Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, London, 1925
And so begins Mrs Dalloway, which turns 100 this year. In the time that has passed between 1925 and now Virginia Woolf’s legacy and the story of the Bloomsbury Group have attracted countless books, studies, exhibitions and conferences. And yet it feels that this movement and its lasting impact on art, design, literature and society itself, remains an enigma. For Mrs Dalloway, her place in the world is elusive: ‘She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.’ Beneath the surface, a secret language exists.
This brings us to the contemporary artist Guillermo Bermejo, a resident of the Backroom Foundation, whose intricate drawings are presented alongside his Bloomsbury forbears: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Simon Bussy and Stephen Tomlin. During Guillermo’s residency we visited Charleston in Firle, Sussex, the home of Vanessa Bell, Virginia’s sister, Duncan Grant and his lover David ‘Bunny’ Garnett. A meeting place of the Bloomsbury Group including Virgina Woolf, Clive Bell and Lytton Strachey, Charleston teems with the energy of the group, the surrounding landscape largely unchanged for a century.
Pixerina Witcherina, the title of the show, was the secret language spoken between Virginia Woolf and her niece, Angelica Garnett. the daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Inspired by the nonsense rhymes of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, this invented language served both as a parlour game between aunt and niece and a way of creating a private world. Brought up by Vanessa and her husband Clive Bell, Angelica later discovered that Duncan was her biological father. Angelica found her home at Charleston to be both welcoming and forbidding, both intimate and unreadable. Like Mrs Dalloway she often found herself ‘outside, looking on.’
For Guillermo drawing is a secret language. In this series of Bloomsbury portraits he reflects the enigmas of the group. His drawings are made on old book paper, often on a small scale, as if we have found them in the deepest recesses of a library. Virginia appears with Angelica; here are Vanessa and Virginia with their brothers Thoby and Adrian; here is Duncan Grant at Charleston. These are characters we have seen on many occasions in photographs, in portraits and yet the feeling is altogether different and new. It is the Bloomsbury Group reimagined and revealed, before the veil is replaced again to preserve their mystery.
Fitzroy Square, the setting for this exhibition, was home to the Bloomsbury Group following their move from Gordon Square: Virginia was at number 29 between 1907 and 1911 and the Omega Workshops, a design enterprise founded by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, were located at number 33. It was in Fitzroy Square that Duncan stayed with John Maynard Keynes at number 21, first striking up a friendship with his neighbours Virginia (then Stephen) and her brother, Adrian.
We are delighted to host Guillermo’s exhibition at the Backroom Foundation, whose mission is to bring together a new generation of friends, artists, writers and gallerists to collaborate in a relaxed, convivial environment. Thus, in the shadows of our Bloomsbury, we continue their legacy.
– John Swarbrooke
