I want everyone to know of her extraordinary courage & resolve on the opening night @NPGLondon Although her illness was quite advanced even then she was determined to see the portrait on the walls there. She was frail but so strong, her presence luminous, radiant and powerful.

What a bittersweet summer this has been, celebrating her with friends at the National Portrait Gallery while knowing she was so unwell and keeping it secret.

🎩

You have a point! Ha ha

I mean, clearly that was the entire plan 😎😆

Thank you so much 💋

⭐⭐

Ha, actually he is there to greet allcomers to the pearly gates in this gargantuan guise

LAUGHING WHILE CORPSING series was exhibited for the first time in my first institutional solo exhibition
DIE AUGEN DER ROXANA HALLS
Neue Britische Figurative Malerei
HAUS KUNST MITTE - BERLIN
01/07 - 01/10 2023

And the title...

"Corpsing is when an actor breaks out into unscripted laughter. The term comes from the theater: The worst possible time to uncontrollably laugh would be on stage, playing a corpse."

The traces in the sky were of some form of violent disruption in the air - the trails of a plane spiralling downward - gunshot smoke and birds flying off in rapid unity - a distress flare - a distant bonfire. called to mind a particular passage of Virginia Woolf.

‘le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau’ (‘the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine’). "
I felt I might drink some new wine were I not to know from the outset and well before glancing brush to surface what exactly my women were up to.

I was thinking of the Surrealist collaborative drawing game Exquisite Corpse when I approached these canvases and decided to play a game of sorts, but with myself.
"The name ‘cadavre exquis’ was derived from a phrase that resulted when they first played the game...