Artist draws inspiration from literary world

A Darlington-based artist and Teesside University PhD student is staging a unique exhibition, exploring one of the 20th Century’s most potent female literary voices.

Cartography for Girls, by Carol Sommer, will be on display at the Crown Street Gallery, in Darlington, from 3 to 26 November.

It casts new perspectives on the work of British novelist and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), who published 26 novels between 1954 and 1995.

Dame Iris was a significant contributor to literature and moral thought during the 20th century, with a lot of her work examining themes of relationships and morality.

Carol Sommer’s Cartography for Girls takes as its starting point Iris Murdoch’s observation that ‘the questing mind abhors vacuums’, or formlessness. As such, the works in the exhibition probe and map the idea of form and formlessness, particularly with reference to the fictional female experience depicted in the novels.

She said: 'My work is driven by an interest in the illuminations and absurdities that can arise as a result of applying classification systems to existing bodies of work or information – in this case Iris Murdoch’s novelistic depictions of female experience.

'Iris Murdoch warns that classification can never be more than a serious game, and while perhaps classification is always provisional, I liked the idea of a serious game in relation to the work of an author whose philosophical viewpoints offer much scope in terms of devising taxonomies through which to examine this aspect of her fiction.'

Carol is working towards a practice-led Fine Art PhD at Teesside University and her work uses film, installation and text to engage with the discourses of literature and literary criticism.

Her Cartography for Girls exhibition is supported by Creative Darlington and a preview evening is taking place from 5.00pm to 7.30pm on Wednesday 4 November at Darlington’s Crown Street Gallery. All are welcome to attend.

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