In her essay “Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore,” Elizabeth Bishop recalls sending Moore a lengthy poem, the most ambitious poem she had up until then attempted. Moore (and Moore’s aging mother) sat up late into the night, rewriting it. Their version of the poem arrived in the mail the next day. Bishop writes:

“The revised poem had been typed out on very thin paper and folded into a small square, sealed with a gold star sticker and signed on the outside ‘Lovingly, Rose Peebles.’ I had had an English teacher at Vassar whom I liked very much, named Miss Rose Peebles, and for some reason this name fascinated Marianne.”

The exhibition Lovingly, Rose Peebles sparks from an interest in the relationships that form between artists in the close readings of one another’s work. Artwork acquires an accumulation of voices and authors, both during its making and editing (Elizabeth edits Elizabeth and Marianne edits Elizabeth) and displacements of subjectivity occur. Spectres of other voices (Miss Rose Peebles) also hover around work, voices operating in both pedantic and imaginative ways.

For this exhibition, ten artists, who all work with photography in some form, have been invited to edit the work of another. The structure is that of a star. Through a process of studio visits, correspondences and conversations, each artist has been in dialogue with and helped select the work of another for this exhibition, in a chain until the first point of the star. This exhibition’s content is generated by these conversations and collaborations between artists, and the subject of the show—rather than being organized around a single theme—is instead constituted by these processes.


—Kim Schoen / MATERIAL Press