Anatomy of a scene -a ’speculative collage’ of events - explores the display of gestures, in relation to the performance of closure and disclosure of information in the public realm. As an exercise of close-reading, we transformed a detail of Rembrandt van Rijn’ painting The Shipbuilder and his Wife in a carpet (550 x 650 cm), showing the couple’s hands and a letter. People from Hull have been invited to write a letter, fiction or fact and with an addressee in mind, from their own perspective, situation, or concerns.
It is said that Rembrandt was in Hull to paint several seafaring men’s pictures, or perhaps to escape from his debtors in The Netherlands. Whether true or not, his painting The Shipbuilder and his Wife, on show at the Ferens Museum in 2017, depicts a couple, identified in 1970 as Jan Rijcksen (1560/2-1637) and his wife Griet Jans, portrayed working on what looks like a treatise on shipbuilding, with inscriptions on the various papers naming the sitter, the artist and the date, 1633. Married couples are usually shown at this date as two separate portraits. Here, Rembrandt has created a composition with two portraits together into a single image. The figures overlap and their interaction is vivid. Griet Jans has burst into the room (her hand still on the door), interrupting her husband with a message in her hand that seems of the utmost urgency.
A note can be personal and censored to the rest of us, but can also easily become public. For example, we’ll never know what was in the note to the Shipbuilder, whereas private Government notes about Brexit negotiations suddenly became very public in November 2016, when the notes carried by a politician’s aide that included the line "have cake and eat it" were spotted by the media and widely reported. What is the message in the letter Griet Jans is holding?
We invited seven people living and working in Hull, from different generations and different walks of life, to write this letter. The letters were performed as audio pieces, and installed on headphones near the carpet and the painting of Rembrandt.
Letters by Benji, once Admiral of the Humber but always an Evertonian; John father of two; Laura not afraid to be different; Kirsten, specialist in Dutch painting; Magnus, friend of a fishermen; Sabine, Swiss resident in Hull for fifteen years; and Paul first in the family to attend university.
