In the Studio: Lisette May Monroe

Lisette May- Monroe (b. Leeds, England) is a writer, critic, and practicing artist based in Glasgow. Her work, while mainly autobiographical, spans issues of class, feminism, and sex. In addition to her fine art practice, she runs Rosie’s Disobedient Press, an artist-led, independent publishing project, alongside Adrien Howard. ‘Hard Lines’, opening the 5th of June, is Monroe’s upcoming Glasgow International exhibition; her first in ten years, and the inaugural exhibition at Gulabi Gallery in Glasgow. 

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After a ten year break from your fine art practice, how has it felt to prepare and present this body of work?

Vulnerable! I think the idea of making any work felt really vulnerable. That’s maybe why I didn’t do it for so long. I collaborate a lot and I always have. Collaboration’s a huge part of my practice. In a sense, I’ve also been making this work with other people, but I have found it quite exposing. But also, I feel like I was telling a story everyone already knew. 

I actually pitched a different show. I pitched a research project about where I’m from. And I started making that show and I just kept going back to this all the time. And I was like, well, if that’s where the work’s going, then I have to follow the work. Sarah Tripp always said to us on the MFA, ‘no matter what, just stay with the work’, and I feel like that’s all I’ve done; try to honour that.

How did the collaboration between you and Gulabi come together?

They got in touch with me. Well, they got in touch with Glasgow International and Glasgow International got in touch with me. I’d had multiple different spaces fall through and I began to feel like I was living in ninety different realities at the same time, making so many different shows that didn’t exist in spaces I didn’t have. 

I’ve known Gulabi for a while. I get my film processed there. I’d seen a couple of the guys out and about socially. We have shared friends and it just felt really serendipitous. The work is lens-based, but I wouldn’t say I’m a photographer. I make photographs but photography has such a rich and important history I feel aligned with but haven’t studied.

The good thing was, because it’s the first show there in a new space, I wasn’t playing out other shows that had been there before. All I had to do was think about how the work was going to be in conversation with that space. I’ve always worked in non-traditional gallery spaces anyway. They showed me downstairs and I was like, oh, that’s nice. And then I was like, ‘what’s up those stairs?’ And they’re like ‘this massive room that we’re not using. It’s got ugly walls’ and I was like, ‘oh, yeah. I’ll take that. That’s for me. That’s where my work should be.’ It felt like there was some kind of nice relationship or something to all the shows that I’ve done before. Crucially it feels like you are in the eaves of a house or an attic, which felt very apt; the show is very teenage bedroom in the attic.

When making this body of work, how do you separate how you feel now from how you felt while you were going through the breakup? Does reengaging with the subject matter bring new things up for you or pull you back into the moment of the dissolution of the relationship? 

When I was making the reader, I was working with Rosie Roberts, and she reminded me that there’s this phrase in writing where you write from the scar and not the womb. Wound, not womb. Maybe I was writing from the womb as well. But I think that it’s about distance and being able to have retrospect. When I was in this whole mess, I couldn’t see the edge of it, which is why the show’s called ‘Hard Lines’ as well. There was never an edge. I couldn’t hold it and I couldn’t understand it. Whereas now, it’ll be a year and a half when the show opens, I feel like that distance has been so important. You process so much just through talking. For a while it felt like I couldn’t, which is why the cover image of the publication is so important. I just felt like I was shocked all the time. I was so full up. Language was a constriction. I remember saying to a friend that I feel like I can’t put anything in my mouth. I’m so full of information, but it was information other people were giving me all the time. 

There’s multiple strands of thinking all the time. So you’re exhausting yourself  thinking through all these cycles of emotions and because everything means something else or everything affects another thing. You’re questioning yourself and that specific relationship, all the relationships around you, my relationship to my life, my work. It all needed time to dilute. It’s quite ironic, but I don’t think about my breakup that much. Maybe it’s because I’m making this show. I have a place to put it. I think about the effects of it and I think about how it’s affected me and the people close to me, but I don’t think about that relationship. I can hold the special things that were in it quite well. Obviously, there’s a prodding and poking that’s happening in the show, but the hurt has dissipated. I couldn’t have made this show last year and I probably couldn’t have made this show next year. It wouldn’t have felt as relevant anymore. This is the exact right time to make it. 

