Hiding the Wound-Homage to Mr Freud, Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
© www.anniewrightphotography.com

I’m absolutely delighted that my work Hiding the Wound – Homage to Mr Freud (1979) is part of the Coming Out exhibition, which has just opened at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. The show celebrates the diversity of LBGT voices over the last 50 years since the first steps were taken in the decriminalising of homosexuality in the United Kingdom.

According to the information accompanying Hiding the Wound, “the title of this artwork refers to the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) It also refers to his theory known as the Oedipus Complex. This suggested that women believed that they had been wounded, or castrated, when they discovered they didn’t have a penis as a child.

“Wright was active in the women’s liberation movement during the 1970s. Her practice at that time explored gender and sexuality through photography and performance. This work, she explains, ‘by means of sewing, a so-called feminine activity, responds to the female experience under male supremacy.'”

For me, it was always a quite light-hearted piece, a visual joke at the expense of Freudian solemnity.

About the exhibition

The Walker Art Gallery will mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales (1967 Sexual Offences Act) with a major exhibition drawn from the Arts Council Collection and its own collections.

Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity will bring together a diverse range of artists who have used their work to explore sexuality and gender identity since 1967.The exhibition will reveal the findings of over two years of research by the Gallery into LGBT history, visual culture, its collection and the Arts Council Collection, revealing hidden queer histories and institutional blind spots that will be addressed through the exhibition’s programme of events and performances. 

The exhibition will include artists David Hockney, Steve McQueen, LINDER, James Richards and Sarah Lucas among others, as well as new acquisitions to the Walker’s collection, generously funded by the Art Fund New Collecting Award scheme.