Woman-House 1983

This is a Louise Bourgeois sculpture called ‘Woman-House’ and looking at it, you get a sense of the artist physically working the material, building up the form from the base, layer upon layer, until the house emerges from the figure. I wonder what it was like for Bourgeois to create this piece? Maybe she started with the figure and then the house evolved as an afterthought or maybe it was the other way around. There is this tension between what a body is and what a house is. Is the body her home, or is the house her body? It reminds me a little of my own practice and the way I like to build up textures and forms, always adding and subtracting, until a final form slowly appears. Bourgeois is in a dialogue with other artists through this sculpture. You can see ideas in this work that have grown out of painting and sculpture over decades. It's like all the artists are having a conversation together, across time, each one picking up threads from the others, until it creates a new thought.