The whole show is like looking at a photograph of the relationship. Like when you look at a holiday photo of when you were a kid, you remember everything about it, but you’re not bodily in that moment. There’s a tangibility and an edge. I don’t feel the need to think of anything anew. I think I had to come to terms a long time ago with the fact that this is crazy. Like it is crazy and there’s no logic to it. That’s why there’s so much layering of imagery in the show. It’s all of these photographs. All of these memories on top of each other and they kind of become coagulated. Just like a mass of information and memory. That’s how I feel about it now. It’s like a melted candle. 

I’m interested in the use of repeated visual motifs throughout the work. For instance, in your leaflet, the image of your chest or the repetition of the necklace. Can you explain what some of that imagery means or represents? 

I have a necklace that I always wear that is really personal to me. I was thinking about what it means to wear jewelry, where it hangs, the weight of it, where it sits on the collarbone, its closeness to the heart, that kind of thing. The locket featured in the show is the only tangible thing I have to her (the person my ex had the affair with). I gave her the rest of the jewelry back. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to have this shared history with her in any way. I found the locket a lot later. 

At the time when you’re really scrambling around for meaning when things like that happen, maybe it gets weighted in a way that it shouldn’t. But I also think when you’re going through something and you’re trying to gather all this information, there are certain things that just play through your mind over and over again. They may be true or they may be not true, but it’s these little thought loops that you can’t get out of. For me, the locket was one of those. The necklace was one of those. These weighted personal objects that had suddenly come into my universe that I’d never seen before. When I was walking, or if I was swimming, it was a constant thought loop of these things. That’s why they infiltrate the show in that way. They’re like glitches or something. 

You have the two tapestries mirroring each other. You’re talking about how you were thinking a lot about jewelry and the way that it hangs on the body and things like that. The necklace you wear in one tapestry is similar to the shape of the curve of the horse’s belly. Can you tell me about that curatorial choice?

Those two works have been in conversation with each other because of this idea of a big pregnant horse’s belly that has been so full of potential. Not just for the horse, but for me. What does that mean for my capacity for desire, the idea of the fertility of this animal in relation to my body and my fertility, or my desire being so reliant on the facility of this animal. That’s why the chest, and walking through the chest is really important as well. The horse’s belly has to stay intact, whereas my chest doesn’t need to. They’re inversions of each other. I like the idea of this black bra holding me up and then this belly holding the horse in. There’s something gravitational happening for both of them. 

In your write up about ‘Hard Lines’, you say you’re questioning what it means to inhabit a body stigmatised by class, disability, and menopause. Can you tell me more about that element of the show and its place in the work? How has living in a body stigmatised by these elements impacted the way that you’ve gone about creating the show? 

I thought about this a lot because I’ve had these thoughts in the middle of the night like, maybe the show isn’t disabled enough, or maybe the show isn’t, like, menopause enough, or it’s not about class enough. Then I realised that the way that I write and the way that I make, it’s all through autobiography or using the self as a site for research. So, I’m all of those things and inherently the show is as well. Maybe that’s a cheap or a quick answer, but the way that I tell stories, I use language – be that text or visual – that’s  imbued by these things. The way that I approach certain situations are all based on my upbringing, which is a class-based upbringing. It’s all about the way that we kind of share and build narratives in close communities, the way that we support each other, the way that solidarity exists, particularly in those communities and that might not look traditional or like traditional ideas of solidarity. I’ve been so fortunate to have been on the receiving end of so much solidarity in the past however many years. Seeing what happens, especially in times of crisis. I feel like gossip was really talked about in the art world as a research thing a couple of years ago, and I don’t think that it always is gossip, especially where I’m from. It’s about sharing narrative, sharing resources, and working out the best ways to do that. 

The people where I’m from are fucking amazing at telling stories and they’re funny. It makes me wonder how does humour work in these situations, why do we need it, what is the performativity of those narratives, how do they even exist in a work. It’s something I think about quite a lot. I’ve always been from that community. I’ve always had this disability. I don’t know how to exist or approach my life or any of these topics without those things. 

I think we’re in a really tricky place right now with the class conversation. Working class culture, since the beginning of time, has been co-opted, we all know this, and there’s been tourism in it. Because of that, I think there’s become this real protection around working class identity. And I think that there’s an over-authority on what working class identity might be and it’s not something that I’m particularly comfortable with. 

