Personism Leeds Leeds | Leeds NYC

[image description: A pale pink wall runs the length of a room, the floor is concrete and the ceiling made of chipboard. On the wall from left to right are a series of twelve poems printed on mint green paper. They are arranged in four columns, slightly off set, with three poems in each column. To the top left of the black vinyl letters read Personism Leeds New York. In the middle section of the wall there is a pink pinboard, with fuchsia ribbon holding various polaroids and flyers, hung above three white interpretation panels. To the right of the pink wall are 12 large photographic images in shades of pink, they are presented in four columns, three images in each column. To the top left of the photos black vinyl lettering reads Personism Leeds Leeds.]

Personism is an exhibition of new poetry, photographic image and video readings from a collaboration between artist Michelle Duxbury, poet Rebecca Faulkner and artist, writer Pamela Crowe.

‘…one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person’ – Frank O’Hara

The exhibition title is taken from the half-serious manifesto of the same name written by American poet Frank O’Hara in 1959. In Personism: A Manifesto O’Hara ruminates on freedom in writing, if it matters if anyone gets or likes his work, ‘how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death?’; how writing or making art might be an instinctual process ‘You just go on your nerve’, and considers how a poem might simply be a statement or message to another person, one just as easily communicated over the phone:

‘It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born.’

Pamela Crowe: In 2021, I invited poet Rebecca Faulkner to begin a process of exchanging ‘Personisms’ with me, video readings of new poetic work we were writing – if instead of sending the words in written form, we spoke them to each other. Simultaneously, I approached artist Michelle Duxbury to begin a process of non-verbal exchanges with photographs, similarly inspired by O’Hara’s provocation for direct communication but this time via image alone.

O’Hara’s desire for simplicity and ease of expression spoke to me. I was curious about how often poetry was performed or spoken with an adopted voice by the reader, sometimes ‘authorly’ or consciously ‘poetic’, other times sermon-like as if delivered from a pulpit. I wondered why poets or actors forgot their own voices when they performed, why they assumed the voice of another and lost the ability for direct expression, ease, authenticity of meaning and tone; a lost connection it seemed to the first feelings or inner voice with which they had created or read the work.

Personism is as much about the ability to read back words, to read from a script so-to-speak, as it is about one-to-one-ness. It’s a work about writing, about staging, self- image making and authorship; about authenticity and how we connect to our emotions and feelings when we express ourselves through art. The exchange with Michelle Duxbury, which eliminates words entirely offered a further challenge. Can an image speak directly? Do words obfuscate? What connection can we create through an exchange of self-image? What do the images say when placed together? And I wondered too, what will we create from the process around the artwork?

And Personism was finally about intimacy. About friendship and collaboration. It was a come-on, to two people I wanted to spend time with, desired to spend time with. Art seemed a great catalyst to do this. And there have been many little Personisms around the project too, everyday Personisms and moments of connection with others. We hope you enjoy and connect to the work, we invite you to step closer too.

To discover more about Frank O’Hara visit frankohara.org

Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn, New York. The author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, (Write Bloody Press, 2023) her work appears in New York Quarterly, Solstice Magazine, The Maine Review, CALYX Press, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 poetry recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest, and the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She is currently at work on her second collection of poetry, exploring female identity and artistic endeavor.
www.rebeccafaulknerpoet.com | instagram @faulkner_becca

Michelle Duxbury is a Leeds-born and based artist. Drawing on her own experience as a disabled, neurodivergent, working class woman, Michelle’s work explores how we exist in our bodies, spaces and places. Using photographic processes, moving image, sound, and embroidery, she offers a glimpse at her complex relationship with an outside world. Her practice is informed by process-based research & experimentation, developing a more sustainable approach to creating work, and a desire to contribute to inclusive narratives around disability. A recipient of The Tetley’s PANIC! Bursary in 2021, Michelle was selected for the 2022 YSI Sculpture Network following her solo show at The Art House. Her work was recently shown in the Leeds Artists Show at Leeds Art Gallery.
michelleduxbury.studio | instagram @alabamathirteen

