the month: Dutch etchings, La Petite Mort, 7/05, The Hill; Catalogue Biennale de Trois-Rivières, CA; Uncanny Tales, Platform, Summer 2005; Reach, Uncanny Tales, Summer 2005; Catalogue Unladylike, East West Gallery, London; Uncanny Tales in Ieper, Ticket, 10/05; La Petite Mort, Nieuwe Etsen; Oct. issue Veduta; Veduta, Autumn 2005; Collision of Dreams & Nightmares, EP 17/6/05; Into the Dark Side of Women, The Independent, 4/4/05
1999 Catalogue Pictures to Live With, The Millinery Works, London; Artist Directory of Great Britain, David Buckman; The Artists Eye, The Arts Review, 9/99; Artist Opens Floodgate of Memory, Evening News 22/4/99; Catalogue Burying the Hatchet, The Millinery Works, London; The Hermit who Turned, Morgan Falconer, Highbury & Islington Express 8/10/99; Burying the Hatchet, The Angel 10/99; Critics Choice, John McEwen, Sunday Telegraph 17/10/99
2004 Strong Stuff Not for the Romantic at Heart, Canberra Times 16/2/04; Heroes & Villains, Printmaking Today, Autumn 04; De ondeugende wereld van Marcelle Hanselaar, Ticket, 10/04, no. 105; Het zachte vlees, A.A.A. no. 356, 11/04; Catalogue Silence is easy, De Queeste Art, BE; Catalogue Uncanny Tales, FWA; Uncanny Tales, Preview, Printmaking Today, Winter 2004 2003 Catalogue Contemporary British Art; Sight Specific, What’s on in London 29/1/03; Catalogue Grafiek Nu 10, Biennale Nederlandse Grafische Kunst, Kunst aus London, Westdeutsche Allgemeine, 15/2/03; Provokante Pinselstriche, NRZ, Essen, 19/2/03; Catalogue New Hall Art Collection, 3rd ed., Cambridge; Hanselaar Takes a Bow, Printmaking Today, Spring ’03; Catalogue Wrexham Print International; Catalogue Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières; La Biennale internationale d’estampe prend son envol, Le Nouvelliste, 16/7/03; Marcelle stoot door, Stan Huygens Journaal, De Telegraaf, 4/6/03; Catalogue Sons & Mothers, Collins Gallery, Glasgow, 6/03; Catalogue Sometimes I dream about reality, East West Gallery, London; Expression of Restraint, Morgan Falconer, What’s On in London, 10/9/03; Reflections of an Artist’s Dream, Kensington Times, 24/9/03; Catalogue Uncanny Tales, Arnhem, NL; Mensen, maskers en de beest erachter, Hoog en Laag, 8/10/03; Uncanny Tales, Er hangt iets dreigends in de lucht, De Gelderlander, 7/10/03; Uncanny Tales, groepexpositie, Tableau Fine Arts Magazine nr. 5, 11/03; Griezelige Verhalen, Opzij, 11/03; Verontrustende verhalen, Art – NL 5/03; Catalogue Art, Age & Gender, FWA, Orleans House, London
32
2001 Englische Figurative Malerei in der Galerie Hettlage, Münchner Merkur 16/7/01; Das sprechende Antlitz der Scheherazade, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15/7/01; Erasmus Magazine Incomplete Tales of Remarkable Journeys, 11/01; Studium Generale, Marcelle Hanselaar, Galerie Erasmus, 12/01; Catalogue
1989–98 Catalogue Woman on Man/Man on Woman, Oriel Theatr Clwyd, Wales, 97/98; Catalogue Undercurrents, Doncaster Museum, 1998; Jane Czyzselska, Unquiet Voices, Artist Newsletter 9/97; Catalogue to the exhibition, Galerie Reisel, Rotterdam, NL 1992/93; Sister Wendy Beckett, On Art and the Sacred, Rider Books, London 1992; Sister Wendy Beckett, The Spiritual in Contemporary Art, The Journey, London, 1990; Catalogue Art for China 1989; Catalogue Links of Affinity, Dutch Contemporary Art in Britain, Mary Rose Beaumont, Knapp Gallery, Regent’s College, London; Net als de Koningin, Avenue, 5/89; William & Mary vieringen, Nederlandse kunstenaars aan bod, Marcella van der Wiel, De Telegraaf, 17/6/89; Britse Nederlanders exposeren in London, Haye Thomas, Haagse Courant,17/7/89; Links of Affinity, Dutch Contemporary Art in Britain, The Times, 20/7/89; Expositie Engelse Hollanders, Hieke Jippes, NRC Handelsblad, 21/7/89; Going Dutch, Giles Auty, The Spectator, 1/7/89; Dutch Contemporary Art in Britain, Jane Norrie, Arts Review, 7/89; Banden van verwantschap, Nederlandse Kunst spreekt in Engeland een woordje mee, Nanke Kramer, Trouw, 3/7/89; Nederlandse kunstenaars in Groot-Brittannie, Tableau, Summer 1989
©Aleph Contemporary Ltd, 2022. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the prior permission of the publisher. All images reproduced with permission Photography Danny Lee Photograph of Marcelle in her studio Birgitta Johanson Print and binding: Empress Litho Limited ALEPH CONTEMPORARY PUBLISHING London 2022 169 Piccadilly, 5F London, W1J 9EH T +44 (0) 20 7692 4045 info@alephcontemporary.com www.alephcontemporary.com
Aleph Contemporary at The In & Out, 4 St James’s Square, St James’s, London, SW1Y 4JU
info@alephcontemporary.com
www.alephcontemporary.com