All marginalised practices end up having to do this. I feel like there are cycles of support trends that go through the art world. So like, what marginalised group will get support this week, and that will be the focus, and then that group ends up having to like autobiographicalise their life, sell their identity to take advantage of well-meaning, but often ill thought out opportunities and that becomes the work. Having to live and share these stereotypes or signifiers that actually aren’t always the touchstone they are made out to be. Working class communities are nuanced and full, and I think sometimes we are still forced into reductive ideas of representation just to get ahead. I won’t play that game anymore, and I don’t feel comfortable with that being the only acceptable working class work.

There’s a lot of assumptions made about accessibility, and a lot of those assumptions are that just because marginalised people experience barriers to education, that is equivalent to intellect. That’s not true. There is also an assumed lack of interest in the arts, and for that to be a working class condition, I’m kind of sick of that. Working class culture and cultural production is vast, but not everyone has to be interested in everything. Give everyone the possibilities of access then let them engage if they want, based on their interest. 

I find that all really frustrating and I think that it’s not generative, and I think that’s something that Glasgow is really struggling at the moment with. Maybe that’s a big thing to say, but right now things aren’t generative and we’re having things taken away from us on all sides, so then for the community not to be generative is a real problem. I don’t know what the fix is for that. But solidarity would help. 

Do you have anxieties about presenting this body of work and people thinking it is just about this breakup, and not about you specifically? 

I think so. But also I think people want to see a show about a breakup and that’s fine. Once you make a show you have to let it go. That’s why it was really important for me to do the reader. I needed to be really clear about what I want people to know. For me, it’s more about a snapshot in time which involves a breakup, but it involves lots of other things too. They all generated this circumstance that created this massive rupture, which took me back to making work again. That’s the important thing for me, that collision of all those things. People will see what they want to see. I have bracketed enough so I maintain the control I need around the work. But if people want to see a show about revenge, that’s what they’re going to see. 

When speaking about this work previously and the anxiety one may feel about presenting such personal subject matter, you’ve said something along the lines of ‘everybody already knows and is talking about it, so why can’t I?’ Did you ever feel discouraged when conceptualising the show, or more importantly, feel an obligation to not speak ill of the other parties that are inevitably a part of the work?

I’ve thought so much about ethics for the show. I’m always a massive one for permissions. My friend made a really good point that I don’t name my ex. I don’t name the other person because that’s not fair on them. I admit this show is about me, and it’s the first time this narrative has been about me. As soon as this happened, this whole situation was about other people. It was about the two of them, it wasn’t about me. They are present because the thing that happened involved other people. There has to be a presence of them in the work. Everything that is in the show that isn’t mine was left behind, has never been reclaimed. There are no identifiable markers used within that. 

Me and my ex talked a lot about the ethics of photography and the ethics of using other people in your work. And there was a show a few GIs ago where someone had made a work which featured their ex and it had images of that person, and they asked for them not to be shown, and the artist kept them in. At the time, I was saying that I really disagreed with that because it’s a use of identity without permission. I was trying to think a lot about how strongly I felt about that show, and how to do this show that involves other people and not put them in that position. I don’t think he will agree that I’ve done that. But it’s clear that we didn’t agree on a lot of things. I asked a friend who’s a lawyer and he was like, there was an ethical contract in your relationship that was broken before you did this, so in terms of a breach of contract, the contract was already broken. And I was like, okay. Let’s go I guess. 

Something that took me a long time to come to terms with was what I wanted in terms of emotions going out of the show. I don’t think I want to impart the same emotion that was imparted on me. It’s more about not disappearing or something. I’m rejecting whatever had been put into me, but also then refusing to disappear because of that as well.

How do you lean into sentimentality and nostalgia with the work? When using these elements, how do you want the viewer to feel, and how do these elements make you feel when you work? 

I’ve always thought about those two things. I’m quite sentimental in general, and very sentimental about objects. When I was growing up, my best friend that I met in my first year of primary school, I’ve written about her before. If one of us went away even for one night, we would write letters to each other, and we still have them all. So I basically have this diary of our growing up. I have bits of shit like that. 

I feel like there’s a charge to those objects I can’t let go of, and I’m very sentimental about them. When I was on the MFA, I spent a lot of time thinking about that and talking to John Calcutt about it. He sadly passed away. But we used to talk about that quite a lot, and he was very grumbly about those things or very unsentimental in certain ways. I have always had a work that’s had a longing in it for the past, or for memory, or that softer space of memory. That’s why the show is upstairs. The lighting’s very low. It’s very intimate, heavier, almost like a teenage bedroom. There’s no language upstairs. There’s no writing. That all exists downstairs. 

