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27/6/2012

John Goto

The Freud Museum, London

‘Women of the Family’, pigment print on rag paper, John Goto Artist John Goto explores the relationship between biography and the unconscious, in this exhibition of new photographic works inspired by the life, work and dreams of ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton - the self proclaimed ‘founding father’ of Jazz.

Psychoanalysis and jazz were both born at the end of the nineteenth century, though under very different circumstances. Their founding fathers were respectively Sigismund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939), a doctor and medical researcher in Vienna, and Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton (1885-1941), a Creole musician who had honed his musical skills playing in the brothels of New Orleans. Whilst Freud never claimed for himself the title of ‘founding father’, Jelly Roll most certainly did, attracting derision and controversy in the process.

On his death in 1941, Morton left behind him a strange and dreamlike account of his life during nine hours of recorded interviews he made with Alan Lomax, Folk Music Curator at The Library of Congress, in 1938. Despite subsequent attempts to impose chronology and establish the facts of Morton’s life the best and most comprehensive account, other than Morton’s own, is the huge rambling scrapbook compiled over forty years by William Russell. It is full of vivid, often contradictory stories by Morton’s contemporaries, photographs, official documents, letters and musical scores. It seems that Jelly Roll’s story continues to resists the analytical logic promised by historical narrative.

Dreams of Jelly Roll examines the difficulties of presenting historical biography and poses the question to what extent can we ever truly know another? The photographs exhibited in the Freud Museum are based on archival research material which is reworked and re-contextualised using digital technology, alongside newly made photographic elements. Constructing the setting for each photograph using the virtual world technology of Second Life, the works aim to explore the possible meanings behind Morton’s daydreams and tall stories, mixing people from his musical and social circles with significant figures from the world stage to which he aspired.

Alongside the exhibition, in collaboration with Matthew Leach, Goto has created House of Dreams, an Augmented Reality installation, in which Maresfield Gardens is inhabited by virtual figures from Jelly Roll’s dreams. The spectres hover above Freud’s couch, hide amongst his collection of antiquities, shift scale, become fearful giants, and then vanish from Maresfield Gardens as suddenly as they appeared. They remain invisible to the eye, unless roused from their dormant state by the visitor using a smart phone App LAYAR.

John Goto is a British artist particularly known for his work with photo-digital media, which he began using in the early '90s. He has worked with historical and political subjects throughout his career. Goto has held solo London exhibitions at Tate Britain, The National Portrait Gallery and The Photographers’ Gallery, and mounted many one-person shows in Europe. He is currently Professor of Fine Art at the University of Derby, UK. www.johngoto.org.uk

Jelly Roll Morton’s boast of having invented jazz is not as risible as some have suggested. As well as being a composer of great subtlety and invention, his piano playing provided a bridge between ragtime and jazz. He modified his claim when speaking to Lomax, saying ‘I started using the word in 1902 to show people the difference between jazz and ragtime’. Freud might have been interested in Morton’s choice of the word ‘jass’, a patois term for sexual intercourse, and indeed in his stage name of ‘Jelly Roll’. What are we to make of Morton’s numerous fabrications and exaggerations? Were they signs of an immoral personality, as some critics have claimed, or were they a culturally specific form of hyperbole? The causes might have been more complex, however, than either of these scenarios suggest. Laurie Wright comments that ‘Morton would have been a wonderful subject for psychoanalysis’. Morton’s contemporary, Volly De Faut, believed ‘Jelly suffered inwardly from an inferiority complex’. Gunther Schuller argues that Jelly Roll was ‘led by his musical and personal frustrations to embellish the truth’ whilst Philip Pastras draws attention to Morton’s uncertain sexual orientation, and the disturbing effect on a young mind of witnessing nightly floorshows in the brothels of New Orleans.

Augmented Reality is achieved by combining three functions of a smart phone - GPS reading, internet connection and camera – to create an image layer in front of the place observed through the camera. In order to participate, the visitor needs to download LAYAR from the App store, which is free, enter the search term House of Dreams and launch.

The Freud Museum London is the final home of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and his daughter Anna, a pioneer of child psychoanalysis. The Freud family settled here after fleeing Nazi persecution in Austria in 1938. The centrepiece of the Museum is Freud’s extraordinary study, containing his iconic psychoanalytic couch, countless books and antiquities. The Museum opened in 1986, since when it has developed an international reputation for its collections, research, conferences and contemporary art exhibitions.

Catalogue - A 32 page full colour catalogue will accompany the exhibition, priced at £5.00.

Interviews – To arrange an interview with the artist, please contact Lili Spain at lili@freud.org.uk

The exhibition is kindly supported by the University of Derby.

Image: ‘Women of the Family’, from ‘Dreams of Jelly Roll’, pigment print on rag paper, 80.5 x 47.4 cm © John Goto

Media contact: Lili Spain lili@freud.org.uk 020 7435 2002

Private View 28 June 6.30-8.30pm

Freud Museum London
20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX
Opening hours: Wednesday - Sunday 12 – 5pm, closed Monday and Tuesday
Museum admission charges: Adults £6.00, Senior Citizens £4.50, Concessions £3, Under 12’s free

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