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GRAVE GOODS
Wed 11 May 2022
Davina Kirkpatrick, drawing, death study Participants: Annabel Pettigrew (AP), Caroline Wilkin (CW), Davina Kirkpatrick (DK), Nikki Salkeld (NS), Ashley Rudolph (AR),Nikki Cody (NC) & David Lillington (DL), were invited to bring artworks or objects which they might consider taking with them in death, or burying with someone else. In our discussions we talked about our shared belief, that objects have the power to connect the living with the dead, our chosen grave goods ranged from feldspar minerals to embroidered socks and haunted dolls.
AP got the discussion going with her chosen grave goods of two Labradorite stones. This beautiful dark stone flashes with bright, iridescent colour, it is considered to have magical properties, which strengthen psychic connections and offer the promise of communication to and from other realms, like a talisman. One stone to rest in the coffin with the deceased and the other with the living, to form a psychic connection between the two (a magic telephone!). Much like the Egyptians who gave gifts to their dead to help them with their onward journey. The giving and guarding of a heart, in this case the Labradorite, placed in the cavity of the heart. Offering protection for the deceased through the mummification process, before passing/transitioning into the ‘golden place’ beyond, reflecting on grief as the alchemy of the soul.
DK chose two drawings which referenced significant objects representing care and compassion. Following the death of her partner she (along with three others) lovingly prepared his body. It felt instinctively right at that time to want to record this through the act of drawing, a physical act of contemplative recording which, reinforced a sense of connection. To photograph ‘would give too much information’, but to draw presented a ritualistic process to help process her grief. (LW) Reminiscent of Munch’s drawings, prints and paintings of his sister Sophie, who died at the age of fourteen. Edvard Munch The Sick Child I (Det syke barn I) 1896. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/86830 Munch painted the first version of The Sick Child in 1885–86, and according to his notes he worked on it for a long time. He wanted to reproduce his impression of his dying sister – her pallid complexion and reddish hair against the white pillow. He tried to express something that was difficult to capture; the tired movement of the eyelids, the lips that seem to whisper, the little flicker of life that remains. To be able to sit quietly and observe the unnoticed.
Penny Somerville, drawing in death study. A series of drawings were made which, portray tenderness, love and intimacy. The chosen object – the grave good, being a pair of red socks with the word ‘horizon’ embroidered across the lovingly darned toes. DK regards the act of repair/mending as a respectful act of expressing care and kindness. When her mother died DK, was also tasked with choosing clothes for her. Her mother had always kept things for best’, so she subsequently chose a beautiful, but, yet unworn skirt hanging in her mother’s wardrobe, surely this occasion called for her to be ‘dressed for best’.
Dressing the dead was a recurring theme, especially thoughts of dressing up for this important exit from this life.
(NS) Chose the V&A’s ‘Watteau’ evening gown by Vivienne Westwood, to be buried in https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O83590/watteau-evening-dress-westwood-vivienne/ . The practicality of this, on so many levels ‘a non-starter’. But nevertheless, this beautiful shroud could be replicated by using paper. The artist and ghost seamstress, Michèle Karch-Ackerman makes clothes for the dead. “I make clothing for ghosts. The dead, the forgotten, and the hurting. For thirty years I have stitched conceptual wardrobes to manifest healing.” https://agp.on.ca/exhibitions/ghost-seamstress/ @Michelekarchackerman
This echo’s the tradition of Chinese mourners burning joss paper or ‘ghost money’. As well as making ritualistic offerings at the graves of ancestors, representing earthly consumable products, made from paper (mobile phones, cars, watches etc). The belief that the deceased, will benefit from these goods, and have a prosperous afterlife.
Following the death of her father CW cut one of his suits to make a rag rug, a prized and precious kneeler, now used in the grave yard to make rubbings for printworks. The grave goods chosen by CW to give to others; at the end of life and in death, were crochet blankets. Described beautifully as ‘wrapping yarn into love’. These cosy offerings to give comfort and warmth during the final journey. A journey we are so seldom ‘comfortable’ to talk about. The act of crotchet similar, to the act of drawing, providing the space and time to sit quietly with thoughts of loss and love.
AR wanted to think about what happens to our stuff when we die. What if we could take fragments of our objects (our life) with us into the afterlife. The possibility of a woven shroud/suit of micro fragments made from a combination of all of our objects, woven together. We know who we are by the stuff we are surrounded by. Pharmacopoeia a medical-art collaboration between the artists Susie Freeman and David Critchley and Doctor Liz Lee, produced Cradle to Grave for the British Museum. A project about health and wellbeing, describing the medical histories of a typical man and woman in Britain today. The pills and capsules and often their packaging, are incorporated into fabric by a process known as ‘pocket knitting’. By using a fine nylon yarn small solid objects such as pills are captured in pockets in order to create large flexible fabrics. http://www.pharmacopoeia-art.net/articles/in-sickness-and-in-health/
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/living-and-dying
The artist Michael Landy, famously destroyed everything he owned as a piece of performance art. (BBC Culture https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160713-michael-landy-the-man-who-destroyed-all-his-belongings).
“At moments, admittedly, I felt like I was witnessing my own death, because people I hadn’t seen for years would turn up, and I thought, ‘Well, they’d only turn up for my funeral.’ But often I did feel real elation. No one had ever destroyed all their worldly belongings before”.