If you break up with somebody and also go through menopause (these things happened within three weeks of each other),  there is such a huge time of review. You spend a lot of time looking back as well. There is a saying that nostalgia is a homesickness for the recent past. I just think that’s such a beautiful term. I’m like, why do we need those things? Why as humans are we so empathetic towards the past? And when does that spin around and start to affect going forward? 

I don’t hate romanticism. I quite like it. I’m not embarrassed by it. I think some people are really embarrassed by those things and I never have been. I just decided to really lean into it. Before, I would have maybe tried to write it or intellectualise it in a certain way. But I thought, why make a show about the subject matter if you’re not really going to lean into the essence of the subject matter? It is pathetic, but there’s also a million pop songs written about this. There’s something about trying to legitimise those things for the sake of culture or where they sit within the stratification of culture. There’s this idea that sentimentality in art can’t exist. These feelings are so often prescribed as feminine feelings or immature feelings and can’t be legitimised through artwork, because artwork sits in a completely different place, either through skill and craftsmanship, or through academia, and there’s always a coldness there. There’s an element of that being like, no, this is for me, this is a feminist issue as well. How do we talk about these things through the making of a work and how do we legitimise them? 

I would say one thing that’s been kind of amazing about going through both these two processes at the same time is I do not give a single fuck anymore about having big emotions or having big reactions to something. You get to the point where you’re like, well, I’m fucked and everything’s fucked. What have I got to lose? Why don’t I do a big show about all this? Why should I keep all these emotions in my body? I didn’t put them there. They should really be external to me. Why am I walking around with them inside? So now they’re all outside. 

Through making this body of work, what have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about relationships? And what have you learned about your body? 

I remember people older than me saying this. I’ve been like, I’m gonna feel bad about my body forever. I am so much more content in my body than I’ve ever been. I’ve really had to grapple with it for so long and I was doing that in a way that was very hidden. My body is sore a lot and I think I’ve really now come to terms with how to deal with that and I’ve stopped fighting it as much. I understand my limits a lot more. When something like a breakup happens, you suddenly have this feeling of being completely invisible and so hyper visible at the same time. I had to come to terms with my body very quickly because of that. I felt like I was being seen everywhere and was being observed everywhere. If that went on, I  wouldn’t be able to leave the house. 

I’ve been so lucky to be surrounded by people that are so amazing in a myriad of ways. I think about the way they think about their bodies, the way that they handle themselves, the way that they come to terms with the things that they come to terms with. All I can do is soak that up and try and understand that through my own body, which I feel a lot better about. 

I have this swell of relationships now that are in my life that I didn’t have before because I hadn’t opened myself up fully. Now I have all of these people around me that I feel so connected to in a way that I didn’t feel before. I see how they are with their relationships or with me and there’s this generosity there that I maybe wasn’t open to feeling before. That makes me really excited for the potential of other relationships. And I just have to believe that what happened to me is an outlier situation. My situation was bad, but that’s because there was a lot of unnecessary amounts of bad in it. There were unnecessary amounts of manipulation. That was the bad bit. People have affairs. The world doesn’t end. People get over it. I’m very realistic about that. 

It makes me think about puritanical culture and how a lot of the times we view cheating through a lens of ownership. Sometimes people’s really intense reactions to infidelity and cheating stem from a very, even if it’s unknowingly, puritanical and religious standpoint. We would have much more honest conversations if we allowed ourselves to live in that grey area. We would have much more productive conversations about infidelity and cheating and affairs and moving past that or not moving past that. That middle ground requires so much vulnerability and that’s really uncomfortable. 

I also just think societally, we still don’t want to talk about sex. If we talked about those things more openly, there’d be a different conversation around the margins of fidelity or relationships and that kind of thing. That is something that I’ve learned about myself, my body, and relationships. It’s like, I have met and had sex with quite a lot of people, and it has really just changed my perspective on people’s capacity for understanding, trust, and what it means to be going through the things that I’m going through and have the desire to run through those stages of those things as well, and for people to be understanding about that when I thought no one would be. It’s really flipped my idea of relationships and intimacy on its head. And for the better.

I’ve learned that I wanna make art. And it’s something that I always thought I did and never did, and I shied away from it. Now when I’m not with the work, I miss it. I miss not being with the work, and I think that’s a really important thing to learn.

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In the Studio is a monthly series interviewing Scotland-based artists and curators in their studios, conducted by Chaz Scott, a curator and art historian based between Baltimore, Maryland and Glasgow, Scotland.