Carrie Marill :: Duke and Duchess
Project room -Objects of Desire (group exhibition
featuring works on paper)
February 4 -25, 2006
Reception: Saturday, February 4 from 6-9pm
 This
February sixspace is pleased to present the latest body of
work by Arizona-based artist Carrie Marill. Duke and Duchess
depicts personal items included in the Sotheby estate auction
(#700) that took place September 11-19, 1997 for the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. Wallis Simpson and Edward, Prince
of Wales. Mounted in walnut frames with adorning ribbons marked
with the Windsor/Wallis family seal, Carrie Marill's fourteen
new gouache paintings poke fun at genre painting, celebrity,
and the idea of ownership. Perhaps most significantly, these
paintings deal with the gluttony of winning and how the act
of gaining a possession is often times more thrilling than
the end result. Duke and Duchess suggests that the
act of acquiring an item from this family of stature, with
a salacious history attached, during such an exciting event
can prove to be even more desirable than the object itself.
Ironically, many of the items in the auction were the result
of Wallis Simpson's rampant shopping.
Back story: Wallis and Edward's romance was the number one celebrity affair of their time. When Edward married Wallis, an American, he was essentially disowned from his royal family and sent to exile in France. The unprecedented auctioning off of their personal belongings was set in to motion following Wallis' death in 1986 when the house was leased by the city of Paris to Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of the famous Harrods department store. Fayed decided in the mid-1990s to move his family into the house and Wallis' will dictated that items from the home (linens, sporting trophies, books, letter openers, cigarette cases, and some paintings) were to be auctioned off for charity. As Calvin Tompkins suggested in a 1997 New Yorker article, it also served as a reminder of the royal life Edward gave up for his life-long love affair.
Carrie Marill received her BA at San Francisco State University (2000) and
her MFA from Cornell University, NY (2004). Recent exhibitions
include Plaid at Platform Gallery in Tucson, AZ;
Plants and Trees at the Stanlee & Gerald Rubin Center
for the Visual Arts in El Paso, TX; and Terra Non Firma
at Howard House in Seattle, WA. Her last Los Angeles exhibition
was at sixspace in November 2004. She will also be included
in New American City this fall/winter at Arizona
State University, Tempe, AZ. Grants include the Contemporary
Forum of Phoenix Art Museum Artist Grant (2005), The Charles
Baskerville Painting Award, Cornell University (2004) and
the CCA Grant, Cornell Council on the Arts (2003). Duke
and Duchess marks Marill’s first solo exhibition in Los
Angeles.
Main Exhibition Page
**Concurrent with Duke and Duchess
is Objects of Desire, a group exhibition of works
on paper in our project room.
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