Break Down functioned as a contemporary memento mori: all of us, to differing degrees, use possessions to construct our identities and project ourselves to others – yet here was a man wilfully obliterating his material existence to the point of total annihilation.
LW chose a 1930s Haunted Russian doll bought on ebay. The wear and tear on the doll reveal the touch of its previous life; an object played with, cared for and probably treasured, but with no other back story apart from being listed on ebay as’ haunted’. The doll presents itself as a powerful object, which is respectfully considered in the domestic space. Its weight oddly like that of a baby, resembling a human, but unanimated. The doll feels positively charged, spiritually and ‘slightly spooky’, but not dark. LW considers the prospect of it as her grave companion to help her onward journey into the next life, possibly with the addition of loved ones ashes, tucked into the fabric of the doll.
Thoughts also turned to the coffin (NC) as an object to be personalised externally. A surface for family and friends to write personal messages, to paint, draw and decorate. A community of hands and hearts working, talking, and reminiscing together through the communal act of preparing it for the funeral. This assignment also felt restorative, regarding the relationships between the living (bereaved) which can be highly charged and difficult following the loss of loved ones.
We ended the group meeting by thinking about start of the next with (DL) providing The theme of the Dance of Death.
Resources
The Egyptian Book of the Dead Penguin Classics. John Romer. E.A. Wallis Budge (Translator)
The Book of the Dead is a unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the fifteenth to the fourth century BC. Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles in the afterlife.
The following text is a wonderful paper by Sheila Harper on contemporary grave goods and rituals relating to objects we bury our dead with.
The Good Funeral Guide is a not-for-profit organisation that exists to support, empower and represent the interests of dying and bereaved people living in the UK. www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk
Dance of Death. The Holy Trinity Church in Hrastovlje https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/danse-macabre-of-hrastovlje
(NS)
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ARTIST DEATH STUDIES GROUP
Death offers us the possibility of something more than the phobic iteration of its signs, displacements that might ward off or somehow placate the event. This ‘something more’ is found both in the work of artists dealing with the imminence of their own death and in our responses to the deaths of others.
Chris Townsend, Art and Death, 2008
Moth, Design for Life and Death, Annabel Pettigrew, Throes of Grief, DUST, Lucy Willow, Dr. Davina Kirkpatrick Artist & lecturer in medical humanities have come together to share research on death and grief through creative practice. 
Annabel Pettigrew, Oratory for Travelling Between Realms, 2022
Lucy Willow, The Mourner, Lamentation in Dust, 2019
Dr. Davina Kirkpatrick, Objects of Loss, ongoing project. Death studies artist group offers creative practitioners the opportunity to meet regularly via zoom to discuss their exhibitions, artworks and projects relating to death studies. The group is informal, discursive, and organic focusing on the way visual and literary culture represents death and dying, mourning and grieving through art. Each session starts with an object, theme, provocation or prompt that the conversation is structured around. This group is for artist and designers interested in talking about their research relating to death studies.
We met for the first time online in March 2022. This blog platform will capture the conversations between participants and enable us to explore the rich and varied themes relating to death and grief in visual culture. This group is part of the larger ASDS (Association and Studies of Death and Society).
Who are we?
MOTH, Design for Life & Death investigates the skills and contributions which communication designers can make to death studies and end of life experience. Examining contemporary attitudes and anxieties to death, dying and belief systems, through the lens of design communication. Research investigates how we can confidently express ‘negative’ emotions in both the digital and analogue realm, creating evolved graphic visual language to help navigate grief and sadness and to communicate empathy and loss in our social relationships. How design process and practice can equip us to talk about death as being something we can learn from rather than fear.
Instagram: @moth_design_death
Web: moth.org.uk
ANNABEL PETTIGREW, is an artist whose practice is research and pilgrimage based, resulting in a multidisciplinary output, which includes; Printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, performance, writing, photography, video and textiles. She runs the artist-led collective group, ‘Throes of Grief’, a research-based initiative exploring grief, and the presence of grief-related themes in contemporary art practice. Within her practice Annabel explores grief rituals and traditions, with a view to developing a contextual language and a grief specific rhetoric relating to the importance the presence of grief has in contemporary arts practice.
Web: https://www.annabelpettigrew.com/
DUST, is a shop, gallery and event space set up in 2020 by artist LUCY WILLOW as an artist led project. The shop brings together artefacts, objects, artworks and research on creative practice and grief. The shop borrows work to exhibit and sell by artists, writers and poets, relating to death and grief as a way to generate conversation. The aim is to create a multi-disciplined shop as a platform for conversation about death, ritual, grief and end of life to take place. In the future these conversations will be initiated by events such as live streamed performance lectures, podcasts, death cafes and installations in the shop.
Instagram: d.u.s.t_art
DR. DAVINA KIRKPATRICK, is an Artist, Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Visiting Research Fellow at University of Plymouth. Her background in site-specific public art, socially engaged practice, and collaborative inter-disciplinary projects involved national/international residencies, commissions, and exhibitions. After an MA in Multidisciplinary Print, her PhD Grief and loss; living with the presence of absence. A practice-based study of personal grief narratives and participatory projects investigated her own and others’ experiences of creating out of grief and loss. Her post-doctoral Creative Fellowship – Immersive Environments and Serious Play: New Initiatives for Patient Practitioner interactions explored making and talking to and with pain.
Web: www.davinak.co.uk
Instagram: @davinakirkpatrick
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Artist death studies group 