Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska Centenary event 4

Event 4)

The Life and Legacy of Sophie Guadier Brzeska.

A presentation with three speakers in the Wotton Cinema at 1.30pm

Ania Ready: Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska a Biography: Her life to 1916 and later, her asylum years and her inspiration to artists, photographers and writers today

 During the afternoon Ania will speak in three parts on:  

1. Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska - Biography
2. Sophie in the Asylum
3. Projections of the artistic projects that have emerged that are related to Sophie.

Ania has an MA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Gdańsk, Poland.

She moved to the UK in 2004.

Ania Ready is a Polish-British photographic artist and author based in Oxfordshire, UK. She works with photography, archives, and texts. In her work, she explores the human psyche, and how it can be affected by outside forces: societal, medical and political ones. Ania is interested in what it means to have an agency in how we look and respond to the world. She has a special interest in the topic of femininity, hysteria and madness.

She creates images, collages, and also works with alternative, camera-less processes.

https://aniaready.com/about

Jeff Walshe:Sophie in Wotton-under-Edge

Jeff Walshe: Secretary of the Wotton-under-Edge Historical Society and will give a brief talk on Sophies life here in Wotton from 1916 to 1922. How the discovery of a letter about her, led to a network of interested parties exploring the life of an amazing woman.

Dr Patricia Gilles: Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s Construction of an Artistic Self: Poetry Notebooks and Journal

Dr Patricia Gilles BA Hons in History, Northwestern University; Ph.D. French Literature and Language

Currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies at Essex University. www.essex.ac.uk/people/GILLI96604/Patricia-Gillies

Summary:

Born in 1872 Galicia to impoverished aristocracy living some 70 miles from Krakow in the Polish countryside of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska died in Coney Hill Asylum, Gloucestershire UK in 1925, after living in Wotton-Under-Edge from 1916 to 1922.

Determined to achieve selfhood as an unconventional literary artist, she left hundreds of pages of journal writings in French, many loose pages in Polish and English, and fourteen small notebooks: all evoking her sufferings, rage and resistance. One of the few points of order is a series of notebooks filled with poems, three of which are marked by her in Roman numerals, I, II, III. The poems within are marked by crossings out and revisions, all indicative of artistic intentionality. Months, years and even days ascribed to poems evidently under constant revision make attempts at dating approximative. If the texts convey a chaotic and intensely painful life, it is one that is nonetheless vowed to artistic expression. Her concept of artistic selfhood is founded in a resistance to socio-economic and political structures. For Sophie, such structures block the connection of the self to the ideal, a world beyond the artificial where the truth of artistic work is informed by primordial forces. As these forces are fundamentally anarchic and transgressive, her expression tends to be disturbed and paradoxical rather than logical and ordered. When Sophie uses verse to denounce bourgeois venality and corruption – the meaninglessness of everyday life, the conventions of marriage and social politeness – she is asserting an artistic presence in the world in terms that reject that world.

Event 5)

Saturday 29th March 2025 at 6.45pm –a Polish dinner with readings at: 

Good Food Kitchen and Bar.

Bookings required:  

Max 35 guests @ £36pp for a 4-course meal

www.goodfoodkitchenandbar.com/polish-dinner

Event 6)

Sunday 30th March 2025 at 2.00pm – Savage Messiah at the Wotton Cinema

Normal Charges apply -book online or pay on the door

https://www.wottoncinema.com/film/Savage+Messiah/1581

Savage Messiah is a 1972 British biographical drama film of the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and writer Sophie Gaudier Brzeska. It was directed and produced by Ken Russell, based on the 1931 book Savage Messiah by H. S. Ede. Much of the content of Ede's book came from letters sent between Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his partner Sophie Brzeska over a 5 year period. The film has Ken Russells brand of stretching the real story into his own fantasy and should not be taken as an accurate portrayal of the characters. Good performances by all. With Scott Anthony, Dorothy Tutin and Helen Mirren.

For events 1, 2 and 3 see the Lectures Column.