“PANDORA UNCOVERED” 1983
POPULAR PRESS Pandora is the focus of her Whitechapel installation watched over by Harry Bates' sculpture of Pandora, normally stashed in the basement of the Tate. When Pandora opened the infamous box, out poured all the disasters that beset mankind - plague, famine, pestilence, the lot. Only the Bird of Hope stayed behind to offer a glimmer of salvation. The message from the patriarchs who created the myth is clear. Women must not be allowed to get their hands on knowledge - enquiry must remain the preserve of men. Or to put it more bluntly, an informed woman is a threat.
Sarah Kent, Time Out, March 25 1983
ARTIST'S NOTES Some months before this exhibition I had visited the 'Live to Air' show at the Tate to hear my audio work 'Two voices; White Feather' and in the bookshop discovered a postcard of the 'Pandora' figure which I had only known from a childhood book of Greek Myths and Legends. On enquiring I was told the sculpture had been in their basement store since being purchased for the collection in 1891. I made an appointment and a week later was led through long underground corridors lined with art to meet her. As until then I had only seen one photograph of 'Pandora' and I had no idea whether she was actually the size of an ornament or a monument. A dust cover was lifted to reveal a beautifully carved life size figure in white marble still under its original Victorian glass case. She was holding a casket of bronze and ivory which ironically was the reason she had never been moved, conservators fearing that her unsupported arms would break under its weight. The Whitechapel Art Gallery undertook complex and lengthy negotiations to borrow her for my installation, resulting in 'Pandora' finally appearing here, in public for the first time this century. Afterwards she remained on display at the Tate, and soon influenced another artist Hans Haacke who included her image as an ornament in his portrait of Margaret Thatcher.
Rose Garrard 1994
SITE
'Whitechapel Open' Whitechapel Art Gallery London
COMPONENTS
Life size white plaster figure with replica of my father's box, actual box, and replica of Bates' Pandora's box. Large painted canvas of book, box, dead,bird and the original Harry Bates' 'Pandora' (exhibited first in 1891) lent by the Tate Gallery London.