Picture This

‘That’s strange, because you represented her for a while, until her so-called suicide. Her name was Maxine Doubleday – she was an English sculptor.’ Beyond the lights, Susie could see Martha pushing her way through toward the camera crew, who, realising they had a scoop, had moved in even closer while around them the crowd had fallen ominously silent as they began to hang on her every word. ‘I knew her well. In fact, we were a couple for a number of years before she came here. So you see, Felix, we have more in common than you realised – the same taste in women, for example. I placed her here in this image because I wanted to portray Maxine as my alter ego. In some ways she became that during the time I’ve been living here, making this work.’

Martha could now be heard arguing with the director in an attempt to stop him filming. Susie quickly moved on, with the cameraman in tow. Felix, still encircled, had no choice but to follow.

‘But let’s turn to the young man in the framed photograph,’ Susie continued. ‘In the original painting this is a vague generic outline of a man – although he did bear some resemblance to you, Felix – don’t know if you ever picked up that rather pathetic homage. Anyhow, back to my own re-visualisation of the work: here the man is a young painter called Gabriel Bandini, who also killed himself. When? Just yesterday, wasn’t it, Felix? I think you might remember – after all, you found his body, right? The interesting thing about Gabriel was that he was a fantastic mimic of other painters’ work – a forger, in fact. The most tragic aspect is that I believe he had the potential to be a great painter himself, if he’d been allowed to pursue his own career. Instead, you found him, seduced him and moulded him, didn’t you?’

‘I’ve had enough. Stop the cameras! I said, stop the cameras!’ Felix whirled around, only to find that he was pinned against the wall; the cameraman, delighted at the dramatic outburst, kept filming.

‘As if that wasn’t enough, when Maxine Doubleday realised that the Hoppers were potentially forgeries you had her set up for a suicide, didn’t you?’ Susie lunged toward him.

‘No! She killed herself! She was unstable, neurotic, I swear!’

‘Liar!’ Latisha’s voice rose above the murmuring of the crowd, who turned en masse to see where the challenge had come from.

Seizing his opportunity, Felix finally broke free, shoving violently past the cameras and into the outer gallery. Pushing several people to the ground, he ran for the exit, only to be blocked by Latisha, who, swinging her crutch, knocked him to the floor. By the time he got up, several of New York’s finest were waiting to arrest him just outside the gallery door.

Epilogue

Catalogue notes, Tate Modern, 2007

The Topography of Obsession is Susie Thomas’s most recent show, the latest after her sell-out solo exhibition Picture This in New York in 2006. In many ways it pulls together several recurring themes seen in Thomas’s previous work, but at the same time it reflects a maturing of this fascinating and constantly evolving artist. The show consists of six artworks, all created around objects that the artist has collected from her time developing the New York show. The objects themselves range from banal everyday items (a rusty metal bolt – apparently discovered atop a section of the Brooklyn Bridge) to the obscure and exotic – a customised embroidered serviette from the Met Gala 2006, a large gold feather, a Korean neon restaurant sign meaning ‘fortunate’ – to the deeply personal – a pregnancy test showing positive (artist’s own: Thomas gave birth to a daughter earlier this year), a passport-type photograph of Thomas’s deceased lover and partner, the sculptor Maxine Doubleday with friend and muse Latisha Johnson – to the tragic – a ‘love’ (or perhaps lust?) letter from prison from the disgraced gallery director Felix Baum.

In the hands of a lesser artist the show might have appeared a little too personal and internalised, but here Thomas transcends the indulgent. She has created maps of image and light around each object, a move away from her usual appropriation, and it is here that her extraordinary talent as a draughtswoman and narrator shines. It is really an exhibition about the sexualisation of object, memory as fetish, and we are left questioning our own experience of memory – how accurate are our own memories? Are we always doomed to make myths out of memory as a way of creating meaning to our own lives, our obsessions, whether sexual, material or emotional? Whatever the answer, The Topography of Obsession will embed itself into the viewer’s own lexicon of experience.