Pamela Crowe is an artist and writer working across performance, text, image and voice. Her work has been published by The Poetry Society, Winchester Poetry Festival, Soanyway Magazine and Spelt Magazine, exhibited at Leeds Art Gallery, commissioned by Leeds 2023, Axisweb and 1623 Theatre Company, commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2022, shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. She is a winner of Poetry Archive Now 2022 and a recipient of a Creative Access Bursary 2023. Her pamphlet THE BELL TOWER is published with The Emma Press.
www.pamelacrowe.com | instagram: @crowe_pamela

Our thanks to Sarah Roberts and team at Hyde Park Art Club, the selectors for the OUTOUT HPAC programme, the staff at Hyde Park Book Club, Frances Hansom, Sydney Gilbride, Jonathan Turner, and Kurran from Hobbs Reprographic.

Please note: Personism explores themes around identity, sexuality, body image including body dysmorphia, baby loss, illness and disability.

Listen to the AUDIO version of the exhibition interpretation on SoundCloud:

Personism LEEDS NYC is a text and video work with Rebecca Faulkner and Pamela Crowe comprised of a series of 12 poems exchanged with three simple rules, the poems to be spoken aloud and exchanged by video addressing the other writer; and, no words beyond this. Mirroring the tone of O’Hara’s LUNCH POEMS, the work grew as we began to test out our speaking voices, to return the words from the page to the voice, to speak directly and read with authenticity.

Watch a VIDEO of Personism Leeds NYC on Vimeo:

Listen to the AUDIO version of Personism Leeds NYC on SoundCloud:

Titles of the poems [in the order of exchange]:

Titles of the images [in order of exchange]:

Image descriptions:

Half a curtain missing by Pamela Crowe
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of a woman with head and shoulders showing. Half of her face shows in a mirrored reflection looking directly at the camera, the other half is obscured.

The Disjuncture by Michelle Duxbury
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of close up of womans face facing the camera. The image has been overlaid multiple times so that the subject’s face is extended across eight strips vertically. Dark hair frames her face.

Keep moving by Pamela Crowe
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of woman dressed in all black, stood reflected in a bathroom mirror. Her head is bowed and her left arm is positioned on her waist. A pale pink rectangle from another image is superimposed below her face as if a tear.

The Umbrage (archaic) by Michelle Duxbury
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of the silhouette of the top half of a woman’s body stood in front of a window with daylight showing through four window panes.

Reprocessing by Pamela Crowe
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of a woman reflected in a vanity mirror sat holding a black canon camera with flash operated. The woman wears a white and pink striped v-neck blouse. To the left of the mirror, the edge of a box is visible and in the distance there is a tree.

The Transmogrification by Michelle Duxbury
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of blurred head and shoulders photograph of a woman’s face facing the camera. She wears a dark top with the words ‘BURN IN HELL’ printed in white across the chest. The words are shown in reverse as if reading in a mirror.

Keep moving 2 by Pamela Crowe
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of a pixelated close up a half of a woman’s face with lowered eyes. A black rectangle from another image is superimposed below her eye as if a tear.

The Adumbration by Michelle Duxbury
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of the head and shoulders of a woman wearing a dark coloured face mask. Her hand and wrist with a watch on appear to reach towards the camera.

Relative by Pamela Crowe
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of two women’s faces from different generations of the same family superimposed against each other. Both women’s heads are in profile facing towards the right side of the image.

The Fleeting by Michelle Duxbury
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of one half of a woman’s face shown facing the camera, justified to the right of the image. An upside down image of buildings including high rise flats is overlaid.

Take off your glasses, no. leave them on by Pamela Crowe
Hot pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of two photos of the same woman’s face presented one beneath the other. On the top image, the woman wears black eye liner and pouts, blonde hair frames her face. On the lower image, the woman wears reading glasses and faces the camera with a blank expression.

The Nebulous by Michelle Duxbury
Pale pink tint on A2 portrait sized black and white image of a woman showing in the extreme right hand side of the image. Only part of her head is visible and her eye is lowered. Beneath, she appears to be holding a phone to take the image and skin inkings are visible. The rest of the image to the left, depicts a shrouded shape as if in mist.

Listen to the AUDIO version of the image descriptions on SoundCloud: