Walking into Tate Britain with my friend Kate, I unzip my rucksack for the bag check. I rarely travel lightly as I always chop and change with my reading desires, so usually have a portable library on my back mixing up books on cloud formation, neurodivergence and stories about women who unpick themselves and discover they appear to be part ant and part sewing machine (quite a specific one that, Camilla Grudova’s The Doll’s Alphabet – my favourite book of the year so far). As I lift the flap of the bag, I jovially say, “Books, books, books, books, books.”
“We have a good bookshop here,” smiles the security person.
I look ruefully, knowing all the temptations I will see today.
“Oh, I know.”
The other security person tells us that she has a book in the bookshop. We ask what it is, and she bashfully replies that it is not really her book. We want to know more and, under our expert interrogation, she explains that she illustrated the Tate book on visibility. The moment we are out of earshot, I tell Katie we must go straight to the shop and buy two copies of Visibility.
Marcia is surprised when we return three minutes later (pictured) and ask her to sign our books.
In the John Singer Sargent exhibition, we bump into her again and she tells us a few things about the famous “strapless” painting.
It is a portrait of Virginie Avegno, who was known as the “it girl” of her day, because Sargent painted her with one of the straps of her dress hanging off her shoulder. Already notorious, this ruined her reputation and she left public life. Marcia explained some of the strokes of paint that reveal amendments, then leaves us to look at Lady Macbeth’s dress. We eat cake and talk ants and sewing machines, and depart via the existential agony of Francis Bacon and the pop art vivacity of Pauline Boty.
Marcia is now at the exit, so we wave goodbye with a happy sense of new connection. Accidentally looking in the Oxfam Bookshop window which I just happen to be walking past, I spy a title that beguiles me: Rebel Women of the Apocrypha by the artist Marcelle Hanselaar. With etchings of Lilith and the Witch of Endor, I decid
