Margaret Salmon
Last February American-born filmmaker Margaret Salmon won the first MaxMara Art Prize for Women. The prize, launched at the Venice Biennale in 2005, is a bi-annual award and a collaboration between the Whitechapel and fashion house MaxMara. Its raison d'etre is to nurture and promote female creativity through a six-month residence in Italy. The only entrance criteria is that you must be female, and living and working in Britain. This "exceptional prize", said Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel, at last week's opening of Samon's exhibition at the gallery, "reflects MaxMara's support for talent and creativity and the Whitechapel's ongoing tradition of championing women artists from Frida Kahlo to Barbara Hepworth to Nan Goldin. We hope that by establishing the first art prize of its kind in the UK, we can continue to showcase the work of emerging female artists."
Margaret Salmon spent her residency in Italy making a graceful triptych of films set to an Italian lullaby about three Italian mothers in different stages of early motherhood. 'Ninna Nanna' had its launch at the Whitechapel Gallery last week where Salmon has also been given a solo exhibition, another element of the prize, which was awarded by an all-female panel of judges comprising the Whitechapel's director Iwona Blazwick, artist Gillian Wearing, gallerist Victoria Miro, the editor of Frieze Jennifer Higgie and collector Anita Zabludowicz.
Margaret Salmon, who was chosen from a shortlist of five artists, grew up in Suffern, New York State, but now lives in Whitstable, Kent. She first trained as a photographer then began making films in her early 20s while working in the film department of the New School during her BFA in New York at the School of Visual Arts. She is strongly influenced by the revolutionary aesthetics of Cinema Verite and Neorealist cinema and her films tend to focus on lyrical, atmospheric and often disturbing family dramas, seen through the eyes of women.
'Ninna Nanna' is shot in both black-and-white and colour in Salmon's trademark unobtrusive style on a handheld 16mm camera. The film "explores the iconography of motherhood set against the reality of child-rearing" and is being screened in the Whitechapel's lower gallery until 11 February. Salmon is also showing two earlier films, 'PS' (2002), about the breakdown of a relationship, and 'Peggy' (2003), which follows a day in the life of an elderly lady.
In 'Ninna Nanna' three women with newborn babies are exhausted by their relentless daily routines. Salmon captures the solace they are experience as well as the strength of the bond between each woman and her child. There are lots of glamorous Dietrich style close-ups and even though the mothers are very tired, there is something seductively decadent in their self-sufficiency. Nostalgic and old-fashioned domestic settings provide the backdrop against which each woman sings repeatedly a traditional Italian lullaby to her baby - a 'ninna nanna', which is also gives the film its title.
As with most of Salmon's films, 'Ninna Nanna' is deeply human but is not concerned with portraiture. Her 'characters' are universal types - in this case, mothers united by a sense of isolation and loneliness. Each triptych panel opens with the women deliberately shutting out the outside world, closing the blinds of their homes even though it is still daylight. Once they are alone with their babies, they start to sing the lullaby in succession alternating between solos and moments when they all sing in unison.
During a discussion with Bina von Stauffenberg, the curator of the exhibition, Margaret Salmon explained her use of the triptych: "I wanted to recall Fellini, particularly his film 81/2, or perhaps Rossellini's Rome Open City. And from the beginning of the Renaissance, the triptych has represented mothers and children." Other filmic influences cited by Salmon were Tarkovsky's autobiographical Mirror and Chantal Ackerman's 1975 film Jeanne Dielmanm 35 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the story of a prostitute, housewife and mother whose life is confined to restricted spaces.
Between April and September, Margaret Salmon, travelling with her husband and daughter, researched shot and edited her film in Italy. In April and May she stayed at the American Academy in Rome where she undertook an intensive Italian language course and used the school as a research base. The family then went south to the tip of mainland Italy, exploring Calabria, Puglia and Basilicata. Here she filmed her first subject. From July to September, she was based at the Cittadellarie-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, northern Italy, for the filming of the other two subjects in her film, and the final editing. The shortest period of filming was twenty-four hours. Chairman of MaxMara, Luigi Maramotti, speaking on Wednesday too, said, "Margaret took full advantage of her residency and made a unique and rigorous connection with the Italian territory, its culture and traditions. Poetically, she seems to have nailed Italy."
The shortlist for 2008's prize will be announced this September and the winner will be selected next January. "We want to focus on artists working in Britain, however, as this is the hottest place for new talent in the entire world", explained Maramotti, who likens the prize, and what it offers, to the Grand Tour, when artists would delve into key Italian cities for (often painterly) inspiration. "The mythical tradition of the Grand Tour is lost today; no-one travels that way. Buying time to be exposed to different situations and different landscapes is precious".
The exhibition runs until 11 February. Margaret Salmon will be talkign about her work on 11 February at 2.30pm. Booking is essential and the event is free. For more information visit the Whitechapel's website: www.whitechapel.org.
Laura K Jones
Margaret Salmon
Until 11 February
The Whitechapel Art Gallery
80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street
London, E1 7QX
T: +44 (0)207 522 7888
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