Rose Garrard
Rose Garrard is a maker of installations, video, performance art, and sculpture. Her practice from the late 1960s has focused on an engagement with ideas concerning gender, identity, status and power, binding together personal experiences and historical references.
Talisman: The Steel Knife of Her Grandmother
‘Talisman: The Steel Knife of Her Grandmother’ Rose Garrard was involved in a serious motorbike accident and subsequently spent time in the fractures ward of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London with her left arm in a cast. During this period, Garrard worked on a series of mixed media drawings entitled 'Talisman' based on an ancient gnostic text 'The Thunder, Perfect Mind’, a source of well-being and recuperation for her during this period of healing, inspiring art based on the images she visualised from the text. ‘Talisman’ is an acrylic and grey wash drawing on paper.
Image Descriptions:
The artwork photographed against a white wall in the White Column space. A grouping of nude figures drawn into the grey wash on the ground, filling the picture plane, intersecting each other, and with a sense of falling. In the centre at the bottom is an open penknife is superimposed in a realistic mode and rendered in a darker grey. Along the bottom edge is an inscription written in pencil, which reads ‘`Give heed to my poverty and my wealth. Do not be arrogant when I am cast out upon the earth, for you will find me in those that are to come... And do not cast me out among those who are slain in violence, for I am compassionate, yet I am cruel.' The drawing sits in the centre of the frame, surrounded by a thick border of blank paper.
Audio Descriptions:
Organisation:
Leeds Art Gallery, opened in 1888 on The Headrow, is a free, nationally designated, and top-rated venue in West Yorkshire known for one of the UK’s best 20th-century British art collections. It showcases paintings, sculptures, and modern art (including works by Hepworth and Moore), along with changing temporary exhibitions, a Victorian-era Tiled Hall Café, and family-friendly activities.
External Link:
Website: https://museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/leeds-art-gallery-jxyz