Interview by Xina Soleri
Tucked away on the lower level of the Attenborough Arts Centre (AAC) on the University of Leicester campus is Letty McHugh’s unique immersive exhibition, Anchorage, which was recently extended through 8 January 2023. The exhibition itself is composed of several elements that elicit different sensory experiences. Upon entering the gallery, the tent-like canvas installation immediately catches the eye. It is serene while simultaneously inviting curiosity; if you look closely, you will find careful embroidery that encircles the structure. In addition, the air is filled with McHugh’s own voice from her recent work ‘Watches for An Ordinary Day’, while a monitor plays videos capturing an outward looking gaze. These three elements are emblematic of McHugh’s own forced isolation due to chronic illness at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each component plays with the tension between isolation and connection both for McHugh personally as well as a universal experience through the ages. McHugh herself is embedded in every element of this exhibition, and in her genuine openness she invites connection despite, or perhaps as a result of, isolation.
When it comes to experiencing the exhibition, McHugh says:
“I’m a big believer in doing whatever feels right for you once you are in a gallery, interacting with an artwork is about your own personal experience so look at anything you want to first, go to what draws you. Having said that, I like to save all the wall texts till the end when I’m in a gallery, so I can get my own impression before I read someone else’s, but you do you!”
So with that brief background, here are a few questions about her art and the importance of connection that McHugh has been generous enough to answer. Please be sure to stop by the gallery Monday-Friday (12:00-17:00) or on the weekends (12:00-16:00) before 8 January 2023, it’ll be well worth the visit!
As something that began to take shape during the pandemic, how did it feel to see Anchorage assembled in a public space for the first time?
It has made me so happy to see the work in the gallery at Attenborough. I’ve done two works in progress showings, but it feels very different to have everything finished, the films playing, the book in the gallery, even the blue walls! It was a bit overwhelming at the install, the realness of it all if that makes any sense. This is probably the most personal project I’ve made, and working on it got me through some tough times, so it’s been emotional, but wonderful, to have it out in the world.
When exploring quite intangible emotions through your artwork (like isolation or anxiety or loneliness), does the process of creation become part of the process of survival? Or perhaps more of an escape?
For me it is absolutely part of the process of survival. Sometimes it’s also an escape, but I think this project was really about looking hard things in the eye, and learning to live a good life whilst acknowledging those hard things aren’t going anywhere. The period of time I was working on Book of Hours [McHugh’s recently published book] and making Anchorage coincided with the 10 year anniversary of my MS diagnosis, and that was much harder on me emotionally that I was expecting it to be. There were times when I would just imagine this other person, someone newer to illness than me, or just someone feeling lost, and I tried to imagine that I had learnt something in the last ten years about how to live in the illness place, as I call it in the book, that might help that other person. That made me feel better, working on the project, it gave some meaning to everything I was going through, and that helped me. I think there’s decades worth of chronic illness feelings in the work.
I'm really interested in how you've combined your written work with the physical installation through embroidery—what inspired you to do this? And what was the process of writing out these words and phrases with a needle and thread like? Did it shift the meaning of these words for you, seeing them in this new way?
In a way that’s something I’ve always done. Right back to when I was 17 on my Art and Design Btec. I guess, when I was growing up my Mum had all these samplers on the walls that women in our family had made, so embroidered text was my first visual language in a way. Then when I started making my own art, I’m kind of impatient, and I could already embroider pretty well, and it takes so long to learn to paint well enough to communicate your ideas, I just wanted to get on with making things.
Then I’m fascinated by the whole history of women and textiles, and how subversive that is, and how women have used textiles to have a voice. I do this white on white, or cream on cream in Anchorage, embroidery as a reference to medieval white work. It was this highly skilled, massively valuable technique, and the lives of some of the women who practiced it is fascinating. Nothing like the lives we imagine women having at that time, but I won’t go off on a complete tangent.
The actual process of doing it, very appropriately for this project, is much less soothing and mindful than I imagined it would be. I thought I would be very peaceful and contemplative. It was complete carnage, I kept getting everything in the wrong order, I didn’t give myself enough time, so it was such a rush. There’s 8 meters of embroidered text on the walls of Anchorage. My back was killing me by the end! I remember reading an account of a monk working on an illuminated manuscript and how hard it was on his eyes and back, and thinking, brother I know exactly what you mean. If you look one panel is actually written backwards, I nearly redid it, but I’d just written this chapter for Book of Hours about why we shouldn’t suffer for our art, and I felt like I’d be such a hypocrite if I tried to keep going, so I just used it as it was.
You've spoken about how, in most voluntary isolation throughout history there is still some element of connection to others, even in extreme forms of isolation. This is so indicative of the social nature and needs of human beings. You really explore this tension and link between isolation and connection in Anchorage—and now, as a physical exhibition, there is another layer of a kind of isolation that occurs when an artwork is placed inside a museum space. But equally there are new forms of connection! I know there have been a lot of school groups coming through and interacting with your pieces—how do you see your art as a tool for connection that extends beyond you? Was this part of your original plan?
How does it feel to see a very personal piece being interpreted so uniquely and personally by strangers?
What an excellent question. I think that phrase ‘art as a tool for connection’, that’s central to what I want to do as an artist. Good art is so charged with life. Last November I went to Tate Liverpool and there was this piece by Louise Bourgeois, and I remember standing in front of it and thinking ‘yes, Louise Bourgeois gets it’. ‘It’ being the total truth of living with an illness that is impossible to articulate in words. That’s what art is for, connecting one human to another human, feeling known and seen and understood by someone you’ll probably never meet or speak to. But for art to be alive like that, you need two people, you need someone to view the work generously. It's always a collaboration. So I guess when I think about strangers interpreting the work, it feels right. Like, we are having a conversation, and the work that exists, that’s my half of the conversation, and whatever response they have, that’s their half.
Also, I’ve said this out of order but I have to say how happy the school visits to the exhibition are making me. I haven’t had a lot to do with the development of the program and the team at Attenborough have done such a beautiful job with it. It was learning about an artist at school when I was 12 that first got me interested in art, and I just love the thought that someone on one of those school trips might grow up and be an artist.
And finally—when feelings of isolation arise, what are the tools you currently reach for to foster connections?
My cat helps. And thinking about my little nieces. Trying to disconnect from huge overwhelming things like the news and social media connecting with small domestic joys if I can. Writing something just for myself in my journal always helps, because at least I’m connecting with myself. Trying to remember that everything is a season, this one might be cold but a warmer one is coming.
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