Negative Space

by Cristín Leach

In a series of layered essays, art critic Cristín Leach writes about the gaps between reality and perception, about writing and anxiety, body and brain, breaking and making, succeeding and failing, conventionality and independence. The non-linear structure of the essays, with repeats, retakes, and deliberately unsaid or missing information, mimics the gaps in memory and understanding that are part of the human condition, especially during times of great stress. It’s about art and writing as a fundamental way of explaining and understanding the world, perhaps saying what cannot be said, or revealing without showing. This is a linked memoir about writing as a salve and a means of escape, marriage as a refuge and a trap, the nature of home, and what happened when everything fell apart.

Genres: Ireland, Nonfiction

151 pages, Paperback

Published August 22, 2022

Reviews

[Raytown]

A Thing is a Hole in a Thing It is not

Art is a desire to show other people how you see the world

Some insightful bits, some beautiful lines but not quite enough of anything - CL clearly opted for breadth over depth. The loose structure and the jumping all over the place/time ultimately made me feel disconnected and untethered. Also, I suppose I expected something more substantial, more gut-punching freshness of thought, but some of CL’s musings did feel a bit cliché.

The poem included here - “Forest Memories for the Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness project” - is gorgeous though.

[PJ]

Bkclub May 2023: Negative Space

Hated start, hated the first couple chapters so much I wasn’t gonna read anymore and waste my time…hated the style of writing ‘I wrote’, felt it was clumsy disjointed and boring listing of all her editorial pieces in an ironically ‘never made it to the top’ /was always mediocre in editors eyes but I’ll put all my pieces into a book fill it up and show off my whole CV & let the people see my work kinda way 🙄 AND interspersing every two mins about her husband cheating on her but then never following thro with anything of interest. 🙄🙄🙄

Then got to sinking and thought ok maybe there’s an actual conjoined story here… there wasn’t - just another bland mediocre incomplete story of her being in a storm in Thai & then juice it up with her sisters bland story of being caught up in the tsunami??

Clumsy writing:
‘I wrote’ …couple of sentences later another ‘I wrote’… that repeation of words bugs me & interupts my reading flow

‘The first thing my husband did after he’d moved out was come back and shred…’
Then a couple of sentences later
‘The first thing I did when I discovered…’

Failed writer
Failed artist
Failed marriage

Sent a drawing of a dried flower to a friend…she never got it, no return address lost 🙄

I’m making the radio series
I publish…
I write… paintings I want to inhale
I write…profound sensation of coming home to myself
I write…
I write…
I write…

(All one paragraph 5 ‘I writes’ when we f***ing know she’s writing it 🙄)

‘Afraid of any large body of water where she can’t keep her head on top’ yet tries to record jumping into river for the radio series and can’t stay under (clumsily trying to connect to sink or swim 🙄)

‘In 2000 I was editor of website for arts and culture for Nat broadcaster’

‘The rose petrified as it died’ 🙄

Forest memories for line women poem… 🤢
Tsunami wth?
Electric picnic to do a talk
This fest that judge writer my shanties 🙄🙄🙄
Smear test violation ??
Ooooh aaaah cervix connected to back of throat 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Radio producer asks me to do series 12 paintings…yawn yawn yawn

Nothing connected, only sit down and think ‘ok I could fill a book with all the things I’ve written…my published stuff, my unpublished songs, things I’ve attended and judged. Then I’ll fill the rest with my marriage breakdown references, childbirth, my sister being in the tsunami, my yoga story and sound bath story, smears and whatnot.

Went back to it cos it’s short and I was on hols so why not…thought it was gonna get more interesting now that it was away from regurgitating her pieces…

And ode to the fucking tattoo..then family history like we actually care or it has anything interesting

If it wasn’t obvious - I hated the book

[E]

This is an insightful and expansive volume on not only how a marriage breaks down but how writing itself informs identity, thought and memory. The volume weaves through public writing (art reviews) notebooks, scraps of diaries as well as elements of memoir. I loved the hybrid nature of the work and its process of reevaluation- especially how critical review informs a lifework and offers an insight to a private life too.

I've becomeso tired of the sometimes shrill voice emananting from recent self-help works (performing as widsom pieces, empathy or activism) and loved the subtle doubt at the heart of this work, the acknowledgement that doubt (and not fixed positions) can give us an insight to how things did not work out and that strategies of recuperation are not always easy to follow or even perceive. There is wisdom and beauty here.

Do read - this work expands one's knowledge of artworks and making too!

[Anya]

I read this book because of good reviews. I was very disappointed. It is hard to describe this book, but basically it seems strongly influenced by an Olivia Laings style: writing about art, and people and sometimes personal stories, but unfortunately doesn’t work in this book. It rambles with disjointed thoughts and snippets of stories, back and forth in time which makes it hard to empathise with the author. The narrative is strongly centred on her divorce, which seems at odds with the other topics. I love hearing about personal stories, but then make it about that- this author tries to make it about art, or about cultural life and then her personal stories seem awkward and make me feel embarrassed for her. Pity, but I didn’t enjoy this book despite my open mind and love of hearing about personal insights (and loving Olivia Laing’s books).

[George Millership]

Cristín Leach time-jumps through the stages of her divorce, from the harrowing to the healing, whilst weaving in fundamental truths of western/Irish patriarchy in domestic and marital space.
Her work as an art critic accompanies this, bringing out themes of sexism and gender in contemporary art, but is honestly quite shallow. Good as a list of recommendations of Irish contemporary artist, but can sometimes function as just that - a list, verging on displaying the author's cultural capital, rather than an incisive or emotional shortcut to the emotional content of the book.

[Catherine]

Negative Space is a deeply personal examination of life and one's experiences told through scenes from the author's life. Ms. Leach--an Irish art critic, writer, and broadcaster--touches on universal themes that women can relate to including: identity, artistic expression, the dissolution of a marriage, human resiliency, and how the past influences the future.

[Nicola Pierce]

While I absolutely loved both the cover and the premise of this book, I'm afraid the approach did not gel with me. However, I am willing to believe that the fault is mine. I am not an intellectual and this may have prevented me from properly accessing the truth of this book.

[Lianne]

3.5

[David Macpherson]

This is a beautifully sad (and a little uplifting) look at divorce and the power of art and writing to keep one going. There were a few places in the book that moved me.

[Chantal Ladias]

I am not Irish but lived in Dublin for 36 years . As a foreigner I had to deal with the separation , the courts , the infidelities, the abandonment of children , the constant sense of being the sinful foreign woman .. I became a professional in my own field and left … your words are echoing in my heart , especially the end of the book are more insight is displayed about the connections between home - creativity - children … my life is now a story I can tell . Thank you for reminding me I am not alone

[Sara Aylward-Brown]

A fantastic, immersive, deeply vulnerable and profound book. Like a great painting, it's one you can return to again and again, and find something that resonates within its pages.